Noir Setting
Vicious Cycle went back to the drawing board and produced a new concept that they felt was darker and better suited to an older audience. The "head-switching" game mechanic had been praised by the potential publishers and was kept, but this time the cartoonish, childlike Geo was replaced by an angry, vengeful private detective named Fred Neuman. The world of Prime was replaced with the bleak, film noir-esque city of Hope Falls, where Fred would seek revenge against those who had wronged him. Vicious Cycle presented the new project to Sony, who promptly approved the game for the PSP, despite it not having secured a publisher. Shortly afterwards, the project was picked up by D3Publisher.
Vicious Cycle then submitted the concept to art company Massive Black Studios to develop initial character sketches. Massive Black's artists were allowed to use their imagination while developing Fred, but the one stipulation Vicious Cycle made from the beginning was Fred's head—the developers wanted it to be a liquid-filled jar with the detective's brain and eyes floating around inside. Massive Black came up with several different versions of Fred, including some with guns, which lead designer Adam Cogan had already decided the game would not include. After receiving the sketches, Vicious Cycle chose several that portrayed Fred with a squat, childlike appearance that retained some of the youthful focus of the scrapped Geo project. The publisher, D3, decided to present all of the concept art to a test group. To the developers' surprise, the test group was much more interested in a darker, more intimidating portrayal of Fred than the cartoonish, playful look they had chosen. The developers decided to flesh out the concept and took the chosen sketches back to Massive Black. This time the art came back darker, with similarities to Dirty Harry and The Matrix, and a Norman Rockwell-inspired look that would influence the game's art style towards a more violent theme.
Read more about this topic: Dead Head Fred, Development
Famous quotes containing the words noir and/or setting:
“C’est à Paris que je me coiffe
Casque noir de jemenfoutiste.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The doctrine of those who have denied that certainty could be attained at all, has some agreement with my way of proceeding at the first setting out; but they end in being infinitely separated and opposed. For the holders of that doctrine assert simply that nothing can be known; I also assert that not much can be known in nature by the way which is now in use. But then they go on to destroy the authority of the senses and understanding; whereas I proceed to devise helps for the same.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)