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In a fairy-tale
forest, a boisterous young girl accidentally unleashes an
ancient demon spirit; Fire incarnate. The demon posses the
closest thing to it, her dog, creating a giant evil fur-ball
that threatens to wreak havoc across the forest. Leaving a trail
of warped and fragile reality in its wake, the new-born dog-god
must be saved from itself.
Our young heroine
has to undo the chaos it wreaks and needs to battle through the
nightmares it leaves behind it, but she has a guardian spirit
and 4 petrified monks to help her.
Can Alice save
her beloved pet? Will she be sharp enough to save the
forest from a fiery new reality? Will she prove herself
able enough to be charged with power over nature... or will the
dog-god's madness consume the world?
Malice is a dark
and comic fairy-tale, a scary, character-based adventure for
kids and adults alike. Sumptuous in its visual humor, Malice's
worlds fall somewhere further down the 'Yellow brick road', round
the bend from 'Alice's Wonderland' and 'Through the looking
glass' darkly...
...this is a
place where you'll meet those monsters that lurk in the closet,
under the bed; JuJu men raise zombies from the earth, singing
trees tell tales of prophesy, age'd ex super-heroes lie helpless
in spiders' webs, murderous crows police the streets and
pyromaniacal glow-worms set fire to each other...
You'll wield a
baseball bat to 'beat' the magic out of the creatures you
encounter, you'll decipher the fiendish ways of a machine
ecology gone mad, and use the 4 elements to defend yourself
against the tyranny of a new born dog-god and his cohorts.
Bottom Line:
Malice is a 3D adventure for the PlayStation; an
exploration/platform/puzzle game that takes the classic platform
style gameplay that the Croc 2 engine is so good at and moves it
into a new monstrous wicked wonderland. Was Malice inspired by the story of Alice in Wonderland?
According to Herman Serrano, "only in so far as it's a dark
fairytale with a girl named Alice for a protagonist, but certainly the aim
was to write a dark fairytale with a character who grows up to
become a kick-ass heroine."
The bottom line
is Malice PS1 combines the action of Croc 2 with the exploration
and depth of a Mario 64 and is presented with a sense of unique
style and graphic beauty and detail that would have become the
new technological standard for the PlayStation. Although
Malice was released for the PS2 in 2004, the PS1 version differs
greatly in storyline, graphics, design, and gameplay. Any
of the former Malice designers will tell you that Malice PS2
was only a shell of its original design. Unfortunately
many of the designs that made this PS1 version so enjoyable were
removed in the PS2 version. This is the game that Malice
should have been on the PS2. In the end, Malice PS1 can
easily be considered the greatest game never released on the
PlayStation.
Below is just a
sampling of the unique game design that can be found in Malice:
- The dog-god
turned Alice into a cat. Obtain ingredients for the
old witch to make a
potion that will turn Alice human again: eyes of newt, crow
feathers, and a deadly nightshade which is represented by a
ninja table lamp...get it? (aye thank yew.)
- A land shark
patrols the fields around the siren tree. Get caught
by it and it will drag Alice down beneath the brush and
thrash her around.
- The
siren tree has a throbbing purple fungal pimple that must be
popped. Traverse up the treacherous branches of the
siren tree and jump down from the highest point and land on
the pimple to pop it.
- The gloworms
have turned bad and you must knock the evil out of them
before they burn you with their magic.
- Use water
magic to run on water.
- Take a ride
on a Beer Moth or a Toucan to reach hidden areas
"I have
lots of good memories of Malice. Mostly that it was a wildly
overambitious idea.. that had a truly awesome tech demo that
wowed a billion of people (that was being used to launch xbox).. but
it got pulled around from Microsoft, and then from publisher to
publisher and eventually, died a death and released on a "B"
game label. The blame? Partly due to mismanagement on our part..
partly down to some of the team who were as creative as they
were egotistical... partly due to overzealous publisher
involvement - making wholesale changes that were unnecessary and
unwarranted.. and partly just because it was too damn big a
project to be done 'at our own risk' !
Malice definitely contributed to bringing down the company. I
can't blame all our woes on one game (far from it), but it sure
sucked a lot of cash out of the company (millions!) and that
can't have helped." Jez San, former Argonaut Games CEO
So why
was it dropped when the PSX version seemed almost complete?
Two main reasons, the first technical, the second was business.
TECHNICAL REASONS:
ENGINE LEGACY AND WORK STILL TO-BE-DONE.
The game engine was based on the CROC engine and although a lot
of gameplay had been put in, it would still take at least
another year to nail some really big bugs, plug in the cutscenes
and level-linking code.
ENGINE FAILINGS:
WORLD COLLISION: Camera gets stuck
The camera had a big tendency to get stuck on scenery. It needed
to be completely overhauled to work with this world. Thanks in
part to the tile set approach and the lack of camera
consideration when the designers created the levels, this was a
big task. It is why the camera gets stuck or is over-ridden a
lot in most parts of the game. This problem can still be seen in
the final xbox version.
WORLD COLLISION: “FALL OUT OF WORLD”
Due to the tile set nature, Alice can fall through the tiny gaps
in the tile set if pushed. When the game migrated to xbox, this
big problem was resolved by creating solid levels not based on
tile sets. It would have been a lot of testing and proofing of
levels to fix this issue if it were to remain on PSX.
WORLD VARIABLES UNDEFINED
This was made worse by the fact that each level had it's own
gravity setting, so Alice actually had different jump-distances.
This sort of thing was soon standardised for the Xbox version.
ORGANISATIONAL FAILINGS:
FLAWED TEAM STRUCTURE LED TO DESIGN FRAGMENTATION
How did this lack of global vision happen? The Malice team
employed a large contingent of level designers, encouraged to go
off and design stuff independently - to the point where one
designer soon lost sight of what the rest of the game looked
like. And the poor coders soon were being asked for dozens of
similar yet unique versions of the same type of game object -
very inefficient. This even went as far as failing to nail down
a set of global variables, like gravity and jump distance.
So this led to a sort of us-and-them mentality between the
coders and the designers, the best anecdote went something like
this:-
Designers wanted everything tweakable. Coders were getting sick
of providing STRATS* to cover an ever-ending list of
changes - especially as the other designers usually had
something that already did the job, if they had bothered to talk
amongst themselves.
Still the coder dutifully added it to their to-do list and soon
returned a Strat the designer could use. The coders by this
stage were savvy enough to add in so many variables to keep the
designer happy. And so the designer went off and played with the
new strat for ages, failing to ever ask what all the variables
did. Shame really as only a few of these variables were ever
actually plugged into something.
Oh those coders and their mind-games! Oh those designers and
their inability to know what to ask for!
*Strats are game objects the designer could drop in
the level editor, ranging from obstacles, lights, cameras,
pickups, NPCs, enemies etc.
So how was this communication fracture resolved? In the last
phase of Malice development, the game teams were setup in
smaller groups, consisting of a coder, a designer and an artist
together. These teams were responsible for certain levels of the
game. A separate team was dedicated to global, front-end and
Alice-related matters, to which all teams fed into. This
stabilised the fragmentation but made the game a bit too
standardised in some areas.
BUSINESS REASONS:
The PSX console by 1999 was in it’s final stage. The PS2 was out
and Argonaut was already completing it’s last big PSX project,
the glorious Alien Resurrection. This movie tie-in took 5 years
to develop and come out, way after the movie release but was
still a great game. However it proved to Argonaut executives
that the console was at the end of it’s life as the returns on
this great game were small.
So Malice was still in the pipeline and even though so much had
been put into the game since 1998, it was still at least a whole
year away from completion. Fox Interactive also pulled out of
supporting Malice so Argonaut was left without a backer for this
game. However, the Xbox was due to come out and Argonaut was
keen to get first onto this console and ideally showcase
Argonaut’s technology. So Malice transitioned from PSX to Xbox,
causing the team to swell in the process. During this time, the
tech also came along with the amazing Shadowcaster engine
emerging from this. By 2001, Microsoft were showing off demos of
Malice on Xbox and all seemed well. However, the PSX game design
was tricky to re-work into a new schedule and the resulting game
suffered a lot of compromise. Microsoft walked away, but Sierra
came on-board – complete with Gwen Stefani and No Doubt
providing voice talent to Malice’s main character.
But still the game design suffered and the tech failed to
deliver on the ever-changing demands. Argonaut was also
suffering poor returns on it’s other titles during this 02-03
period and Malice continued to be downgraded until finally
Sierra pulled out too. The team was downsized to a skeleton
team. Even the project lead was forced out in 2002, effectively
killing the vision forever.
Argonaut had to re-coup some of the money invested. Over the
next nine months up to summer 2003, the remaining team and LT
Studios, the PlayStation 2 conversion team, regrouped their
resources and redrafted the game into something that could ship.
The final game was a compilation of the most-complete levels
tidied up a bit, bundled together in a barely cohesive plot and
shipped out - bug-free but a shadow of it’s former self. It took
a whole year to get the Gold Master and to find someone to
distribute it in 2004. Six months later, Argonaut Games folded.
Malice and a few other projects snuck out while the whole
company poured everything into Catwoman – it was a risk that did
not pay off.
Malice was the sort
of game you just don’t see getting made anymore, and in fact
almost did not in the end. It is easy to look back and sneer at
the amateurish way the game came together, but it was something
trying to be different. If Argonaut had been in better shape to
keep it’s backers on-board or alternatively had enforced a more
hardline policy earlier on to stabilize the design fragmentation
then maybe Malice could have become a classic. Malice should
have been made two years earlier and stayed on the PSX to have
had a real chance, but resources were simply not in place at
that time. It is such a shame and all involved lament Malice.
Whoever you ask they will have a great story about that game,
and a bitter memory too.
| Alex
Ilic was an artist at Argonaut who tragically passed away at age
30. He was very passionate about his work and that's what he
should be remembered by.
“May I say it is
great that you dedicate this to Alex – he was great artist with
lots of talent and a great work ethic – even though he was
French J (he’ll forgive me for saying that), but more than that
he was dear friend and I’m honoured to have known him.” - Mark
Jagger
"Alex was 100%
dedicated to his job which was also his passion. I learned a lot
from him, an I enjoyed working alongside him, his enthusiasm was
contagious. He had a very creative mind, full of excellent,
innovative ideas. He made a real difference to my life in
general as a friend and to the way I approach work, trying to
come up with ways to improve things, thinking outside the box."
- Tanguy Dewavrin
"He was a
wonderful artist and a lovely gentle soul, always
striving for the very best in his art. He was a pleasure
to work with and a pleasure to sit opposite, which I did
for a few months. I was deeply saddened to hear
about his passing and I still think about him every now
and then... a great, great shame!" - Herman Serrano
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