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June 12 2010 |
MW2 Concept Art
Robert Bowling has shared some concept arts and thoughts from early on in development.
By the sound and looks of it, Robert Bowling has been a bit more active in the community lately. Answering questions via Twitter and Youtube, he has now shown some insights from early on in development. We're gamers, and we love MW2 even though some game breaking and obvious glitches that are abused by so many "gamers". It's good to see 402 turning a listening ear to what we think should be addressed yesterday.
Juggernaut
 
I was going through old character concepts done by our artists for Modern Warfare 2 and came across this variant design for what became the Juggernaut in the Spec Ops mode. You might have seen this in the artbook that came with the collectors edition of MW2. What you may not know though, is at this stage in development, this design was intended as a playable multiplayer character.
At one point in development, you could focus on a specific class - whether your thing was speed, strength, stealth - there was a perk class for you. This idea eventually evolved into what is now known as ‘Pro Perks’. Where any and all perks could be upgraded once to their pro version for an additional benefit. At this time, you had more than just standard and pro; You actually had four tiers for each perk. Each upgrade not only gave you a different ability but also changed your character model to visually reflect your new ability. The above is the concept for V4 Juggernaut, the fully upgraded version, essentially a walking tank.
This proved severely over-powered for MP, but with a few tweaks, ended up making an awesome addition to Spec Ops mode! Ultimately, Juggernaut was removed as a perk and morphed into Painkiller once the concept of ‘Deathstreaks’ were introduced.
It's interesting to read how things have developed throughout the development process. It's also fun to read how much it has changed, in the name of balancing. Let's hope the list of game-breaking glitches Robert has recommended fixing to the deverlopers will come through soon too, in the name of balancing (and generally making the game much more fun to play).
Dead Silence
  
In a previous post, I explained how the perk concept in multiplayer changed over time throughout the development of Modern Warfare 2. Moving away from the way it was in Call of Duty 4, to a more class-based system which had the player specialize in a specific class and the perk set assigned to that class altered the character’s visual appearance drastically, to evolving ultimately to its final version of having the player upgrade perks to a ‘Pro’ version through experience using that perk and meeting a specific challenge related to it.
Above is an old character concept by our artists for the stealth-focused class, specifically showing off V4 - the highest tier - of Dead Silence. A perk which silences your footsteps; this ability was later incorporated into the final version of Modern Warfare 2 as the extra ability you gained from upgrading Ninja to Ninja Pro.
My favorite aspect of the visualization of perks and classes was the mentality that you could easily identify the threat level of an enemy with a glance and know immediately the best counter to use. Which we did keep in a more authentic manner with the final character designs by ensuring equipment was actually visible on the character model (i.e. An RPG carrier has an RPG visible on their back).
Concept Character Design by: Brad Allen
We're hoping for a lot more of these concept arts and behind the scenes, thanks Robert! |
