Sadness-Wii.com Developer interview Sadness Wii Sinds de eerste trailer is de game Sadness-Wii in nevelen gehuld. Toch heeft een voormalig Nibris medewerker Adam Antolski een interview gegeven met N-Europe over de geheimzinnige titel. Lees verder voor meer informatie.  Antolski: Hello. My name is Adam Artur Antolski, and I used to work for NIBRiS as a scriptwriter for the Sadness project. I'm the author of many of Sadness's characteristics that NIBRiS is still using, such as the black and white theme, time and place, major characters, and Slavic mythology references. When did you start working at NIBRiS, and how long did you work there? Antolski: I started at the very beginning, in 2006, and it lasted just over a year ... I had absolutely no experience: In fact, I wasn't even an adult yet. [I was chosen] probably because of my work as a journalist for a Nintendo website [a fansite - nothing to do with Nintendo themselves - ed.] I was very grateful back then, but I have no clue why he didn't asked someone more experienced. It is strange, but I wasn't the only one - I remember he involved a couple of others from that site, at least one of them still works for the project. So how many people were actually involved with Nibris then, including yourself? Antolski: Not more than ten, I do not precisely remember, because I didn't know the entire crew.     What work did you actually do in your time there - was there any progress with actual development, or was Sadness still in pre-production? Antolski: When [I was] contacted, there was only a title - Sadness. In about three of four days I come up with some ideas, which evolved into a "script". We actually wanted to make a interactive movie, and there was couple of other ideas as well.  When I was leaving, there was only one 3D object - some minecart I believe, which says a lot for me, most of the time the Sadness project was science-fiction. It's obvious work was definitely underway on the project. But this then begged the question - why the many delays? Were differences among staff about the title the reason why the project has been delayed so much? Antolski: Yes, for example, originally the game was supposed to take place in a fictionalized version of the city of Lviv [a large city in Ukraine], however, most of the scriptwriters thought that Lviv was too close to civilization, that it wasn't really an isolated place, and that logically the heroine could just jump on a train and escape. Though others, including me, thought that it was the right place for horror movie: an old city, with classical, 18th Century buildings with lots of cultures inside, and therefore lots of myths and beliefs you could use. But, we changed it and now it is set in some nondescript woods and villages in Ukraine. Which is better, because you can create whatever you want, but it doesn't have that illusion of visiting a real, existing place. By the time you left the project, had a lot of things been finalised already? Antolski: It is really hard to tell: most of the script was finished, and concept design for sure. We next wanted to enquire about Nibris' relationship with outside developers, and the infamous deal with Frontline that eventually fell through... Frontline Studios parted ways with Nibris citing artistic differences. What were the terms of the deal with Frontline, and how much work did Nibris and Frontline get done together? Antolski: Practically nothing. There were some meetings which I wasn't invited to, however the practical and most important matter was we couldn't match deadlines. By the way, I believe they did that 3D object, the minecart I was talking about earlier. In the time you were there, was any basic programming done, such as work on an engine? It seems the only thing made was that 3D minecart made by Frontline, we know that Nibris only recently licensed the Gamebryo engine. Antolski: I do not know anything about it. But yes, it seems to be like you said. This may seem very blunt, but speaking honestly, do you blame them? Antolski: No, I rather blame us, if you ask me. But I was just a scriptwriter, I might not know the whole truth. Can you explain the story of the title in more detail? Antolski: The main character, Maria Lengyel, a woman of Polish-Hungarian roots was supposed to arrive in Lviv, and the city was supposed to change in the bare moonlight into a somewhat gore-covered place. The location is isolated, so that the character cannot just leave - which we found a little hard to make sound reasonable about a city. The main heroine would see visions, which were supposed to include her memories from the past, therefore the player wouldn't be sure if she really was seeing monsters or if she was just mentally insane. So it was a bit like Eternal Darkness in that it played with your mind whilst playing? Antolski: I wasn't familiar with Eternal Darkness in the time, but when I played it, I've noticed many similarities. We heard Nibris wanted to use extremely innovative gameplay, what did Nibris have in mind when they said that? Antolski: Well, we wanted players to have absolute control over the heroine - be able to use any kind of item as a weapon, due to the lack of guns. And we wanted to make it as realistic as possible, like you could for example break a bottle and use the pieces of glass like a knife, or a chair leg like a bat. If you were going to grab some person from behind, you would "catch" him using the Nunchuck and cut his throat using the Wii Remote. Going back to E3 2006, did Nibris personally create the "trailer" for Sadness? Antolski: We asked a director to make one for us, but yeah, that trailer is made practically by Nibris.