Kuba Opon is the game director of Shadow Samurai 3 and a senior employee of Flying Wild Hog. From the first part of Shadow Samurai, he was fully involved in the production of this series. Opon initially embarked on a career in game development as a gameplay programmer, and later, he was promoted to head of Shadow Samurai 2. He is now the game director for Shadow Samurai 3, which allows him to incorporate his long-term love of thrilling shooters and action games into his work.
When Flying Wild Hog decided to reboot Shadow Samurai, the classic shooter for 3D Realms, the production team knew they had to find a balance. They wanted to filter out some of the crude jokes and 90s-style vulgar humor from the original game, but they couldn't drastically eliminate them, or the game would lose its character. The first reboot, released in 2013, achieved what few other reboots of the era could have achieved: laying the groundwork for a new Shadow Samurai franchise that would continue successfully.
Shadow Samurai 2 received the same acclaim, selling four times as much as its predecessor and laying the groundwork for this year's Shadow Samurai 3.
This time, the studio decided to start with the original game and focus again on the crazy and exaggerated adventure story of the past.
When Flying Wild Hog first rebooted the original Shadow Samurai in 1997, how did he recreate the good aspects of the game while retaining some of the indecent elements?
Kuba Opon, Game Director of Shadow Samurai 3: When we set out to make Shadow Samurai, our writers re-set Wang Luo as a young fool who thought his jokes had magical power. If you love his crude quips, then Shadow Samurai 3 will show you the same energy!
We realized that not everything from 1997 to the present was completely obsolete, and that time has changed, and we decided to take the old stuff out of our game series. Obviously, Shadow Samurai is a work that is avant-garde in itself. However, we believe that the avant-garde should also have limits and not feel vulgar. It takes a lot of evaluation, but I think we did an excellent job!
The 2013 reboot proved that we could indeed inject a modern and successful approach to the game, and Shadow Samurai 2 built up a player base that helped re-establish the value of serialization. What are you hoping to achieve in Shadow Samurai 3?
Opon: When we started working on the third part, we felt like we had lost some of the story elements and didn't focus on the crazy and exaggerated adventures that Shadow Samurai did in 2013, which is especially obvious when you think about Wang Luo's relationship with his classmates. We pored over the old Shadow Samurai, a classic game with some offbeat features that set it apart and that was exactly what we needed. So we agreed to use a linear campaign mode in the game, with a greater focus on single-player play.
Both Shadow Samurai and Shadow Samurai 2 were made using your in-house Road Hog engine. Why did you decide to use Unreal Engine to develop Shadow Samurai 3?
Opon: Compared to self-developed technology, if you use an engine that is under active development and has been tested by many products, you are less likely to create risk. Unreal Engine allows us to keep up with modern technology in game development. In addition, it's much easier to find developers with experience with Unreal Engine than it is to teach people to use proprietary engines.
We're currently working on four games, all of which use Unreal Engine technology.
What challenges did migrating to the new engine present to you?
Opon: Unreal Engine is very intuitive to use. We made our first game prototype in just three months, which was very fast. The only minor obstacle we encountered was the need to pay more attention to the basic systems that made the game run, which we had looked at once before. At the same time, many of our developers are already familiar with Unreal Engine, which has been very helpful to us.
In a way, Shadow Samurai 3 seems to have been designed with an eye toward revisiting some of the core systems inherent in gameplay. Can you talk about how you have refined these systems and added or subtracted them?
Opon: The core loop of Shadow Samurai 3 is based on fast, seamless gameplay and acquisition of "weapons of destruction". Therefore, the remaining mechanisms must adapt to the system, support and cooperate with it. Due to the fast pace of the game and the more centralized position structure, we re-adopted the classic skill tree character progression system and Wang Luo's arsenal.
You've said you want players to feel invincible in this latest game of Shadow Samurai. What have you done to achieve this?
Opon: Wang Luo has a special set of tools that help him always have the upper hand in the face of terrible enemies. He can fly through the grappling hook, combined with his control skills, so that he can always preemptively attack. With the help of his arsenal, as well as the iconic katana, players can deal damage in a variety of ways. In addition, the arena was full of traps that could dismember and crush Wang Luo's opponents. Even if the player is forced into a desperate situation, as long as the skillful final technique can be used to turn the situation around and quickly knock down the strongest enemies, and the equipment they drop will become the weapons of Wang Luo's four-way slaughter.
You've added a lot of stuff to the game's mobile system, can you elaborate on that?
Opon: Fast movement is a fundamental feature of the game, so it's clear that we wanted to polish it to make sure that the graphics, feel, and sound when we move are better than ever.
We've also introduced new elements to the gameplay that weren't seen before in the previous game. For example, we added a sliding shovel, wall parkour, and grappling hooks.
The sliding shovel is very useful, allowing the player to avoid certain launchers aimed at the character's upper body without losing momentum.
During the development of Shadow Samurai 2, we briefly discussed wall parkour, but we were busy making other features and could only put them on hold. This time, we knew that in order to provide the player with a complete "ninja experience", the game needed to have this feature, in particular, we knew from the beginning that Shadow Samurai 3 would have more complex vertical levels, so in the level design, without much thought, we had to add this cool way of moving to support the new vertical levels.
As for the grappling hook, this newly added feature has multiple uses and is very useful in exploration and combat. While exploring levels, players can hook to anchor points of various building structures and then pull themselves over, or, when other ways of moving cannot cross the huge gaps, they can swing them with a grappling hook.
With these movements, we want to turn the environment into a "ninja playground" where players can use their agility to move smoothly through the arena, thus harnessing the full potential of their surroundings to approach enemies from different angles.
How did Unreal Engine help you achieve some of your goals in terms of how the game's look and new experiences were?
Opon: Thanks to Unreal Engine, we were able to change the way we designed the level. Our prototypes are more sophisticated and refined than ever before, allowing us to define our target vision faster and earlier. We can also create more varied custom sequences to keep players from getting bored.
Shadow Samurai 3 seems to be once again focusing on the series' protagonist, Wang Luo. What prompted you to make this decision? How do you use Japanese and Chinese culture to tell his backstory and describe the world he lives in?
Opon: From the very beginning, we planned to create a character-led story, and we also planned to unfold the complex relationship between Wang Luo and Gira the Great Serpent to see what would happen. As for the buildings and settings in the game, we drew a lot of inspiration from traditional Asian architecture and ghost theology.
What are some of the aspects of next-generation hardware and Unreal Engine's long-term potential that you and your team are most excited about?
Opon: From a game developer's perspective, powerful machines and the latest tools are important to eliminate the tedious, time-consuming aspects of the development process. The less we have to worry about overcoming technical limitations, the more time we can devote to making unique and fun games. So whenever a new technology comes along, we get excited.