Mike Bithell Talks About Volume, Why He Likes Stealth

GR – You’ve made an attempt to have absolutely no combat whatsoever…

MB – Well, there’s no killing, you can knock someone out but only temporarily

GR – Do you feel that’s an important factor of stealth games?

MB – It allows for variety of action. It’s an interesting thing that a lot of modern stealth games have gone down the route of saying that stealth is an option, so, you can be stealthy or you can be a shooter or you can middle ground. 

What I find is that the more options you give a player, basically players will always go toward the optimal path. The easiest way to progress in a game is to shoot everyone around. Even in games where the shooting doesn’t work like that, even in Metal Gear Solid, I go into a room, I identify where the bad guys are, I snap all their necks one-by-one.

GR – That made 3 really interesting.

MB – Oh yeah ‘cause you gotta walk down that river. Yeah. And that’s just how I play those games and it means that I miss out on all the depth because I’m playing the whole game killing people.

I’m actually removing that and making it so that you’re never safe. There’s no way to own the room, there’s no place of a position of power you ever get into.

GR – People had criticism of Dishonored, it just made combat too effective.

MB – Yeah exactly.

GR – If you played Dishonored in a combat-heavy way you could finish that game in three hours. I prefer a stealth game where they make a conscious decision to make it a stealth game. Dishonored felt like they had to allow for a certain amount of player choice. Is that a consideration you have to make? Do you feel like you have to pander to people that may feel like stealth is incidental?

MB – I’m in a very fortunate position where my game costs a lot less to make than Dishonored. Realistically Volume, if that game comes out at $20 and I sell 10,000 of them? I’m okay. And that’s so different to what you have to do with a boxed game with a team of however many people work on the average stealth game. I’m actually really happy going into a niche. I’m confident enough to say “You know what, I’ll just zero in on this”.

GR – I’d bet that the burgeoning relationship that you have with Sony helps that.

MB – Yeah. I’m pretty confident that I’ll find them. I’ll find the players that want to play this game, or they’ll find me.

It’s a challenge. It’s about trying to reduce the choice outside of stealth and increase the choice within stealth.

GR – That’s a good soundbite

MB – Yeah it is isn’t it? I quite like that. It’s the first time I’ve said that, I’ll now use that in every interview.

GR – That’s the header for the article.

MB – Boom. Done.