Exclusive WWE '13 Interview With Bryan Williams!

September 8, 2012

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Last week I had the pleasure to speak with THQ's Bryan Williams on the upcoming WWE '13 videogame and discussed a lot of the new elements that we'll see this year, including Attitude Era Mode, WWE Live, Spectacular Moments, Special Guest Referee, Create-an-Arena and even WWE '12!

You can read a full recap of the interview below or listen to it embedded above.

Attitude Mode

Q. The Attitude Mode is new and replaces Road to WrestleMania this year, can you talk about how the story mode progresses? Will we play as a certain superstar to complete their story and then move on to the next or will we jump between characters for the duration of the story?

A. The Attitude Era is replacing RTWM this year and is broken up into 6 chapters. At the start of the mode you’ll start playing as Shawn Michaels in the storyline that tells the rise of D-Generation X. During the story mode, the first match is Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind, but during the progress of this first chapter you’ll hop around playing as different Superstars like Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Shawn Michaels, The New Age Outlaws and you get to see how the D-Generation X stable came to fruition. It’s a really exciting chapter and a great way to kick off the Attitude Era mode. From this point you’ll then move on to the next chapter with features Stone Cold Steve Austin and his ascension to the upper tier of the WWE. So to answer your question you will be bouncing around playing as different Superstars instead of playing as the same guy for a lengthy piece of time and you’ll be able to compete in one-off matches which are unlocked through the match objectives in the Attitude Era mode.

Within each match you’ll have a set of primary and secondary objectives, completing the primary objectives will allow you to progress through the mode, with the secondary objectives based around the match and how it actually transpired, whether it be on Monday Night RAW or a PPV, it’s a way of recreating the match the way as it actually happened. Completing these secondary objectives will reward you with unlockable Superstars, Attitude Era photos and a wide variety of content, including one of matches that might have taken place on Monday Night RAW and might not be the focus of the story, but gives the player the opportunity to play a match that took place on the same episode of RAW, with Superstars not paramount to the story but also were within the Attitude Era and which helps prolong the mode, add depth and longevity.

Bryan also added that as well as starting out with Shawn Michaels and moving on to Stone Cold, you’ll then progress to the Brothers of Destruction and see Kane’s debut, before jumping to The Rock, then Mankind and finally wrapping up the story mode at WrestleMania XV.

Q. The decision to bring back the Attitude Era has been massively popular with fans, but have you ran into any limitations in terms of fine tuning it to fit in with the current day PG era?

A. I got this question not to long ago and it’s a good question to ask with the current day WWE being a PG product and being aimed more towards the families, we definitely didn’t run into any limitations in what we were able to do to recreate that ruckus environment from the Attitude Era. The only thing that you’ll find is that we had to edit the middle fingers and use the blur effect when Austin uses the middle finger, but it’s pretty cool and it looks pretty cool in gameplay when you flip off your opponent and it blurs, but outside of that the WWE let us do what is what we do best, which is produce great wrestling games and we were authentic to the era.

WWE Live

Q. Another big new feature is WWE Live, which see's the audio team that worked on the UFC games come in, how has that changed the game from an audio aspect?

A. Ever year when we do these games we strive to recreate the WWE atmosphere hat you see on TV, whether it’s the on-screen graphics, the sound of the crowds and this year with WWE Live we’re pushing that even further. Like you mentioned in the question, we have the audio team that worked on the UFC games now putting their undivided attention to working on the WWE franchise, which has really given the sound in the game the attention that it rightfully deserves. The crowd is the 6th man, the energy that they bring to the environment it can sometimes make or break a match, so we have within the game what we call a “Crowd Voltage System”, which goes with the ebb’s and flows of the match so that when things are going at a hectic pace, they’re loud, there ruckus and then when the action settles back down you’ll notice the crowd fall along with it, so you have that nice crescendo of big moments where the crowd is really amped and those more subtle moments were guys are having a stalemate with one another.

The voltage system is also fine tuned to each particular Superstar, so your not gonna hear the same crowd enthusiasm for the same Superstar, so when CM Punk is in the ring the crowd will be off it’s feet and they’ll chant his name at the beginning of matches, so you really get that larger than life feel which you’ll also get with the likes of Triple H, John Cena and all the other big guys. This doesn’t mean the crowd will be dead for the midcard guys, but it shows the difference to how they’ll react just like on programming.

Q. What new chants can we expect to hear in WWE '13?

A: We’ve got a lot of cool new chants this year, the CM Punk chant which I previously mentioned, that was taken from the post WrestleMania episode of RAW where the crowd was absolutely bananas, where the show was already good, but the crowd just made it 10 times better.

There’s also some cool Zack Ryder chants in the game that we got from actual live crowds, the “Let’s go Ziggler, woo woo woo!” chant and WWE was even gracious enough to allow us to put in the “Let’s go Cena! Cena Sucks!” chant, which is the first time we’ve seen that in a game, so in total we have roughly 20-30 new crowd chants that will trigger as the matches progress.

Q. Do we have the likes of the “Yes!” Chants and the “You can’t wrestle” chants?

A. We do have the Yes chants for Daniel Bryan, which, unfortunately with his current attitude he’s now saying “No! No! No!”, but the crowds still saying “Yes!”, so we definitely have the crowd going crazy with the “Yes!” chants for Daniel Bryan, we had to get that in there!

Q. With the addition of arena sizes this year in Create-An-Arena, will we be able to hear the difference between a regular crowd and the crowds in smaller arenas?

A. Yes you will, there will be a difference because we do have the option now in Create-an-Arena where you can change the venue size of the crowd, so you can have anywhere from a Madison Square Garden type environment, to a smaller independent style hall setting, which when you use them in the game you’ll notice that the crowd levels are a little more subdued where the wrestling I taking place, which is a really cool addition to the game this year, that’s actually one of my favourite new additions this year actually. The additions we made to Create-an-Arena, being able to change the venue size, customise the stage arena, etc. We wanted to do those last year when we introduced Create-an-Arena, but time is always our worst enemy and we had to focus on the ring and the surrounding elements of the ring, but it was always in our thoughts to give players the ability to customise the stage arenas as well.

Q. Jim Ross' return to commentary is a huge part of the Attitude Era, especially when reliving some of the biggest moments, will we hear the audio from the tape archive in storymode cutscenes or has the audio been re-recorded?

A. Ross actually re-recorded pretty much everything as far as the in-game commentary is concerned, our audio team was diligent in making sure that we got the best from JR, so we had him sit down in the recording studio and had him go through his lines and record new content for the game. There will be on some occasions when you play the mode, depending on certain cutscenes where we’ve actually taken certain snippets from programming and used it for the cutscene, but as far as in-game commentary is concerned, he recorded all new content for the mode this year, which is great as it’s not the Attitude Era without Jim Ross.

Special Referee

Q: You recently announced the return of the Special Guest Referee match, what can fans expect when playing as the referee and how far can they interfere in the match before they are replaced with the regular referee?

A. Special Referee is back, after a lot of fan demand, with was in the games previously but we brought it back, “Bigger, Badder, Better” to steal the slogan from last year’s game and it’s a remarkably improved effort.

The Special Referee, when playing as him your given a lot of opportunities to meddle in the match, so you’ll be in charge of counting pinfall’s, count outs and checking on submissions. The way that the match works is that the referee has a “Referee Meter” that starts out in the middle point at the start of the match, and as you officiate, depending on the route you take, it’ll either accumulate or decrease. If you choose to call the match down the middle and be impartial your meter will fill, which then allows you to perform some pretty heinous actions, such as being able to perform your finisher on an opponent, or even being able to perform a screwjob finish during submission holds, which are actions you can take part in by building your referee meter to a certain point.

Conversely, if you are a bad referee and don’t count pin falls or check on submissions, you’ll see your meter decrease and you can even physically engage with opponents and push them around. You can’t actually grapple with them, but you can grab them and push them around, which in doing these actions will put the opponent at a disadvantage and cause your referee meter to deplete. Once your meter completely depletes, John Laurinaitis will come out and kick you out of the match, replacing you with the actual AI controlled referee. It’s definitely balanced, so it’s not entirely biased one way or the other, you wont be in a situation were 3 minutes into a match your gonna be kicked out, we tuned it into what I think has very good balance between being good or bad, before finally getting ejected.

Q: Can the referee call for the bell during a Breaking Point submission before the meter is filled?

A. Yes, you can. The infamous screwjob, you can perform that as a Special Referee., it’s one of my favourite additions to the Special Referee match and the reaction that the Superstars perform after they’ve been screwed over is pretty priceless also. So as the Special Referee you’ll have everything at your control, whether that be counting a pinfall really fast or slow depending on who your favoring is one thing, but I think being able to actually screw over an opponent who’s in a submission hold just really is the icing on the cake. I’ve even played matches with the Special Referee controlled by the AI during title matches and I’ve lost my title because the referee has screwed me over! So playing these matches while the Special Referee is being played by a player or the AI, I love having the AI as the Special Referee as it just adds that unpredictability whether it’s a standard match 1 on 1, or a tag match, it just makes it that much more exciting and unpredictable, which is what wrestling is all about.

Spectacular Moments

Q. Spectacular Moments are another new addition this year and really caught everyone’s attention with the ring breaking in the initial trailer, what can fans expect from these moments and which is your favourite?

A. Fans can expect a whole lot of jaw dropping moments from the Spectacular Moments this year. As you mentioned we have the ring break which has been implemented for the first time this year, which is a very situation that occurs in the game and is one of the reasons we wanted to put that out there at the beginning of our campaign. Outside of the ringbreak you can perform Suplexes to the outside of the ring, which is just devastating. I’ve seen matches were Superstars have teased this action, but it’s very rare to see someone actually perform it, but in WWE ’13 it’s one of the bone crunching slams you can do that really knock the wind out of your opponent.

We’ve also got interaction with the announce table, which we brought back into the game, as in previous games players have been unable to stand on the announce table and really perform action on the announce table. The initial reason that we removed this was because the way that it previously worked was pretty buggy and there were a lot of instances were there were a lot of floating on the announce table, so we wanted to remove it and we had all these ideas that we wanted to implement when we brought it back and had it functioning so that it was high quality and a level that our fans would expect. It’s instantly satisfying climbing up on top of the announce table and Pedigreeing your opponent through it, then watching the commentators react, that’s a really cool Spectacular Moment of mine, also the barricade break and being able to put an opponent through the barricade, but as far as my favourite Spectacular Moment.. It has to be the catching finishers, I just think they’re awesome, like when you really talk about a Spectacular Moment, this is what I envision, being able to replicate the action of superkicking an opponent like when Shawn Michaels did that to Shelton Benjamin on RAW, you can now replicate that in WWE ’13, it’s my favourite new aspect of the gameplay this year.

Catching Finishers can be performed from the top rope, as well as from springboarding toward and opponent. The moves are also time based, which makes them, not difficult, but definitely not easy and it just makes it that much more rewarding when your able to pull one off and it’s a great way to conclude the match. Hands down, my favourite new addition this year.

Q. One big part of the Attitude Era was the announce tables, as it was rare to see an event end with the tables still standing. In the trailer we seen moves like the Rock Bottom through them, are these also spectacular moments? And are these set finishers or can we execute any move on the announce table?

A. The way it works is that the OMG Moments that you can perform on the announce table is something that can be decided in Create-a-Moveset, players can on their on go in and change this move to their hearts content, but each Superstar has moves that they can perform as a finisher on the announce table, which we tried to keep as representative and authentic to the Superstars as possible, so The Rock has the Rock Bottom, but you can go in and change that to a standard DDT if you like, but we really wanted to keep it authentic to the Superstars, which is why you’ll see Triple H Pedigree his opponent through the table, The Rock will do the Rock Bottom, but in addition to the finishers you can also just do a regular move on the announce table that will cause it to break, but it’s not as powerful as using a finisher, but it gives players that much more freedom in as far as what they’re doing in the match, as sometimes your close to the announce table but you might not have a finisher stored, but you still want to put your opponent through it, so we still allow players to perform that action.

Create-An-Arena

Q. Create-an-Arena was a hugely popular addition last year which you've now expanded on with the option to customise the stage, can you tell us what we can expect from this new addition and will it feature stage parts from the likes of WCW & ECW?

A. I love to talk about Create-an-Arena, we’ve added stage customisation this year and we have roughly 20 new stage designs that you can use to customise and build your arenas from past WWE events. For example we’ve got the old Smackdown stage with the fist protruding from the face of the stage design which I’ve seen on your website. We’ve also got the old oval Smackdown arena, the Monday Night RAW arena, the 2002 RAW set, just a ton of old WWE style arenas from either programming or pay-per-views.

What’s really cool with the mode though, is going back to the Smackdown stage design with the fist, there’s an option called stage display where players can toggle on or off every element of the stage, so if they want to get rid of the fist, they can turn that off. You can even remove the metal backing and basically create something as low brow as your basic independent show setting or you can take that stage and really beef it up and make it even more spectacular looking than it was originally.

I think that when players get their hands on the game they’re really gonna be fond of the stage display options, because that’s where the freedom really comes in, being able to turn off the lights, moving the stage, removing stage pieces, removing titantrons, we give players the ability to customise these sets to their hearts content.

As far as having any ECW or WCW stage designs, we actually don’t have those this year but that’s definitely one of the things we’ll look to add as we add more of these classic stages that fans have come to love.

WWE '12 Question

Q. For the final question, we wanted to make it a bit different, so we're gonna go back in time to WWE '12, because we focus heavily on the creation aspect of the WWE games, so we'd like to ask what your favourite created Superstar is that you've downloaded from Community Creations and do you know who it was created by?

A. I was looking forward to this question the most! I love Community Creations, I’m a big fan of Create-a-Superstar, I’m not the best creator of Superstars, I’m not the worst either, but I just love going on to Community Creations and just adding to my roster by adding all these cool Superstars that either aren’t in the game or just alternate versions of them.

The one guy that I downloaded that I’m a really big fan of, he’s actually a British wrestler and I’m not just bringing him up because I’m talking to a British website, but it’s Pac, the man that gravity forgot. I found a really, really good Create-A-Superstar on Community Creations, and he’s got all of his different attires, 4 different attires that this guy created and the creators name on the 360 was “Y2Jabba”. He did a fantastic job of recreating Pac and it’s not just the appearance of the model of the Superstar, he even gave him a really cool moveset, as well as a really cool entrance, so anybody on the 360 that’s looking for a really good Pac to add to their roster, I will definitely recommend downloading the one created by “Y2Jabba”, he did a really good job on it.

You can check out Bryan's favourite creation embedded in the video below:

So there you have it, our first interview with Bryan Williams, who I'd personally like to thank for taking the time out to talk to us and for revealing lots of new details on some of this years new features.

Source: Smacktalks.org

September 9, 2012

Awesome, that guys seems like hes super cool.

Edited September 9, 2012 by DominusPrime

September 9, 2012

I cant wait for this game to come out so I can screw people over!

September 10, 2012

Bryan's a cool cat...

September 10, 2012

Awesome interview man! Cant wait for this game now!

September 10, 2012

NO WCW AND NO ECW STAGES BOO BOO.

NEXT YEAR. I'd hope they have WCW Classic Nitro, WCW logo Entrance stage, WCW Saturday Night stage and the WCW Thunder Stage.

September 12, 2012

Eh What Hell We Can Create ECW & WCW Logos On Logo Paint :glare:

September 12, 2012

Paul did he happen to mention when wed get more information?

September 12, 2012

NO WCW AND NO ECW STAGES BOO BOO.

NEXT YEAR. I'd hope they have WCW Classic Nitro, WCW logo Entrance stage, WCW Saturday Night stage and the WCW Thunder Stage.

Cory said they didnt take any of the arenas from wwe 12 out, theyll all bein wwe 13. Youll have to create the wcw arenas.

Edited September 12, 2012 by DominusPrime

October 8, 2012

awesome undertAKER vs triple hhh hbk special guest referre

October 22, 2012

No WCW or ECW arenas? What the hell? That was the only thing I found enjoyable out of last year's game. I better see them in the game as dlc. Not having them in this one will be the biggest troll in the game universe.

October 22, 2012

NO WCW AND NO ECW STAGES BOO BOO.

NEXT YEAR. I'd hope they have WCW Classic Nitro, WCW logo Entrance stage, WCW Saturday Night stage and the WCW Thunder Stage.

I don't want to wait until next year. They better have them as dlc.

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