Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Interview

After checking out Guitar Hero at Activision’s Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock event, I had a chance to talk to Neversoft producer Randy Guilotte. Here’s our full interview.

For someone who’s gone away from music games for a while and is coming back to Warriors of Rock, what new stuff am I going to be seeing?

“What you’re going to notice, what we spent all our time on, is the set list. When you played those first couple of Guitar Hero games, and how magical it was to play a song you know note for note, hitting that solo and that whammy. We went back to that and tried to capture it again, and we put a lot of time into the set list this year, and tried to make it guitar-focused – it’s called Guitar Hero. It’s not been so guitar focused the last few games because we’ve been introducing new music to new people. We tried to make everyone happy and you can’t do that. You end up with this massive collage of music that doesn’t really fit together.

“This year we themed the entire game to be guitar-driven and story-driven. We have this quest mode this year which is the old career mode you might think of. You’re playing as the Guitar Hero characters from the past, Axel Steel, Johnny Napalm (etc.). They have their own chapters; you go into Johnny’s chapter and you’re playing in a punk club – it’s CBGB’s. You’re playing The Ramones, The Offspring, things you might hear in a punk club. In Lars’ chapter, Lars is playing metal, stuff Lars would play. These are good songs for Guitar Hero, but they’re good songs for the setting. You play as Johnny, you’re gonna play punk songs.

“We put a lot of time into making sure that what you get out this year is gonna feel like a really well thought-out Guitar Hero, which is something we’ve never really done. We did Legends of Rock which was about good guitar music and boss battles, and it was a good game but we didn’t have to focus we had this year. You’re gonna come into this over the top quest mode, every chapter’s going to feel right for the character.”

So, leaving my feelings on Nickelback aside, seeing some of the stuff in the set list got me really psyched. I was ready to leave with a copy of the game.

“I agree with you, I’m excited. Nickelback, I’m not so in or out on them, but tonight the first song we played tonight was a Nickelback song and the guy we were playing it with was totally stoked. He had a great time. It proved that we’re putting in songs that people love and that are fun to play. It’s not like ‘Why is this song in here?’ We wanted to make people enjoy Guitar Hero again.”

You mentioned CBGB’s specifically; have you been trying to reproduce venues with accuracy or just the feel?

“The only real venue we have in the game this year is CBGB’s. It wasn’t just so simple as ‘We want to put it in the game, so we did it.’ They sent us a lot of pictures from [CBGB’s history]. We tried to make it as accurate as possible. We worked with those guys to get artists that played CBGB’s into the game. ‘If you’re gonna have CBGB’s in the game, you have to have artists that have played there.’ And they were totally right.

“They worked with us to get songs that are in their chapter accurate to songs that have been played there in the past, which is rad. There’s a song in the game called ‘Black Rain’ by Soundgarden in the game; they knew it existed, they knew it had been recorded back in the day and played at CBGB’s, they’re releasing it into Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. They told US about it, we had no idea. They told us there was a Soundgarden song we had to have, and we started digging and finally got the rights to it. So you get to play this new Soundgarden song in the CBGB’s venue and that’s what makes this game so tight.”

There was a lot of controversy with the last game regarding Kurt Cobain, it sounds like you’re listening to what people are saying with that concentration on atmosphere and venue-appropriate songs.

“That’s a weird thing to happen. It’s not like we did it, then reflected on it and thought ‘maybe we shouldn’t have done that.’ For us at least, even with the people we worked with, Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, and those guys…people who are fans of those celebrities…want to play as those guys on any song they unlock, we thought, and it went a different way. Those things happen.

“For this game, the focus was on the music, so the first step was ‘does the song fit for game?’ and then the celebrity integration came after. Gene Simmons is our narrator, he’s not actually in the game. Dave Mustaine wrote a brand new song for the game. The Runaways did a rerecord of ‘Cherry Bomb.’ All the integrations were audio this year.

“Dave Mustaine, we showed him our quest mode, and he didn’t think he fit in there. He says, ‘maybe I should write a new song,’ and he wrote one of the most badass guitar songs in the game, and it shows. Your arm will fall off after you finish.”

You’ve done away with the need to unlock most stuff.

“That was a huge thing. The day we decided, ‘why do you need to go through the game and unlock these songs,’ that was one of the best moves we ever made. A lot of people buy the game just to host a party with Guitar Hero. Why make people play through the whole game to unlock songs. So we compromised this year. You do have to unlock songs. But only about 12 songs and they’re the last songs in the game. You have to play through quest mode to unlock Rush’s 2112, and that’s really just one song over 22 minutes. The way we present it does the story justice in quest mode.

“After you finish quest mode, the Dave Mustaine songs unlock for quickplay, and then the Demi-god character who is the main character of quest mode, he has his own chapter in quest mode that unlocks. Remember ‘Through the Fire and Flames?’ Yeah. There’s seven or eight songs that unlock for quest mode and then quick play, stuff where you’re like ‘that’s ridiculous, how can anyone play that’ after the main game.

I noticed the slide bar is gone, is that new for this game?

“We redesigned the controller for this game not for technicalities; we didn’t have any new hardware related mechanics to introduce. We lost the slider this year, we wanted to make the guitar look like it’s from the game. It doesn’t look like any particular brand of guitar. All the electronics are in the neck. You can take off the wings. If you get the GameStop preorder bonus you get something that looks like an axe.

“We have a new drumset. It has a drumstick holder, a catch for the kick pedals. Also each drum head is separated from the others, so there won’t be crossover between the drum heads.”

I can’t play with five buttons. It’s my dirty Guitar Hero secret. I’d love to sing and play at the same time and have it be a mode in the game.

“When we started doing Guitar Hero we talked about hard mode maybe not doing the orange button, and it was too limiting. There’s this crossover. Say we get another Megadeth song, or Meshuggah. And it’s like, this is one of the hardest songs we’ve ever played, how are we supposed to track it? It’s gonna be as hard as it’s gonna be.

“As far as artist lists [going back to a comment I’d made about wanting a particular song], send us an email, we read those, we see everything people send to us.”

 

We also chatted a bit about some of the song choices in the game. A few songs, including Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” got what Guilotte referred to as “free passes.” These songs are so significant that even if they aren’t quite the guitar-driven monsters that the Megadeth and Rush tracks are, they deserve a place in the game.

I also expressed some excitement about the inclusion of the most brutal death metal band in the known universe as well: DETHKLOK. Guilotte surprised me by telling me that Dethklok animation studio Titmouse is responsible for much of the cut scene animation in the Guitar Hero series.