Red Steel 2 takes a page out of Zelda gameplay

When The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time released, z-targeting was introduced, which enables players to lock-on to enemies. And even after all these years, that gameplay mechanic is still being included in new titles – Red Steel 2 included. According to Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director of Red Steel 2, the developers purposely borrowed z-targeting from Ocarina of Time and explains that a huge change in the interface would be unnecessary.

“Well, of course we looked at everything in the known universe for inspiration (Metroid Prime, Zone of the Enders, etc, etc), but hell yeah, Zelda is a great example of how to make locking in melee work, and I’m very much of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of thought when it comes to interface. I prefer to take a hard look at what has already worked in the past, start there, and then evolve. Which is pretty much what we did.

Just so that you know, we have two selectable lock systems in the game – the default “auto-lock” system (that will do most of the work for you), and a “manual” system (that gives you full control over when and on whom you lock).

With auto-lock, the idea was that you can just jump into the fray and start swinging, without having to think too much about where you were looking. This is my favorite mode, FYI – my fighting style is berserker (for sure), and I love it when the game does its best to put targets in front of me.

Roman (my lead designer) feels differently – he’s much more a “style” player, and prefers to have exact control over his enemy selection. He’s always cautiously strafing around, getting behind people, dodging, looking for chances to take out more than one at a time… thus, he prefers the manual lock.

We’re continuing to make refinements to both systems even now. We will not rest until it’s frackin’ perfect!”