We recently had the opportunity to speak with Ian Stevens, the Head of Game Production at Tigon Studios, formerly Lead Designer at Starbreeze.

TheGameReviews: With Escape from Butcher Bay, the animated movie Dark Fury and the two live action movies, there seemed to be a considerable push in developing the "Riddick" franchise that fizzled rather quickly. Does this game try to revive that effort? Does the new content in the game provide a greater insight to the universe of Riddick?

Ian Stevens: I’d say the reverse is true. Both Escape from Butcher Bay and The Chronicles of Riddick (film) weren’t the immediate commercial successes that we’d hoped for, but Chronicles has done extremely well in home video, and Escape from Butcher Bay continues to be remembered as an Xbox classic. So in the long term we have achieved some great milestones with this franchise. In reality, the opportunity to create Assault on Dark Athena is based on that momentum, and new Riddick films are in the works as well. So Riddick continues to have a very bright future, despite the fact that he’s always hanging out in dark corners...

TGR: I’ve heard that Vin Diesel provided some input to the design of Escape from Butcher Bay. Aside from voice acting and lending likeness, what is Vin Diesel’s involvement in the game?

Ian: Vin founded Tigon Studios in 2002 specifically to play an active role in producing the games he’s involved in, so he’s heavily involved as a producer in every aspect of the game’s development.

TGR: What’s the approximate ratio of new content to remade content in this game?

Ian: Well, we remade Escape from Butcher Bay from the ground-up, including the added content that we made for the PC version, as well as achievements and trophies. Assault on Dark Athena is a completely new game (equal in size to the remake) that tells a new story.

TGR: Has the experience gained from developing Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness influenced the development of Assault on Dark Athena? What lessons learned has had an impact on the new game?

Ian: As a process, game development is always teaching you new things. Even when you put a great game out there you’re still learning volumes from producing it. So in many ways Assault on Dark Athena is bound to be the culmination of all we’ve learned as game developers so far. If anything, these experiences strengthen our ability to tell more complicated stories and do more interesting things with gameplay, while continuing to make our games more and more accessible to different kinds of players.

TGR: So the original title was pretty well ahead of its time, offering first person fighting that worked exceptionally well when no other title was doing that. Are there any changes or improvements to that fighting system here? Was any feedback taken from players of the first game for changes here?

Ian: The First-Person Fighting has remained largely intact, and what we’ve done is simply enhance it. We’ve added more stealth kills, counter-moves, and weapon-grabs, and we’ve brought a bunch of new weapons into the mix that all have some contextual behavior. We’ve also made some enhancements to the AI which makes the fights much more challenging in certain areas, and certainly some of these broader enhancements are things that we do based on feedback in the community.

TGR: Can you talk a little about the plot of Dark Athena?

Ian: Dark Athena picks up right where Escape from Butcher Bay leaves off. Riddick and Johns encounter the merc ship Dark Athena, and while Johns is captured, Riddick evades the crew and launches an offensive to get off the ship. It’s a pretty stark contrast to the more stealthy, lurking nature of Escape from Butcher Bay.

TGR: Does Riddick have any added abilities in the new campaign?

Ian :We’re trying not to spoil too much…

TGR: Can you talk a little bit about the multiplayer modes, especially Pitch Black? How many players will it support online?

Ian: In general we support up to 12 players online and each mode pairs that up or down depending on the design.

Pitch Black places Riddick against six other players (Mercs) in an environment that’s completely dark – properly pitch black. The Riddick character is faster with more health and carries only melee weapons (Ulaks – the curved blades) – he can also use his eyeshine to see in the dark. The Mercs have big guns and flashlights. It’s kill or be killed and if you kill Riddick, you get to play as Riddick in the next round. Audio plays a big part in this mode.