For a second E3 running we stopped by the Rebellion booth to have a go at their upcoming action-adventure Strange Brigade and afterward, we caught up with CEO and creative director Jason Kingsley for a chat.
"The key inspiration for Strange is the Saturday matiné picture show," says Kingsley. "The picture format that was sort of the first popular genre stuff. It's really where computer games come from when you think about it. It's a repeat action-adventure story. Boys and girls paid their money to go to the cinema and watch the hour-long show and the idea was that show ended on a cliffhanger, that's where the phrase cliffhanger comes from because you were then persuaded to go back the next week to watch another one."
Kingsley mentioned how this, in turn, inspired Indiana Jones, and onwards to something like Tomb Raider in video games.
"I said to the team I want to go back to the source material. I want to interrogate and analyse that and see how we can actually make a computer game that will kind of do the same kind of thing, complete with the unreliable narrator."
The finish line is coming up for Strange Brigade which launches on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on August 28, and the scope of the game has expanded since it was first shown.
"We had so much positive feedback about Strange at the last E3 that we felt there was some things we needed to expand and enlarge on, and it's been worthwhile," says Kingsley. "So the game is coming out at the end of August, so very soon, and it's almost finished and we've obviously got lots of bits and bobs to do on it still, but so far it's been incredibly successful for us. We've had a lot more attention than we thought we were going to get, cause this is a new intellectual property for us. So you're never sure how something is going to be received by an audience and it seems to have been received very well which is very pleasing."