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We got the chance to sit down and talk with Jaid Mindang, Project Director for Hip Interactive’s upcoming stealth-action game: Stolen. Here’s how it went down:

GW: As a lot of people know, Stolen is a brand new stealth-action game from Hip Interactive. What a lot of people don't know, are a lot of the in depth details of the game. So let's start off with the simple first: Who is Anya? We know she's a burglar, but what/why does she burglarize?

JM: To say Anya is a burglar is perhaps an over-simplification. Forge City is a crime-ridden metropolis, much akin to Gotham City in the Batman movies, and in that context, as a professional thief who only hits big, high profile, targets and who never kills anyone is a relatively noble career choice. In the spirit of the Hollywood heist movies that have inspired Stolen such as Entrapment and the Thomas Crown Affair, Anya is at the top of her game. She is well paid for what she does, but she does it because it’s something that she excels at, and because she loves it.

GW: Only a short few years ago, there really wasn't a 'stealth-action' genre, and now the industry is flooding with titles fitting that very category. What do you think will help set Stolen apart from the crowd?

JM: Currently most games within the genre are based on the premise of a lone military agent, infiltrating enemy installations to achieve an objective that wouldn’t be possible with a full-scale assault. In that context, stealth is merely a means of killing an enemy without drawing attention to yourself, or may even be simply written into the mission success criteria. In Stolen, the necessity for stealth is an intrinsic part of the game. The player doesn’t instantly fail a mission if they alert a guard or trip an alarm, but the consequences are harsh. Anya can choke guards, zap them with an electrical taser, or even resort to straight-forward melee combat, but she cannot kill guards. If, as a player, you’re having to resort to such methods in Stolen, then it’s probably in order to get out of a life-threatening situation after bungling something, rather than to directly achieve the mission. Direct confrontation with the enemies reaps its own problems, since guards will eventually regain consciousness and radio for backup. Once the booth is alerted, the whole level will be on alert and looking for you, at which point simply hiding in shadows will not be enough. All guards carry torches for searching in dark corners that would ordinarily afford the player some cover. However, if a guard spots you, he still has to physically operate his radio to call for backup. If you can take him down before he gets the message out, you can at least delay the consequences of having been seen until he comes around again. Additionally, guards in pursuit of the player have persistent pursuit behaviour. They aren’t stuck rigidly to their patrol areas, as in other games, they can chase you from room to room unless you actively take measures that will make them lose the scent, or misdirect them using one of the many gadgets from your arsenal. All of this will help make enemy confrontation a protracted and dangerous affair which is best avoided unless you know what you’re doing. Stolen advocates active evasion rather than passive stealth.

GW: What's the story behind Stolen? Or is that one of those 'If I told you, I'd have to kill you' kind of things?

JM: Anya and her partner in crime (Louie Palmer) are hired by a mysterious client to perform a couple of high profile jobs, which are engineered to embarrass the incumbent Mayor of Forge City, during a critical mayoral election campaign. As the game progresses it transpires that she is being set up as a pawn in dirty counter-campaign by the opposition candidate. That much becomes obvious quite early on in the game, so I’m not giving too much away by telling you that. One of the characters is a female assassin who is many ways Anya’s equal and rival, although she is quite ruthless and not afraid to murder anyone who gets in her way. I won’t tell you how she fits in. It’s a tale of political intrigue and corruption.

GW: Can you outline some of the gadgetry and abilities gamers will have at their disposal for us?

JM: Now that would be telling but Anya does have a silenced pistol which will fire tracking devices, stunning nullifier rounds and sonic emitters. She also carries laser tripwires, grand-trackers, and her goggles provide a zoom function, target acquisition statistics, night-vision, sonic-vision, and broadcast a live video feed to her accomplice, Louie – who can communicate to her directly through a 2-way radio link. Louie can also upload new mission data and map information to Anya’s ArmPad, which is the hub and interface for all her gadgets. The ArmPad also provides the interface for her to pick locks, hack into computers, crack safes, and cut through a variety of metal panels to gain access to junction boxes and electrical conduits. She also wears a climbing harness with winch that allows her to rappel/abseil down buildings, and lower herself vertically from ceilings. She’s bristling with high tech gadgets.

GW: Does Stolen have multiple paths to take to complete a certain objective, or would you say the game is pretty linear?

JM: The primary objectives for each mission have been broken down and can be completed out of sequence, and the secondary objectives can be done in any order or not even done at all (hence they are secondary and optional). Additionally, Anya’s rating as a thief can be increased with all kinds of opportunistic theft, such as rifling through desk drawers, and filing cabinets, pick-pocketing guards while they are asleep or even while they’re patrolling around. Having created all of these stealth capabilities for Anya, it would have been remiss of us to not allow the player to use the game to have a bit of fun with them, rather than just forcing them along the path of sticking with just the mission at hand.

GW: Right now we know Stolen as a single player stealth adventure, but are there any plans for multiplayer?

JM: No. Stolen is just a single player game. At this stage in the development, it would be difficult to reconcile the ramifications of having another thief somewhere in the level, tripping alarms and getting the guards riled. They wouldn’t currently distinguish between the thief that tripped the alarm and another, entirely different thief. I can’t see how it would work unless we’d designed it to be the case from the beginning – which we didn’t.

GW: From the shots we've seen thus far, Stolen is looking mighty pretty, if this what we should come to expect from the final version when it hits in March, or is there still some tweaking and adjustments to be made to the games visuals?

JM: Well we do still have a lot to do with the game visually, although the screenshots you’ve seen thus far are still representative of the look of the game. We are still in the process of implementing our particle effects system which will be used for explosions and electrical sparking, muzzle-flashes and bullet ricochets etc. and we’re working on a few camera enhancements. To summarise, what we’re doing now is polishing it from a visual standpoint.

GW: Will Anya have any help on her escapades, or does she work strictly solo?

JM: As mentioned previously, Anya has an accomplice and business partner in Louie Palmer. He’s an ex-serviceman who specialises in telecommunications and security systems. He’s a fair bit older than Anya, and their working relationship has been in effect since Anya was a young teenager. He’s designs and builds all of Anya’s equipment, maintains a real-time link to her during missions, and also acts as her fence and agent in setting up new jobs. He’s also a bit of a reclusive character who believes there are conspiracies everywhere and is cautious to the point of obsession. He’s a good balance to Anya, who is quite gung-ho and sure of herself.

GW: To what level will players be able to interact with their environment?

JM: Navigating the environments will require the player to look at them slightly differently. Anya’s athletic abilities are such that she can, and indeed frequently must, get around inside buildings by almost never touching the floor. In terms of interactivity, she can disable certain static security systems with her nullifiers or by hacking computer terminals and rerouting power away from certain systems. She can also operate some loading machinery, and cut into vents and pipes to open up different routes through a location, but by and large, things like toppling boxes or pushing crates along is not something we felt was conducive to the stealth approach, so we don’t have that kind of thing in Stolen.

GW: If met with a good response, do you think there's room for a Stolen 2 or is this strictly a one-shot deal?

JM: Of course there’s room for Stolen 2. We’re at the stage of development where it’s becoming quite gratifying to work on, because it’s already very playable and in that climate, cool new ideas are coming in thick and fast, but of course it would be very reckless for us to move the goalposts now. We have a huge wish-list of features that we were unable to cram into Stolen for practical reasons. It would be good to see some of those ideas realised in a sequel.

GW: Will there be any form of unlockables for players to strive for when beating the game?

JM: There may well be. This is one of the things that we’re looking to implement at the moment. In any case, there is already much for the player to do in terms of replay value, with the support for general kleptomania that Stolen offers, and in terms of testing the mettle of the guard AI, once you become good at reading their behaviour patterns.

GW: I'd like to thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, and we're looking forward to seeing how the game progresses up until release. Good luck with the rest of development.

JM: Thanks, no problem.