RETURN TO FORM

Charles Cecil on bringing back Virtual Theatre

“Ultimately, the problem with Virtual Theatre is that on a 2D screen, when the character goes off, you have no idea where they’ve gone,” says Revolution head Charles Cecil. Although the ability for characters to have an apparent life of their own felt revolutionary at the time of Lure Of The Temptress’ release, the problem was that you couldn’t see them when they were going about their business elsewhere. And tracking them down in larger areas like the village was a nightmare. “You’d be looking for Mallin, and you didn’t know whether he was going to turn up in ten seconds, or 20 seconds, or two minutes. And if you’re walking in the same direction as him, then it will take even longer.”

For this reason, Charles says they decided to cut back on Virtual Theatre for Revolution’s second game, Beneath A Steel Sky, in which only one character – Lamb – had an off-screen routine.

And the system was abandoned for the developer’s third game, Broken Sword.

But now, with the release of Beyond A Steel Sky, Charles sees this as the perfect time to revisit the Virtual

Theatre system. The sequel to Beneath A Steel Sky has come some 26 years after the original, and the technological advancements in that time mean that Virtual Theatre is a much more feasible concept this time around, chiefly due to the shift into 3D. “Being able to look around in the world, you can actually see what [characters are] doing, whereas in a 2D environment, you couldn’t. So that was part of the vision for the game: to bring back this idea that I always felt had all this potential.”