Mark of the Ninja embraced hand drawn before memory constraints on the Xbox 360 forced them to retreat. That’s an oversimplification of the process, but it’s what allows for a hand drawn look without actually drawing every individual frame. This was a different approach from the two Shank games, which used "character builds." In essence, a character model is created with a bunch of modifiable pieces, and those pieces are altered to create the animation. That’s because, at the time, all of the animation frames were being hand drawn. You'll notice the main character keeps slipping in and out of linework in the video. The game did have several boss characters, one of which was a CEO-type that would become Karajan in the final game. Narrative designer and former Kill Screen editor Chris Dahlen was not involved at this point, and there wasn’t much of a story. “Constructing the levels in that way was alright, but it just didn’t have a super strong sense of place,” he said. The plan was for roughly 60 stages, with the player ultimately working towards the assassination of a single target. There would be six distinct worlds, each with different motif, and every stage would have a handful of encounters for players to work through. Klei had a much different vision of the structure of the game around this time, which Anderson compared to Super Meat Boy. “If you know what’s going on, you can see through it and get it, but if you don’t really know what’s going on, it’s really easy to not pick up on that stuff, especially when the fidelity is so low and everything else is so rough." Like the rest of the game, Mark of the Ninja's main character had a lengthy design evolution. “That was, basically, to help Microsoft understand what we were trying to do with those phases,” he said. The temporary sound effects are hysterical, and the amount of on-screen text explaining the game makes you wonder if the game was, at one point, much more hand-holdy than it eventually became. The game was finished in August of this year. The time stamp on that video is April 2011-two months of work on Mark of the Ninja. “I looked at that and just went ‘oh, holy shit,’” he said. The pitch video is flashy and neat, but not representative of the work ahead for Anderson’s team, which is why I asked him to send along video after the real work of building the game had started.
A longtime devotee of Thief, Metal Gear Solid and other stealthy games, it was a chance to contribute to the genre. Klei CEO Jamie Cheng showed Anderson the video upon his return to Klei, and immediately became excited about its prospects. It’s a little more brawler-y maybe, but it’s not that far off.”Īnderson had much to do with Mark of the Ninja’s development, but nothing to do with this video. “Obviously, none of the visual perception stuff is in there, but otherwise, it kind of feels like the game. “When you look at that, it’s ’s not that far off, really,” he said.
On the surface, so much much of what became Mark of the Ninja seems apparent in the pitch video.
In the meantime, Anderson was recruited for the project. Klei built the video in about three weeks, which was followed by months of contract negotiations with Microsoft. This is the pitch video that sold Microsoft on what would eventually become Mark of the Ninja: Anderson did come back to Klei in late 2010, around the time Microsoft had signed off on a pitch for a ninja-centric game from the studio called.Ninja. He was laid off from Klei following a project cancellation in early 2009, and he moved onto the Deathspank games at Hothead Games. When Mark of the Ninja’s life began, Anderson wasn’t even employed at the Vancouver-based Klei Entertainment.
Mark of the ninja concept art Pc#
Upon his return, Anderson was right back into the thick of it, helping his team prepare the acclaimed 2D stealth game for its PC release. The reprieve ended as quickly as it began. It’s easier, of course, to say that when much of the world has declared your latest game a massive success.Īnderson just returned from a two-week jaunt to Ireland and Scotland, a well-earned break following the launch of Mark of the Ninja. "I wish more people would acknowledge the fact that all games are really shit for a long time,” said Mark of the Ninja lead designer Nels Anderson.
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