It's the biggest videogame ever produced in the UK and, at a cost of well over £5m, the most expensive in Europe. It's the closest thing yet to something programmers have been attempting for a decade: a game that looks and plays like a movie. It's full of 18-rated, F-word swearing and violence, which will prevent millions of young PlayStation 2 owners from (legally) buying it. And its programmers hope it will claim the coveted number one spot in the Christmas videogames chart... if they finish it in time. But if it flops, game protagonist Mark Hammond may not be the only character who needs to make a quick getaway.
The one thing we know is that almost everyone who works in London, and many of those who have visited the Great Wen, will want to try it. The Getaway, Sony Computer Entertainment's next blockbuster, is not set in some mythical game landscape, but in an amazingly detailed London. You can commandeer a black cab and drive it down Farringdon Road from the Guardian to Sony's offices on Great Marlborough Street, and it is recognisably a graphical version of the real thing.
Indeed, in some ways it is "better". You can drive over pavements and the wrong way up one-way streets, while treating bollards - and pedestrians - like skittles. When the cab starts smoking, simply leap out, wave your pistol in the air and commandeer a fast car. But even if you play the law-abiding way, you still get there quicker.
Realistic graphics have been done before: modern motor racing games have accurate tracks, for example. But Team Soho, the Sony studio responsible for The Getaway, has modelled 21 square miles of central London. This mammoth task has taken two years and more than 15,000 photos. The Getaway does not have all the side streets, but you can turn whichever way you like, and explore the city as a virtual tourist.
It is not completely accurate because London changes too quickly. Les Miserables is still there, but some of the shows in the program's theatreland have closed, for example. Brendan McNamara, the game's producer, calls it "the Starbucks factor."
"We have our fair share of Starbucks," he says, "but I couldn't say we have every single one."
When a demo version of The Getaway was unveiled recently at ECTS, the European Computer Trade Show, almost everyone I watched played it as a driving game. It isn't. Or at least, it is also a mission-based shooting game with movie-style characters and plotting. Mark Hammond, ex-bank robber, is the first character you play. The police think you have murdered your wife and kidnapped your child; in fact, your kid has been nabbed by Charlie Jolson, an East End gang boss. You have to do what he says to stand any chance of seeing your offspring alive, and you start by torching a restaurant on Frith Street, Soho. Hence all the violence and swearing.
McNamara, who comes from Australia, says the game was inspired by the great tradition of British gangster movies. Influences included "Michael Caine in Get Carter, and the Hoskins character in The Long Good Friday, and the black humour in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," he says. You could throw in The Sweeney and another popular movie, Mona Lisa. On the big screen, all this might not attract much comment. In a videogame, it is almost certain to outrage the more conservative newspapers, like its precursor, Take 2 Interactive's Grand Theft Auto 3.
David Wilson, the Sony PR man who will have to deal with the brunt of the attack, says The Getaway "is quite a bold statement for us, but we're catering to the biggest part of our market. The average age of PlayStation 2 owners is 23." True, but the peak is more like 14. Although the game will have an 18 certificate, many of them will want to play The Getaway, and parents will have a hard time stopping them.
In The Getaway's defence, its language is the language of the streets, albeit the rougher streets. "It deals with difficult issues, such as racism," says McNamara, "and the reason we're doing it is because we think it is true to the characters in the story." A filmmaker or novelist would claim no less.
And while there is a lot of gangster-style mayhem, I did not see any of the gratuitous gore that features in some other games. When Hammond takes a few hits, for example, you notice the back of his jacket start to redden. Leaning against a wall for a few minutes usually helps him recover enough to carry on.
The reddening is a key to the way things are done in The Getaway. It avoids having any kind of "health-meter" on the screen. Similarly, there is no on-screen map to help you navigate London. However, if you need to turn left to complete an assignment, your car's left indicator blinks. There are no labels to show where your car is damaged, it just becomes increasingly difficult to drive. The absence of such traditional game furniture is the first thing that helps make The Getaway look more like a movie.
The second thing is the almost complete absence of loading screens. In many games there is a pause when you go from, say, the street into a warehouse, while the new scene data is loaded. The Getaway doesn't work like that. It just streams data off the DVD all the time. It doesn't often stop to load because loading never stops.
This applies to the cut-scenes that tell the story, too. In many games, the cut-scenes are rendered separately, then run like videos. In The Getaway, the cut-scenes are done using the game engine. It means the visual quality is lower, but then, they have the same visual quality as the rest of the game. It provides a more seamless experience.
Gavin Moore, the chief animator, says The Getaway has 34 cut-scenes with a total running time of about 75 minutes. "That's the equivalent of an animated feature, but whereas a feature would have 400 animators, we have eight!" But the computer animation was not done from scratch. The team used character actors, capturing the movement of up to five performers at once, in real time, in a room-sized magnetic field. Each actor wore an Ascension Technology MotionStar wireless tracker and, because of McNamara's conviction that people "talk with their hands", a pair of 5DT data gloves. Computers wirelessly captured each actor's movements, so the data could be used to animate the graphical characters.
The developers went through the usual movie processes: writing a script, casting, getting props and sets, rehearsals, performance. In this case, the actors also got weapons training from the Metropolitan Police, who also provided some police voices for the game. And while the actors were not performing for cameras, Moore did capture the sound using directional radio mics. "It meant we didn't have to get them back into a booth to do voiceovers," he says, "and that makes a serious difference. If you just listened to the sound, it sounded like a Radio 4 play. That got the team really excited."
The Getaway, like many movies, will also have a soundtrack released on CD. The game music has been composed by Andrew Hale, keyboard player with Sade. "Handily, he's on Sony Music as well," says McNamara.
The cars are also stars, if of a different sort, and include an ambulance, single-and double-decker buses, and a fork-lift truck. Artist Ben Bruddenell says: "You can drive any car you can find - I think there will be about 65 in the end. And they are not just flash cars straight out of the showroom: we've tried to create what you find outside, including clapped-out old bangers."
Each car is modelled in loving detail, right down to the fascia and headrests. But after play-testing, the team had to make the driving less realistic. "Most people found the cars too twitchy to drive," says McNamara. "We had to compromise because that's the way most people liked it. We have to aim for a broader audience, really. We want people who've never played a game to look at it and say: 'Oh, that looks worth a go'."
If it reaches a wide audience then Phil Harrison - "the man who writes the cheques" - will be happy. As executive vice president in charge of development, he's already shelled out more than £5m, and is not saying how much more. "The people cost is by far the largest cost," he says. "Larger teams for longer times, equals more money."
The Getaway has been in development for three years - it started as a PlayStation game - and has 55 people working on it full time. Factor in lots of workstations and a large open-plan office across from Carnaby Street, and do your own sums. But if it sells a million copies at £45 a pop, everyone will think it was a great idea.
Unfortunately, as with Hollywood blockbusters, spending big bucks on development does not guarantee bums on seats. The Getaway could disappoint the people who just want another Grand Theft Auto 3, because it isn't that, and the controls are different. And while it is intended to be a "crossover" product, it could fall between several stools. There are more comprehensive driving games, more challenging stealth titles and more brutal shooters.
Worse, the "videogame as cinema" genre is littered with corpses including the Sega Dreamcast's Shen Mue, which, at a reputed development cost of $66m, is likely to keep its "most expensive" title for some time.
But it's not just about money. The PlayStation 2 is being challenged and, if it does nothing else, The Getaway raises the bar for all the other development teams. And as McNamara says: "It's gone beyond 'Can you do good graphics?' because everyone can do that. It's now: 'Can you deliver compelling content?' Part of our job here at Sony is to keep pushing the envelope of what's possible." Whether it triumphs or flops, The Getaway certainly does that.
