Diabolique – Licence To Sin” tells the story of Dark Eaville with a terrific tempo. You’re the best intelligence agent and devil straight from hell. You use the latest hitech gadgets, hack computers, fight hand-to-hand or provide cover fire. And when all this becomes insufficient, let yourself use your supernatural infernal powers. Dark Eaville turns into a ghost, feeds himself with defeated souls and every weapon in his hands becomes a truly devilish gun...

Every thousand years a very rare planetary alignment makes Earth invisible to the Boss of the Bosses. Secret agencies of Heaven’s and Hell’s fighting each other for human souls, stop obeying any rules at all during that time. And even though Hell’s agency traditionally does not obey rules, the balance between good and evil becomes gravely endangered when their opponents from Heaven also stop observing the rules! Dark Eaville, is on a mission to stop Heaven’s agency and bring back the delicate balance between good and evil.

Unique atmosphere, unbelievable graphics, great amount of possibilities combined with simple intuitive steering, and the hero never seen before – these constitute the essence of "Diabolique – Licence To Sin”.

Features:

• Never seen before Protagonist. On one hand Dark Eaville is trained secret agent equipped with luxury cars and hi-tech gadgets. On the other hand, he is a beast with fire in hands and a berserk lust.
• Graphics created with the latest technologies such as:
  • Intensive use of the latest GPUs
  • Shader model 3.0 where available
  • Normal mapping technique for extremely detailed characters
  • Full-screen Postprocessing Effects (FSE) for movie like looks
  • Realtime, physically correct soft shadows.
• Enormous number of details and tasteful design – the whole creation’s concept was to imitate the reality of the character as best as possible: rich interiors of expensive restaurants, the lights of big cities, Alpine village, medieval castle and many other places.
• RenderWare Physics engine responsible for realistic depiction of how objects and characters behave in the environment.
• The environment. Clever and well trained opponents use the environment in unique way. The environment also influences Dark Eaville and changes the way you play.

GCM:

Thank you for your time! Please get us started by introducing yourself and telling us about the team behind Diabolique – Licence To Sin.

Pawel:

Hello, I’m Pawel and I’m a PR manager at Metropolis Software, the developers of Diabolique – Licence To Sin. Our team are well experienced people, there are no greenhorns amongst us. The team made following games: Teenagent (1994), Katharsis (1995), The Prince And The Coward (1997), Robo Rumble (1998), Gorky17 aka Odium (1999/2000), Archangel (2002), Gorky Zero: Beyond Honor (2003/2004), Aurora Watching (2004/2005). The company headquarters is in Warsaw, Poland. All core members and freelancers are several dozens of people working on Diabolique.

GCM:

Can you give our readers a brief synopsis of the story in Diabolique and perhaps a little background info on Dark Eaville?

Pawel:

Diabolique – Licence To Sin is a total action single player game with classic TPP view. The game is being made in a comedy action movie style, so most of all it offers an action gameplay and a little bit of humor. Main hero is Dark Eaville – the best agent of Hell agency, who fights Heaven agency on the surface of Earth. Major story goes like that: from the begining of the civilization, there was a conflict between good and evil. Through centuries both rivals Heaven and Hell had their intelligence agencies to fight each other. Nowadays it comes to situation, that happens only once for a thousand years. A very rare planetary alignment makes Earth invisible to the Boss of the Bosses. Secret agencies of Heaven’s and Hell’s stop obeying any rules at all during that time. And even though Hell’s agency traditionally does not obey rules, the balance between good and evil becomes gravely endangered when their opponents from Heaven also stop observing the rules! The Heaven agency eliminates all best Hell’s agents, except Dark Eaville. The Boss of Hell knows that his rival is up to something big and sends his best agent to solve the problem. The unusual thing in Diabolique is to mix spy agencies theme with conflict between good and evil. And so we got an agent straight from hell! About Dark himself we know only few facts (Hell keeps its secrets protected...): he totally misbehaved even as a kid, but was very bright and intelligent. He almost graduated theology at Oxford, but university provost found out that Dark actually didn’t believe in Santa, so he kicked him out. Then Hell agency became interested in this very intelligent, but a bit unkind, young man

GCM:	From what we’ve heard so far, it looks like you are making the Angels out to be the bad guys and having the agents of Hell save the world. What was the inspiration for this creative story twist?
Pawel:	Our lead artist Przemek is a great action movie lover. He loves spy themes like James Bond. Once he had an idea to make a game with a spy straight from hell – one having agent skills and devilish abilities as well. He started to extend this concept and in a moment we all were "infected” with this fantastic idea.

GCM:

Dark Eaville (love the name by the way) seems to possess all the spy qualities of James Bond plus supernatural abilities and fighting skills like Devil May Cry’s Dante or the shape shifting hero from Shade: Wrath of Angels. How do you plan to exploit all these unique skills through gameplay?

Pawel:

Firstly – Dark has an ability of using all weapons and gadgets in two ways. First way is regular "normal” one ;) when a pistol or a rifle is for shooting and so it is with other things (bombs, grenades and spy gadgets). Second way is when Dark uses the stuff in magical mode. Every gun with a little help from magic becomes a truly devilish gun and it has different attributes. Night vision binoculars used in magical way show which characters are human and who is an angel, but of course you can use binoculars also in normal mode. Secondly – Dark has spy skills like fighting hand-to-hand, and devil skills like turning into a ghost or absorbing souls from enemies. All this is brought together with simple intuitive controls. Moreover – this duality influenced the gameplay making it varied and totally cool! You can be an agent, but if you like you can become a devil!

GCM:	How is the gameplay balance in Diabolique; is it primarily a fighting game or will there be a good selection of puzzles to test our minds as well as our reflexes?
Pawel:	Diabolique is set on action. It takes most of game’s space, though there are some situations when brains are needed to be used. In first level there is a stage when you have to get through some kind of changing maze (with variable ways to exit). There will be cleverness, logical thinking and reflexes needed.

GCM:	What are some typical high-tech gadgets we might get to use in this game? Any favorites?
Pawel:	The night vision binoculars are my favorite one. Beside that, the cutting laser is surely an interesting one. By using it you can cut walls and doors. With this gadget players will feel powerful.

GCM:	Countless games have taken us into creative and often disturbing levels of what Hell might be like. Given the nature of this game, might we actually get to fight in Heaven this time?
Pawel:	You will have a chance to be very close to Heaven actually. Additionally some levels are in top secret Heaven facilities. You will also encounter a beautiful gothic cathedral, which is, as we all know, a place close to God...

GCM:	What are some typical environments we can expect to explore in Diabolique?
Pawel:	As main conflict is between Heaven and Hell agencies - you will see places full of mystery like a cemetery or a cathedral, but generally the struggle between those two rivals take place all over the world in very different environments. There are many various locations in Diabolique, none of them is repeatable.

GCM:

How "smart” is the opponent AI in Diabolique and can you give one or two examples of how they "use the environment in unique ways” or how the environments affect Dark Eaville?

Pawel:

You can expect totally advanced AI. I’ll tell you why - we created AI system that allows enemy units to use the shape of the area during the combat: enemies hide behind objects, find the best place to shoot, analyse the environment in order to be the most effective in combat. Enemies’ behaviour depends even on their number, which means that 2 enemies will behave otherwise than 5 of them. When group gets bigger, enemies "feel” they are stronger and they become braver. When you are hidden, enemies guard themselves when checking your last position and it also depends on the shape of an area. Example of environment affecting Dark? OK. Some surroundings are hostile for him (like churchyard) and some are friendly (like dark shadowed basement). In a friendly environment Dark’s magic is more powerful and in a hostile it can become even useless. Your skills change due to surroundings and so does the gameplay.

GCM:	The list of supported graphics features and the currently available screenshots are very impressive. Can you tell us a bit about the engine driving Diabolique? Were there any specific reasons you chose RenderWare versus Havok 2.0.
Pawel:	The engine is made by Metropolis and it is purely our work. Indeed it supports all latest technologies like shaders ver. 3.0 or normal-mapping. RenderWare is responsible for physics in Diabolique – from characters movement to explosions. We chose RenderWare ‘cause it makes all objects, characters etc. behave realistic. It’s the best way to pretend reality and this is what players look for.

GCM:

As far as the audio portion of the game, will you be casting any known actors in the lead roles, and what kind of music can we expect for a game that spans supernatural-gothic and high-tech spy-thriller?

Pawel:

At this moment I can’t confirm any names. Surely the voices will be recorded by professional voice actors. The game couldn’t have "lived” without real voices. Sound effects and especially music are adapted to game style. Music has fast tempo and is dynamic, thought it is not a foreground element. Diabolique music is not "aggressive”, ‘cause it wouldn’t fit to a bit of humor which is one of Diabolique’s features. Of course there are moments of gothic themes in music, especially when the mood requires it.

GCM:	If you had to pick one feature of Diabolique that sets it apart from anything else we may have already played, what would that be?
Pawel:	Definitely it would be various gameplay – the devil and the agent in one! And the gameplay changing due to environment.

GCM:	Any plans for taking Diabolique to the Xbox 360 or any other non-PC format?
Pawel:	Yup. We will inform about development in later time.

GCM:	Are you planning any pre-release demo for the game and if so, when might we get our first playable taste of Diabolique?
Pawel:	Yes, there will be a demo of Diabolique – Licence To Sin. You will be able to play first playable code when you sin enough and a familiar devil tells us it’s the highest time! ;-)

GCM:	Okay, now we’re really going to make you think. If you had a "License to Sin” what would be the first "sinful thing” you would do?
Pawel:	Oh, nothing big, just SD&TD >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Sex, Drugs & Total Drinking!!!

GCM:	Thank you again for your time! Do you have any last impressions or thoughts for our readers?
Pawel:	Thank you very much! I invite all Game Chronicles readers to the game’s official website www.diabolique-game.com and read more about this game.

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