RICO London is Ground Shatter's ambitious upcoming action FPS title, and sequel to 2019's RICO. Alongside adding a British city to its title, RICO London brings in a whole host of mechanical, tonal, and narrative components to the series. The first game employed generous helpings of procedural generation in its cartoon-y tale of espionage and warfare, having players leap from location to location to solve a variety of problems around the world.
It was flush with stylish cel-shaded action, dynamic encounters against insurmountable odds, and a Switch port that brought loads of new players to the series. Ground Shatter's new game also commits harder to its central premise. The buddy-cop action genre is a massive mainstay of blockbuster cinema, but is much less prevalent in gaming. RICO London's game designer James Parker recently spoke with Game Rant about creating a game similar to classic buddy-cop movies.
According to Parker, a lot of effort went into creating mechanics that empowered the player similarly to the protagonists of films like the Bad Boys series. This process includes slow motion, fully destructible doors, and figuring out exactly how much banter should be in the game.
What Inspired RICO London?
There was a mix of inspirations that led to the creation of RICO London. Parker cited a few classic cop movies as sources, the most obvious draw being Die Hard. While this movie might not be a buddy-cop movie in the traditional sense, the relationship between John McClane and Al Powell is a core component of the film. More importantly, the film takes place in a tower.
In Die Hard, the audience keeps up with McClane's progress by how he traverses through Nakatomi Tower. Parker hopes that the classic London tower block setting will have a similar effect. He also referenced films like Raid and Dredd, discussing the "good period" of "great tower-based action-shooter films."
"From a game perspective, it's such a clear and obvious progression. It's clear you're moving from the loading bays at the bottom, through offices, and eventually up to the penthouse for the final showdown. In a way, the progress you make as a player is replicated in the progression you make through a vertical space."
Other video game inspirations for the game include Ubisoft's cel-shaded shooter XIII and Virtua Cop. While Virtua Cop might seem like an odd older influence to draw from, Parker cites the pace of the arcade-y gameplay and guarantee that players were at any given time "only a moment away from shooting down a bad guy."
When thinking about its film inspirations, the aim of the RICO franchise was to "make you feel like an action star," Parker said. That's why RICO London likes to sprinkle its sprawling tower with moments of slow motion, especially when players breach into a room (either together or alone).
"It's this headcanon of one or two guys against the world, and you're able to react slightly faster than should be possible. You get that opportunity to assess the environment, which is what evens the odds between you and these hordes of enemies."
To Quip or Not to Quip
Apparently, one of the hardest decisions when trying to get the tone for RICO London correct was choosing the frequency of quips. There are lots of games with brilliant character dialogue, and RICO London does have a full voice cast for its cutscenes. However, Parker realized during the design process that having these characters constantly throwing jokes and observations at each other might rob something from co-op players. The debate around quip quantity has always been "one of [Ground Shatter's] biggest discussions regarding tone," and Parker had some particular thoughts as the game's designer.
"My opinion has always been that if you're playing with a friend, you'll be having those conversations in real life. Maybe you'll be making similar comments or quips while playing the game. In that case, having the characters do it as well will just be a bit much, maybe a bit repetitive."
As such, most of the banter and dialogue in the game is purely there for "moving the story on," rather than just character-to-character quips. The team at Ground Shatter also studied the reaction of Twitch streamers to the first game when developing RICO London. During that time, they found that "when streamers were playing the first game, the best times they had" were when they had space to quip and joke among themselves.
Ultimately, the philosophy behind RICO London's lack of quippy in-game banter is down to one key factor: "I would rather the players were having that fun for themselves, rather than the characters having it for them," Parker said.
RICO London is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.