NBA 2K10 Interview: Part 2 (Game Informer)

[drewbaby1414]

Game Informer has posted Part 2 of their interview with lead feature designer Erick Boenisch and lead gameplay producer Rob Jones, as they talk more about NBA 2K10.

Quote:

GI: "Let’s shift the focus onto the court. What are the big changes coming to 2K10 in terms of gameplay?" Rob Jones: "The thing that I’m the most excited about is the new Signature Play feature. What Signature Play is to me is really a big umbrella that takes what we started with, with signature style or whatever you want to call it in 2K7 with all the jumpers and dribble moves, expanding that to post packages—if you take all of that as one item and put it under this umbrella. We were doing signature celebrations and ambient stuff before, now we have signature facial animations. All of this brings these guys to life in the way that you would actually see them in the league. It doesn’t sound like much until you actually see it; it punctuates the rest of the game. The biggest thing for me is the signature tendencies stuff we did with 82 games this year. At the beginning of the year one of the big things we wanted to do was portray players with individualized tendencies and abilities in a way that the AI could really replicate the way they play when you play against them. We built the system from scratch. We added 36 tendencies, plus we needed to add additional data as preferences that aren’t necessarily tendencies to get a better picture of what a guy does. The big thing for me was I was mostly a defensive player back when I was more athletic. [Laughs] The thing that made me smarter and better at doing that was I picked up on players’ tics really quickly. Their tendencies—what they liked to do and how they attacked the player that was in front of them based on their size or based on their speed—that stuff carried on for any particular guy every time they played. A great player will adjust. If you take something away from him, he’s going to do something completely different. But their preferences and tendencies to do things—those were quantifiable."

[Jano]

Gmeplay features sound great especially the part about the animations. My only thing is are these going to really differentiate the player gameplay wise or is just "animation dressing."

I can kind of feel the difference between the bigs and the guards in the combine but I'm interested to see how this plays out. Hopefully its similar to Live where moving with a big feels weighted while quick guards like CP3 feel like water bugs.

I'm hoping that each player kind of has his own feel. This is something I really like about Live and I hope the same holds true for 2K10.

[Dalsanto0026]

The game is sounding awesome!

Association mode should have a lot of depth.

[michaeljordanjr]

Quote:

Believe it or not, I’m not done yet. The next one is my favorite one. It’s an extension of our 2K Share feature, which we had in the game last year. This is the ability to create and import draft classes into your franchise mode. We actually have a feature outside of the mode where you can create them. This is just simply the ability to go in there and edit the 75 rookies that we generate to your liking. Legally I’m not supposed to tell you what you can and can’t do with this feature for legal issues of importing characters that we don’t have rights to, but if you let your imagination run wild I think some of our fans are going to create some really cool draft classes. It’s all done through 2K Share and before a season a little dialog box will pop up that asks you if you want to load one or just auto generate a random class. For our fans, this is a great way to keep franchise mode fresh.

Holy yes! PC version will have the 84 draft class and I'll have Lakers select Jordan!!!!

Import draft classes with legendary rosters = dream NBA game.

[GSW]

sounds good...I'm from Missouri though...SHOW me the Gameplay!

[Da_Czar]

association mode sounds crazy. if the gameplay is there this will be one hell of a mode to play through. especially you start thinking about their presentation with nba today and the new commentary as well as the holiday overlays and this could be the best franchise mode we have seen.

very exciting. I just hope the gameplay is up to snuff. Also loved hearing about the post game. I love the new animations in combine so i can't wait to see what they have for the nba caliber players.

[RayDog253]

Association just keeps getting better and better.
All the new sig stuff sound crazy as well.

[CelticBalla32]

Being an Association junkie, I'm absolutely pumped. We're talking full D-League integration, full-fledged practice mode, restricted free agency, the ability to create/tweak draft classes, the ability to control all 30 teams, and a nice touch with the NBA History feature. I also believe that I heard something about 10-day contracts somewhere (correct me if I'm wrong).

Add all of those new features to all of the amazing anecdotes we've learned about the gameplay, fluidity, commentary and signature style - on top of the Draft Combine add-on and My Player mode - I'm almost overwhelmed. It's all sounding freakishly promising.

Three more weeks, guys. It's not that far away.