NaturalMotion, makers of the Euphoria motion engine being used in LucasArts' upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, recently unveiled its first original game. Dubbed Backbreaker, the football title for unannounced "next-gen" consoles will make use of the studio's in-house motion engine to make tackles ultra-realistic.

A preview trailer released with the announcement showed off some really impressive procedurally generated movements and character interaction, and NaturalMotion assured me it was all captured in real-time from a preview build. The company's Morpheme animation engine is also being used in the project.

With the game about a year into development and slated for a 2008 release, I sat down with Backbreaker associate producer Matt Sherman to learn about what we can expect from the title, other than wrecktacular tackles.

Shack: First of all, why a football game?

Matt Sherman: When they first came out with some of the technology demos for the Euphoria engine, they used some football tackles. And once they created those tackles they thought, oh my god, that's the most realistic thing. We don't have anything like that out in any of the current football titles, and it kind of snowballed from there.

The biggest complaint on football games--looking at current next-gen football games--is the tackle situation still hasn't really evolved that much. It still lacks, and it doesn't look real. Even with the blending of canned animations, its not authentic. It's not real football. There's not gang-tackles. We thought there was a real opportunity to fill that void if we create a football title with that type of technology.

Shack: This is NaturalMotion's first game, though I know NaturalMotion's engine developers actually collaborate fairly closely with developers on Euphoria-enhanced titles. How are you handling the development internally?

Matt Sherman: We've hired on a bunch of developers. There's a big team, and it kind of varies how many people are working on it at any given point in time. It could range from five to 40. Everyone has a role really.

Shack: How do you think you can compete with developers like EA Tiburon and Visual Concepts that have years of experience tweaking a very specific type of game?

Matt Sherman: We don't feel like we're trying to make the same type of game as a Madden or 2K Sports game. It is going to be a sim game, but we want to change some aspects of the football game. So far every game--you can trace this back to Sega '94 Madden--it's all been kind of the same camera angle, slightly tweaked. We want to offer a different type of gameplay experience that's more on the field, more emotional.

It's definitely not going to be a first-person, 2K5 disaster, but it's going to be more of a third-person experience. We want you to feel the pressures of being on the field. So the gameplay is going to be different, and the look is going to be different. The defensive experience is going to improve dramatically. You're going to have a role, you're going to be involved in tackles, you're going to be involved in all kinds of aspects, and that's something that lacks.

We certainly don't expect to take away EA's marketshare. We think of this as something to complement it in a different type of football game.

Shack: You did mention that it will be a sim game, so in a broad sense, it's going to be more of a Madden-styled game than an arcade, Blitz-type game?

Matt Sherman: I'd say it's going to be somewhere in between sim and arcade, but it'll be more on the sim side. It's not going to look like a Blitz, that's for sure. But I wouldn't say it's going to be an absolutely pure sim game.

Go to page 2 for the details on licensing, injuries, weather effects, play modes, and online games.