National Video Games Examiner Patrick Hickey Jr. chats with the team behind Digital Tribe Games’ newest first-person shooter, “ROOT,†Ian Anthony – Programming, Animation and Mechanics Design, Harrison Tucker – Level Design and Addition Additional Animation, Will English – Artwork and Shader Development, who discuss the inspiration behind the game and how they’d like to it to affect the gaming landscape.
About ROOT:
Step into the inexpensive loafers of expert hacker Edward Summerton. Roll up your sleeves, pop your collar and brew a pot of coffee, because today you’re going to breach the networks of a mysterious and powerful corporation.
During this undertaking of corporate crypto-espionage, you will face many hostile programs, but your most dangerous enemy is the man who designed them. The Systems Administrator built the System from the ground up and holds immense power within the network. He will use the limitless resources at his disposal to prevent you from achieving your goal: total ROOT access to the System.
Patrick Hickey Jr.: What has the development process been like?
Will English:Â It’s been interesting. We were actually working on a different game. Then late one night when Ian and I were taking a break for some pizza we just started talking about how bad stealth is always implemented in first person games. From there we just sort of came up with how we thought stealth could be done right, and we just had to do it. The technical and artistic execution was very organic, for instance, we had not written a line of story when we started development, it just sort of evolved side by side very naturally.
Continue Reading This Article From Review Fix Editor-In-Chief Patrick Hickey Jr. at Examiner.com
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports.
Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders.
His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023.
Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief.
Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale.
Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.
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