Ubi Soft recently announced XIII, a cel-shaded First Person Shooter based on a comic book of the same name. Computer and Video Games caught up with XIII’s producer, Julien Bares for a full interview. Here’s an excerpt:

Why make a cel-shaded FPS?

Bares: Our first decision was to make a different game. I think we were quite fed-up with realistic games and we knew we could do it, and we're expecting people who play first-person shooters and action games have the same desire for different things. .

Isn't the point that realism is what sells, though?

Bares: I like to play realistic games, but we wanted to do something different. The same way you can watch a romance or an action movie, you may want to play a very realistic game or a cel-shaded. You can play Amped on Xbox and SSX Tricky, but they're both very different games.

The XIII licence is popular in French-speaking countries but not really anywhere else - why use it?

Bares: The same reason we went for this graphical style - the story is good, and has always been good, but we think the graphical style is really French. It's funny, but when we took the comic to some English people and Italian people, they were all like: "Ah! It's ugly!" - it's almost too French to be good outside of French and Belgium. This is why our style is really different from that of the comic. We wanted something that would be appreciated in countries other than France.

You've mentioned that in XIII you want players to fell the knife is better than the gun - can you explain this?

Bares: A guy with a big gun is not a hero, because he's no smarter than the next guy with a big gun. The guy who can progress using a knife, however, really is a hero. We want to develop the capacity of a player to get out of a situation using only a few weapons. This guy isn't James Bond - he's not full of gadgets and Ferraris - he's relying on what he has around him. In this way it's better to use a knife.

Can you tell us a little about the Sixth Sense system in the game?

Bares: When you are a well-trained commando, you know what's going to come - you have an instinct telling you when there's danger ahead. Sixth Sense is, in this way, like a personal radar telling the player what going on around them. We have found visual ways of showing this, so a player can sense danger, stop for a while, then think what to do next.

How does this affect the gameplay?

Bares: It's kind of like a radar - if there is someone in the room just in front of you, you'll know if he's armed or not, and whether you can just open the door and enter a room, or need to be cautious. It's really to tell you more about what's going on. It doesn't work all the time - only for a few seconds - so you have to make the choice to listen to your instincts.

Will all versions be released at the same time?

Bares: All will be finished at different times, but released at the same time early next year. The only problem is with the GameCube version, which we want to do something different with. We got GameCube last, so our knowledge isn't as good as with other formats, and the controller is so simple it requires you to simplify the game, which is good actually. We have several new ideas we want to implement on the GameCube.