- I'd like to introduce a gaming partner
that we've been working with,
who is focused on designing experiences
for high-performance desktops,
as well as thin and light laptops,
powered by our latest graphics products.
- You go first!
- It's your chicken!
(chicken clucking)
(crowds yelling and sword fight)
(percussive introduction)
(chanting)
Welcome to Brian Etheridge,
Director of Publishing at Tripwire.
- Hey, Roger, how are you doing?
Really happy to be here.
- We've had the privilege of working with Tripwire
on a number of titles.
Killing Floor, Maneater, Chivalry Two.
Can you tell us how Tripwire got started,
and its path to publishing?
Tripwire really started as sort of a scrappy group
of modders working together on a total conversion mod
for Unreal Tournament 2004.
It was actually my first experience with Tripwire,
because I played that mod to death.
And I loved the realism.
It was something that they hadn't quite done
in shooters yet at that point.
And so, you know, the mod is what they entered into
the Make Something Unreal Contest in 2004, and they won.
And with that they got funding and Unreal licenses.
And that kicked off the Tripwire that we know today.
Tripwire got into publishing because of that experience.
- Chivalry Two is the first deep collaboration between
Tripwire as a publisher and Intel.
What can you share about this collaboration so far?
Chivalry was a groundbreaking game,
much in the way that kind of Red Orchestra
sort of set the standard for realism and shooters.
I think Chivalry did the same thing in terms of, you know,
really setting the tone for melee combat
in a first person game.
You know, John Gibson, our CEO, and Steve Piggott
from Torn Banner, they had been friends for some time.
So, you know, the collaboration made a lot of sense
for us to both, you know,
both having worked with Intel to get together on this one.
We work together to integrate
a variable rate shading into Chivalry Two
as a way to really tackle
some of the performance bottlenecks.
I think that really helped us to expand,
expand machines that we can bring the game to.
You know, Chivalry Two is a beautiful game
when you look at it on a high end machine,
and to see it run and look good and play well on, you know,
a laptop with an integrated graphics card,
I mean, that's, that's amazing.
- As the PC platform evolves overall,
how has that really helped you break new ground
with Chivalry Two?
- I think Chivalry Two is about reliving
these medieval battles from movies,
and to get there, you need, you know,
beautiful scenes and a volume of players.
You don't get an epic castle siege by having
like eight guys running across,
back and forth on the battlements.
You know, you need loads of flaming arrows
and catapults slamming into castle walls,
and ballistas impaling fully armored knights.
You know, 64 players all piling in around,
you know, a flag or rallying to a banner to save their Lord
or something like that.
- Yeah, and we've been collaborating with, with you
for a while now to, to help ensure that the game
can take full advantage of Intel's latest and,
and future graphics products.
Can you tell us about some of the work you're doing?
- We built a scene to really showcase
how you can improve the performance
without giving up on the quality.
You know, when we're taking a look
at like a castle siege scene,
for example, from Chivalry Two, with VRS on.
You know, in the demo that we made,
we added a bunch of content
and features that would work well specifically with that.
So, you know, we use things like VRS 2x2 as a,
at a base pass.
And you know, this is kind of a brute force method
of applying VRS.
But, you know, in gameplay you get to mess around like with,
you know, you can choose the camera mode for example.
And that's something that toggles the shading rates
based on your camera movement and player controls.
And that's kind of what I mentioned before.
You know, it's this tool that helps us
sort of overcome some of the things
that you would normally see.
You know, we've talked about motion blur in the past
as being a really great thing to help us
sort of like overcome potential performance loss.
And, you know, VRS is a, is a tool
that just makes it look even better.
- One of the themes of today is really about
how do you build products that address user needs?
And what do you see as the biggest needs of your players,
and what are some of the emerging opportunities
in gaming for, to meet user needs that gets you excited?
- Yeah, I think the biggest need of PC gamers
is really keeping up with the latest games, right?
That's what they want to be playing,
whether it's a VR title or a, you know,
a more recent version of their favorite shooter.
But in the past, you know, that's been one of those things
that's kept people from getting into PC gaming.
With things like VRS and, and,
you know, PC players nowadays,
especially have it so much better, right?
You know, I get excited about little things
that get us closer to sorta like truly realistic gameplay.
Whether it's having like an, an actual city
that's filled with people,
or tons of people on battlefield, voice commands,
things like that, and really intelligent AI.
- You know, Chivalry Two, it launches in June,
and it's been about a nine year journey.
I mean, that's, that's quite a haul.
What can you tell gamers to expect?
And what do you think
they're going to get really excited about?
- When they pick it up on the Epic games store,
I think they can expect to see just nonstop melee action.
You know, tons of players, tons of over the top weapons,
and I think they're really going to get a kick
out of playing these, playing these battle scenes.
You know, it's like, it really is like a,
like a crazy medieval movie battle that you've seen
in tons of movies.
And I love that about it.
- I thank you so much for your time.
It's an honor to talk with you.
We have the greatest respect for your team,
and we're super excited about Chivalry Two.
And I look forward to seeing millions of gamers
playing this on June 8th.
- Thank you so much, Roger.
And I really look forward to seeing you on the battlefield.
(battle cries and swordplay)