Aquarica

[Noone]

Can you tell us a bit about this game and movie? Will the movie and the game tell us about the same events or will there be dedicated to different things?

[White Birds]

The movie projet and the game are sharing the same scenario/cast of characters/locations. But the way the story is told differs in each media. It may seem stange to say, but it is actually easier to imagine the movie, as you don't have to deal with the gameplay. Gameplay is really something difficult when you're trying (as I hope we do) to make it a full part of the story.
Another big difference is the budget. Doing a CGI movie is about 10X more expensive that the game.

[Noone]

Will the game be told from another character then movie? Are you going to spend some of the 10x budget for movie to create cutscenes to game or will cutscenes in the game be just cuts from the movie?

[White Birds]

In the game, you will play three different characters.
For the moment, we are working on two completely separated production flows between the game and the movie. So, the movie might be released more than a year after the game. For this reason, we're not planning to use any part of the movie as cinematic for the game.

[Tomsess]

Could you tell us something about the Aquarica's story?

[imagine]

Did people who works for the game work for the movie too?
If yes, did they found a big difference?

[White Birds]

A part of the team is working on the two projects (and Benoit of course). Concerning the story, in a few words : there are people living on small tropical islands. Someday, they have the feeling that these islands are slowly moving. Little by little, the tropical birds are leaving, the temperature gets colder... They in fact live on the back of gigantic whales, that, once in a century, go North for reproduction and then die. During a 100 years, they hide from the humans by living a semi-lethargic life, covering their back with sand and earth, and looking like small islands.
In parallel to this story, there is a small town on the Est Coast of the USA which always lived on whale hunting... The hunters hear about this myth of the gigantic whales and decide to go on campaign.

[Noone]

Can some of these three characters be controlled by the player at the same time? Will there be some episodes when one character can see another character doing his job (that means I've played as one character in the first part of the game and then begins the second part of the game, I play as another character and see how my character from the first part is acting on his own or as I did in the first part)?

[Kate Walker]

When do you plan to finish and release Aquarica?

And will the game have prerendered backgrounds with 3D persons like Paradise or Syberia?

[White Birds]

Very interesting question. in fact, we're working exactly on this point right now. The answer is complex in terms of scenario and gameplay. We still don't know if we will find a satisfying way to play like this. But we'd love to !

[fook_yu]

It could be nice to have the same days (or events) told by 3 differents caracters...

I don't know if you've already seen The Simpsons epidose where Homer gets his thumb cut off by Marge... In this episode, you see the same day but from different angles (Bart, Homer and Lisa).

It would be cool to have a game like that (well, Fahrenheigt do this a little bit).

As for the story of Aquarina, it looks amazing. I don't know why, but the atmosphere reminds me of the movie Kaena : The Prophecy (http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/kaenatheprophecy/).