French website Gamekult published a long interesting interview yesterday. Here's the link:
https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/tenn ... 97233.html
Basically the interview talks about how they want to continue the legcy of Top Spin and make their Top Spin 5. Some info are about the same we read in other interviews but it also has its share of new info and also some anecdotes for Top Spin 4 and 2kCzech (who apparently left a bitter taste in the guys' mouth for abandonning the franchise).
There's a good chunk of talk about the tactical and "mental" side of tennis and how it'll be implemented in the game. The explanations are a bit cloudy so I don't know if the guy couldn't explain in too much details or if the mechanic of this thing is confusing for the developpers themselves. He talks about how the mental aspect of the game is important in tennis, which is very true. I already thought about that while playing tennis game so this is great news.
But as I said the implementation of such a feature seems very shady... From what I understood, they want the players to have specifics tactical features "unlocked" after a couple of events, which will be different depending the players. He also mentions that the mental state will be displayed in the game.
I have a couple of problems with this. First I don't see why the mental state the player is in would have to be displayed, i think it would be better to be more subtle (for exemple by the attitude of the player like the body language). The other thing bothering me is this kind of "checklist" style to "unlock" the ability of the player. Doing so is like pretending to know the secret formula to be "in the zone" which is the complete opposite of reality. Mental states depends on too many factors for a human to be able to control it. I guess it would be better for this aspect of the game to be more like small variations of player's stats throughout the match, RANDOMLY. Yeah I know not everything is random in real life but this is the closest and the most efficient way to portray mental state during a sport competition in video games right now... If you have other ideas I am interested in knowing them.
The other problem their system may cause by beeing a number of accomplishments or tasks to do, is that better players will be even stronger and the balance of the game will suffer greatly. Also it'll be "robotic" and not mental-related at all, more like a powerup bar.
However if they turn this feature in the good way it could be a killer feature! I am really looking forward to know more about it. I wish the developpers would talk to us at ITST to share ideas to make the game better.
Other interesting bits in the interview is when they mention they contacted a few other distributors before BigBen and he says that other tennis games are coming from other companies! That's great.
If there are some specific parts of the interview that you want a more detailed translations than google (duh!), feel free to ask.
