by John Gaudiosi

Swedish developer GRIN has collaborated with Capcom for the PC and next gen sequel, Bionic Commando, which brings the latest technology to a franchise that has traditionally been a 2D platformer starring a hero who makes up for his lack of jumping skills with a very handy bionic arm. Actually, one of many new features in this sequel is the ability for Nathan Spencer, the bionic commando, to jump and use his cybernetic arm in new ways.

Simon Viklund, the director of that game at GRIN, said this sequel is based on the developer's proprietary Diesel Engine, which has been in development for several years. Actually, all of the games in development at the studio, including the downloadable version of Bionic Commando, use this engine.

"GRIN has been working very close with both NVIDIA and Ageia with their hardware accelerated technologies for many years now," explained Viklund. "This gives us the power to not only deliver a fantastic looking game including hardware accelerated physics calculation, but also the power to realize our game ideas. Let’s not forget that a PC can be a lot more powerful than a console, which also gives us the opportunity to add even more detail and content. I guess we could it call the PC version of the game 'super sized.'

Viklund said the Diesel Engine is built around two tiers. The first tier is the core itself, including all the low level or hardware specific technologies. The second tier is the gameplay programming API, which is based on Lua-script.

"This makes development very efficient from a production standpoint, since all platform specific technology is embedded in the engine," said Viklund. "This allows our game play programmers to focus on the game itself, and very rarely have to think about platform specific solutions. If the scripts run on the PC, it will also run on the PS3 and Xbox360 without any compilation. Of course, there are some components, like networking, that specifically needs to be coded for each hardware platform."

Viklund said today his team is doing things that couldn’t be done even a few years ago. For example, take the hero's swing, which is one of the main components of Bionic Commando.

"It is so smooth and a joy to use," said Viklund. "Today, we have the computational power both on the CPU and GPU to be able to deliver it in a fantastic way. Having an Ageia Physx card is not required, but it really puts the cherry on the top. As NVIDIA is working very hard on developing physics calculation processors to be mounted in their upcoming hardware graphic cards, we believe that we will be able to take games to the next level. As the user can travel so far and fast using the swing, we also needed to have huge environments, which of course also means that we are really pushing the graphic cards GPUs. But with NVIDIA’s new hardware including both faster and better GPUs and memory we can really give the player a fantastic game play experience."

The story for Bionic Commando begins 10 years after the events that occurred in the original Bionic Commando. Players find out that Spencer has been incarcerated for some crimes that he committed during a previous mission. A new terrorist group composed of ex-Imperials (enemies from the original game) and rogue bionics who have begun to fight the FSA government (Federal States of America) over a law known as the Bionic Purge, which effectively required them to give back any bionic implants--effectively killing any soldiers who had bionic organs installed.

This terrorist group, known as "The Bionics Resurrection Initiative" or BioRein for short, has recently dropped a massive bomb in one of the FSA's most prominent cities. Since BioRein has also installed an anti-aircraft grid, the government is left with few options other than a traditional strike from the ground, but with the city being a twisted mass of rubble and dirt, very few soldiers have the ability to traverse the environment effectively. So they make a deal with Spencer: a full pardon in exchange for his assistance doing some recon on what BioRein is after.

"We have added in some new abilities in Rearmed that will also make their way into the 3D version," said Ben Judd, producer of the Bionic Commando franchise at Capcom Japan. "For example, once you get a specific enhancement, you will be able to grab enemies and use them as human shields. Although this was not used in the original, it's a cool part of the gameplay in both of the new Bionic Commando games."

Judd said what makes Bionic Commando so cool is that he really isn't using the most cutting-edge technology. He is more man than machine, but his humanity is what gives him the edge.

"It would be like if you had a Wild West gunfighter face-to-face with a machine gunner," explained Judd. "The machine gunner clearly has the better technology but this would force the gunfighter to develop new strategies and use his mobility as a counter-strategy for beating the superior firepower of the machine gunner. In Bionic Commando, not only will you fight against full-blown Mechs who rely on pre-programmed attack patterns, but you will also fight against squads of basic grunt soldiers who make up in numbers what they lose by not having any bionic technology. Finally, there are going to be some rogue bionics that you have to fight, as well, and some of them have the latest technology, unlike Spencer."

Capcom and GRIN went back and played the original Bionic Commando, analyzed it, and then broke down what made the original special. Then they took it a step further and did that for the Japanese version, as well, since it had different content than the U.S. version. Finally, the creators even went back to older Capcom games that featured Super Joe like Commando and Mercs and studied his past, as well.

"We wanted to come out and present a clear-cut story that tied all the pieces together," explained Judd. "The combination of Rearmed, the serial comic book being updated weekly on the bioniccommando.com website called "Chain of Command", and the 3D game all tie into a consistent Bionic Commando world that we can use as the main canon in case there are future sequels."