When The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was released in June of 2004, the gaming community reacted with about as much interest as a tie-in game to a Vin Diesel movie can generate. That lasted all of about five seconds until people realized that Butcher Bay was one of the best games to be released on the Xbox, movie tie-in or not. Featuring a heady mix of stealth, shooting, brutal hand to hand combat and light questing, Escape from Butcher Bay not only gave gamers a plate full of action but showed off some of the best visuals to appear on the original Xbox.

Fast forward a few years and when it became apparent that Escape from Butcher Bay wouldn't be making the backwards compatibility list for Microsoft's shiny new 360, Starbreeze decided to remake the game so that folks who enjoyed it on their original Xbox could enjoy it again on the 360 and if some new fans came on board, well that would be cool too.

Development work continued with Activision as a publisher until June of 2008 when Activision and Blizzard merged. Activision suddenly had a host of Vivendi games to evaluate and unfortunately, Riddick's debut on the 360 wasn't one that Activision decided to keep. Undaunted, Starbreeze continued to work on the remake, as well as the additional levels that make up the Assault on Dark Athena storyline. Enter Atari who not only picked up the publishing task for Dark Athena but also gave Starbreeze additional development time, allowing the studio to expand Assault on Dark Athena into a campaign similar in length to the original Escape from Butcher Bay as well as expand the multiplayer component. The end result, to be released on April 7th is as complete a Riddick experience as fans of the visually augmented anti-hero could hope for. The game consists of the original Escape from Butcher Bay remade for the 360, the full Assault on Dark Athena campaign and a full fledged old school style multiplayer component.

Ian Stevens, Head of Game Development at Tigon Studios and former Lead Designer at Starbreeze was kind enough to answer some questions for us about what fans can expect from Dark Athena, as well as give his thoughts on sound design, working with licensed characters and the dangers of adding multiplayer for multiplayer's sake. Thanks to Ian for taking the time to answer our questions. With that, let's get to it!

I understand that the original purpose for redoing Escape from Butcher Bay was due to disappointment over it not being backwards compatible with the Xbox 360 but can you explain how the game grew from a single player remake to an entirely new campaign and a multiplayer component?

Great question! The remake was our emphasis as this project began and originally Dark Athena was only a 4 hour experience, in addition to some light multiplayer options. But as development progressed and publishing rights changed hands, the project took on a new life and Dark Athena grew to be just as large as EfBB was, and the scope of our Multiplayer game increased as well. It was a pretty organic process, with the community and our love for our audience driving the whole thing – we’re gamers too and we want to make people happy!

Can you talk a little about the achievements and trophies in the game? Will there be achievement/trophies for all game modes, or just the "new" material?

The achievements are spread across the entire game, so you’ll pick them up everywhere including the remake of Escape from Butcher Bay.

The Riddick original on the old Xbox

One of the most impressive things about both Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness was the sound design, with the opening level of The Darkness providing a particularly strong workout for surround sound speakers. Can you talk a little about Starbreeze's approach to sound design?

We treat sound like a character and in different scenes that character can change. For the intro in The Darkness we thought very literally about our audio as being this very sad person, a bit of a Greek tragedy, desperate for love and acceptance and finding it in the worst place possible – all a bit of a prelude to Jackie’s character. Similarly, with Assault on Dark Athena, the sound design has a voice and we use it to build the emotional tone of every part of the game. We approach it with the intention of conveying a mood or emotion to you, which we hope elevates the impact of what’s happening in gameplay.

Having success with one licensed character is rare in video gaming, however Starbreeze has had success twice now, with Riddick and The Darkness. Do you feel that Starbreeze has a different approach to licensed characters or is it just a case of lightning striking twice? Can you talk about your approach to licensed character, and if possible, how this approach will help with the upcoming Bourne game?

Licensed games are tricky because occasionally the material you have to work with just isn’t compelling. You’re often forced down a road that almost pre-determines a bad result. So our first advantage has been good material – the Riddick universe and The Darkness were great for games. Then, we’ve definitely had luck in a certain degree of flexibility with the material. We get to present our take on it, and that allows us to do more than you’re typically able with licensed material which tends to be very constraining. The fact that Vin and Universal are actually supporting our creative vision is certainly a big advantage for us. If we can keep this trend going we should be okay!