I recently had a chance to sit down and chat with Khang Le, art director and one of the CEO's over at Adhesive Games. Hawken has turned a lot of heads since its debut, ours included and even ended up winning our 'Best Of E3 Overall' title. We got to go into some specifics about art direction, visual styles and other interesting insights about the upcoming title.
In terms of the visual style you chose to go for with the mechs, what were your choices in differentiating yourself from the pre-established Mech titles out there like Armored Core or Mech Warrior?
Khang Le: In terms of mech styles, Maschinen Krieger is still relatively unknown aesthetically so I really want to bring some of that to Hawken. Eastern titles tend to use humanoid, streamlined mechs like Evangelion and the West tends to like 'chick walker' mechs like those in MechWarrior. Maschinen Krieger's aesthetics tend to sort of look like a mix of insectoid and chicken walker movement types.
We also have 2 factions, the Prosk have more organic shaped mechs while the other faction, the Sentium side tend to look more like very modern tank with legs. The different between them is pretty subtle, but the visuals will stand out compared to any other mech title out there.
