E3 2012: Sleeping Dogs

At first glance Sleeping Dogs might seem like an overly

familiar video game.

As an undercover cop embedded in an organized crime

syndicate, you wander around a city,

steal cars, complete missions.

If this all sounds a little too Grand Theft Auto,

think again.

What sets Sleeping Dogs apart is that it's set in the city

of Hong Kong.

It has martial arts brawling that really feels more like

something out of Arkham Asylum.

We talked to Square Annex about how Sleeping Dogs

could be this E3's sleeper hit.

With Sleeping Dogs we really tried to focus

on the core mechanics.

A lot of open world games really sort of have forsaken

the hand to hand combat, the driving, the shooting,

and they've done that sort of at the expense I guess of

the ability to sandbox game play, do whatever you want.

We said well, I think we can do both.

You can still have that sandbox experience,

jump from mission to mission, do whatever you want,

explore the world, but really have great hand to hand combat

and make a great racing experience.

So bringing that all together, making a really fun,

playable experience, that's also open world and has

a great, compelling story.

You're set in Hong Kong and you're an undercover cop

in Wei Shen.

He grew up in Hong Kong, was in with a bit of a rough crowd,

his parents took him to the States to kind of get away

from it all, and later on he's asked to join this task force

to reuse contacts and connections from his childhood

to try and infiltrate the Triads and take them down.

On Sleeping Dogs they spent a lot of time on our combat.

Right from the beginning we knew that was probably you know

one of our most core features.

We took a lot of influences from Hong Kong cinema

where the hero is surrounded by 20, 30 enemies

and they've gotta use their wit and their environment

and their excellent martial art skills to get themself

out of this situation and incapacitate all the other

thugs around them.

And so we built a system that we feel is really fluid,

and it's very intuitive, easy to pick up and play,

but there's also a lot of depth.

So United Front Games, we got a long pedigree in experience

of working on racing titles.

We kind of took all these different driving game experiences

and brought it to Sleeping Dogs.

Trying to create a somewhat realistic experience

but airing on the side of fun and arcade,

and we felt it was important if you're going, you know it's

a big city, you're driving all around Hong Kong Island,

and if you're going from point A to point B,

you want that to be an enjoyable experience.