Inside Prototype

Prototype is built on Radical’s Titanium Engine. According to Bennison, it represents over a decade’s worth of experience and development, with the project beginning its life in 1995 as a rendering library. It’s definitely come a long way since then.

“From a purely pragmatic view, the roots of the engine began when there were no viable middleware solutions and continued analysis since then has shown our choice to be financially justified given our business model,” says Bennison. Looking back over the years, it’s easy to see that the developer’s view is justified. The engine is a fusion of the knowledge the team has gained from Simpsons: Hit & Run, Hulk, Crash of the Titans and Scarface: The World is Yours. Of course, the technology has been influenced by Radical’s failures as well, but more for the lessons learned than anything physical.

As for specific features, the engine has ticks in all the next-gen boxes: complex shadows, per-pixel dynamic lighting and a day/night cycle, to name a few. However, Titanium’s strengths are its streaming technology and multi-platform support. Having created Hulk and Scarface, streaming is refined to the Nth degree and players should expect a seamless experience as they run hell-for-leather down the streets of New York. As for its multi-platform capabilities, Bennison was happy to go into more detail.

‘What is important is that a console SKU is not a simple port or afterthought, but rather that its strengths are exploited. For example, Titanium provides significant SPU support for the PS3. We did not create an engine for the Xbox 360 and then think about how to port the tech to the PS3.

“Don’t get us wrong. There are many great commercial engines out there that have produced many jaw-dropping titles. We’re not saying Titanium is better than they are.” But as you can imagine, the familiarity of Titanium, its code and tools is in their favour.



You may have heard a bit of talk on Prototype’s THX 7.1 certification. This term alone doesn’t mean much on the surface, but Bennison was able to explain what the benefits will be for gamers.

“Since we spent a lot of time and effort capturing hours of true New York City sound scapes – from taxis blaring, people yelling, alarms going nuts on crowded street corners – it seemed the only solid option to recreate that immersion was to work with THX.” Bennison says that THX was amazing to work with and while the certification process was ‘detailed and fairly exhaustive’, it worked out to be a great thing for both the game and the developer. And, despite the 7.1 moniker, players will be able to enjoy the pros of THX certified sound with a 5.1 or even 2.1 setup.

“Prototype will fully accommodate those system setups and we’re working hard to ensure as much of the ambience is captured, regardless of system capacity,” says Bennison.


Shaping the whole
Radical has made it clear that Prototype is the first in a multi-game franchise. We have no idea how many titles this will entail, though it’s not a major concern as we have more than enough anticipation bottled up for the developer’s first effort.

Bennison says there are plans for downloadable content, but Prototype’s large world provides a dizzying array of expansion opportunities, so nothing’s been hammered into the post-launch stone yet.

For now, keep your eyes open as publisher Sierra has the release date penned for later this year.