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Blu-ray Knight
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If you’re like me, the revelations of Rock Band 3 info that hit yesterday morning left you with just as many questions as answers. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to talk to Rock Band 3 project lead Daniel Sussman and publicist Stephanie Myers yesterday afternoon to ask some of the questions we all have — but I never expected some of the answers they were able to give.
Read on to learn new details about the functionality of the Rock Band 3 guitars, a new peripheral that should get serious drummers and keyboard players pretty excited, and the secret Rock Band 3 functionality that’s hiding on your hard drive right this very moment. Plus: the debut trailer!
I wanted to start off talking about the keyboard. I saw that the keyboard has MIDI out; is that how it interfaces with the game?
Daniel Sussman: No. The MIDI out is for whatever musical application you would like to use it for. [The keyboard is] a fully functional videogame controller on each platform. So, on the 360 it’s got the Ring of Light, all the buttons, and it connects wirelessly; on the PS3 and Wii it’s got the same dongle structure that we use on all of our peripherals.
Wireless Keyboard Controller, $79.99; with game, $129.99
So MIDI is basically an added-value sort of thing?
DS: Exactly. We realized pretty early on, as we were designing the keyboard, that it was going to be a pretty functional keyboard, so we wanted to sort of realize its potential. Given my past in the hardware-development scene, [we're all] very psyched to be making real instruments.
So, would there be any way to use a full-sized MIDI keyboard with the game or anything like that? Or is it pretty much just the controller?
DS: We are developing a MIDI box, a conversion box, that would be a controller in itself and allow the import of standard MIDI [keyboards] and drum kits into the game.
MIDI PRO-Adapter, $39.99
Oh, that is awesome. Then, let me ask you about the guitar: Do the new guitars have MIDI out?
DS: The new guitars both have MIDI out.
SWEET. Pardon my geeking out, but I do some home recording and the idea of having a guitar with MIDI out is really exciting to me.
DS: Well, to us too! Again, as with the keyboard, both flavors of the guitar are designed to be MIDI instruments at the very least, and the Fender Squier is — it’s a real guitar.
So, how does the technology work with the Squier? Can you explain how it detects finger placement and so on?
DS: Well, I don’t want to get into the super-detailed specifics, but we basically isolated this matrix of strings and frets so that we can tell what your left hand is doing before you strum.
Stephanie Myers: We don’t want to go into too much detail about that, but it’s essentially fret-sensing technology for your fingers. And it shows up in real time on the screen, so you can look at the screen and see where your left-hand fingers are.
Rock Band 3 Squier Stratocaster, Price TBA
DS: I’ll tell you what, though, we’re going to have it all at E3, so my advice is to just check it out on the floor. It’s easier to see in person than to describe it.
For Pro mode, for the guitar, are you basically learning the song? Like, if you got up to Expert in Pro mode, and you played the song, would you then just be able to go pick up any other regular guitar and play that song?
DS: Effectively, yes. The underlying design of Rock Band Pro across all the instruments is that whatever you’re doing in the game translates to some form of genuine musical ability outside of the game. So on the keyboard, even if you’re playing on Easy or Medium, the notes that you’re playing, or the notes that the game is cueing you to play, are pitch-accurate.
And in guitar, it’s the same way. We’ve designed an interface that covers everything from single notes and single-note runs, to power chords, to full barre chords and open chords. It gets pretty complex.
L: Pro guitar run; R: Pro guitar chords
We have arpeggio language — it does take you all the way through to Expert, which is note-for-note authoring…for ridiculous songs! Like, “Crazy Train,” or “Rainbow in the Dark,” or whatever — these songs that have blistering solos — in order to beat those songs in Pro mode on Expert, you will have to learn the song.
That is insane.
DS: Well, it’s been an adventure, to say the least, to develop this stuff. We’ve been blown away by the response that we’ve gotten through focus tests, and just sort of the natural development of it all as we actually put our game in front of people and watch them develop skills.
But actually, it’s not such a stretch when you think about what we did with [the first] Rock Band and the drums. We could have made that a far more abstract simulation of drum gameplay, but we didn’t. We kept it as close to the real thing as we could, and by Expert, you’re basically playing drums. And so that was sort of an awakening moment for us, as we saw that in the field and saw how people responded to that, and how Expert Rock Band players could learn skills in the game, and then transpose those skills to real music. That was the glimmer of insight into Pro mode, where we realized we can totally do this.
People get so good at guitar — Expert guitar, what people can do on that, is actually mind-blowing. The amount of time people spend, we’re super-respectful of that time investment. And with Rock Band Pro, we’re looking to do two things: One is to level the playing field, in a sense. This is new; if you’re really good at Rock Band or Guitar Hero or whatever, this is going to be new to you — it’s a new way of interacting with music. [The other is that] at the end of that difficulty ramp, if you actually put the time in, you’ll have something that is valuable outside of the game space. That’s the ambition of Rock Band Pro.
Now, the smaller controller has strings for picking and buttons on the neck, is that right?
DS: Yep, there’s a matrix of 17 frets, with six strings worth of buttons. So that’s a lot of buttons on the neck [102, to be exact. --Ed.], but it actually works exactly the same way that the actual Fender guitar does, where your left hand is pressing buttons and you activate them by strumming. It’s pretty close to the real thing; it’s a MIDI instrument but not an analog instrument, so because of the buttons you can’t bend strings and stuff like that. But it’s got a lot of upside that a real guitar doesn’t: You don’t have to worry about tuning or maintenance; it’s really just an out-of-the-box game controller that supports the Pro guitar stuff.
Fender Mustang PRO-Guitar Controller, $149.99
Because of the smaller neck, will there be any difference in charting between the smaller controller and the full-size guitar?
DS: The only difference is with respect to the top end of it; there are more frets on the Squier than on the Mustang. So there is a difference in the charts there, where we look at what guitar you have and then make sure that we transpose those higher parts down when you’re playing on the button guitar.
So let’s talk about drums: Are you guys doing an entirely new kit?
DS: No. Drum functionality is basically the same as it has been in Rock Band 2. We’re making some changes in the software: Obviously we’re supporting the cymbals in this robust way, through Rock Band Pro. There are some other things: We’ve looked at the way we detect rolls and some of the other, more complicated drum things you do in a game, and we’re trying to support that in the gameplay a little better than we have in the past.
And on the drum kit, we’re actually opening up the mysterious second input jack. That will be by default a second kick pedal jack…or you can switch it to be a hi-hat, which functions in the free-play drum modes or the drum fills.
That’s awesome. So, how are the cymbals being designated in the game? Are you adding colors? Or new shapes? How is that going to work?
DS: We have new shapes. We share the same lane, so toms and cymbals coexist on a single lane, but they’re differentiated by shape. So the cymbals look like little cymbals, and the toms look like standard gems.
Pro drums; note the new cymbal-shaped gems.
SM: About the drums, this is actually something we want to make sure people realize: To play Rock Band 3, you don’t have to buy anything new. You can play this with your existing instruments, unless you want to do Pro guitar or keys — the Pro initiative in general — but all the rest completely works with existing hardware.
DS: That’s true. The Rock Band 2 cymbals, all that stuff is super-functional right out of the gate. And I’ll add that almost our entire legacy catalog is already authored for cymbals. With keys and Pro guitar, the legacy stuff doesn’t support Rock Band Pro, but Rock Band Pro supports legacy songs for drums.
OK, right. So, it supports three cymbals, right?
DS: Correct. [Editor's note: Yes, I know I missed something. Wait for it.] Although it’s pretty modular. In Rock Band Pro, you can play if you only have one cymbal, but you’ll suffer on the leaderboards. The game behind Pro drums is that you get extra score for hitting the correct surface. And if you don’t, it makes it a little harder to survive through the end of the song. But that covers the one-, two-, or three-cymbal configurations. Depending on what you have, the game adapts to that.
Let me back up for a second. You said that the legacy content already supports cymbals. Did you mean that you’ll see the cymbal icons when playing older DLC in Rock Band 3?!
DS: [clearly amused] Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
Wha — How did that happen? Have you guys basically been planning to do this all along?
DS: Well, yeah. Most of the content — some of the early Rock Band stuff doesn’t have it, but by and large, the vast majority of the entire Rock Band catalog supports cymbals in gameplay.
Wow. I, uh…wow. I don’t have a cymbal kit for my Rock Band 2 set — have I been missing something? Has this always been the case?
DS: No. Without devolving into too deep of a technical discussion, our authoring guys have basically been putting in information that has gone unrealized up until Rock Band 3. So there are a lot of cues and “hooks” in our authoring flow that have always been there; we just haven’t had the software cycles to take advantage of them. Cymbals are an example of that. [Our authors have been] authoring the distinction between a tom hit and a cymbal hit, but the software has never taken advantage of that distinction until Rock Band 3.
That is huge.
DS: Now, I want to stress that that’s only the case for drums. Everything that we’ve done with keys and guitar is a brand-new form of track and gameplay. That’s all restricted to RB3-specific content and forthcoming DLC.
Well, since we’re talking about DLC, do you know at this point if DLC from Rock Band 3 going forward will scale down to be compatible with Rock Band 2?
DS: We’re still trying to figure out how the landscape lies for DLC in Rock Band 3. We are committed to continue to build the catalog, but we’re not really prepared to talk about the specifics of our DLC strategy.
You mentioned the second pedal and said that that would work in freestyle and fills. Are you basically saying that songs are not going to be charted to use double bass and hi-hat at all?
DS: Right. We chart our songs to be as accurate as they [can be]. When you’re playing songs that have double-kick, we put as many of those in as our system can afford. But there will never be a case where you need to have the double-kick. You may have an advantage…
Since you’re now officially acknowledging additional cymbals, will RB3 support the Guitar Hero kits with the two cymbals?
DS: We do support the Guitar Hero kits, but not in Rock Band Pro; there are too many fundamental differences in terms of their pad layout and cymbal layout for us to be able to map the Pro stuff onto their kit. But we have full support for their kit in standard gameplay.
In the interview with USA Today, Sylvain [Dubrofsky, Senior Designer] mentioned new core gameplay features, mentioning trills on guitar and then following up with something about “scoring extra parts.” Can you explain that a bit?
Sylvain Dubrofsky: [via e-mail] We have new gameplay that we use for trills, tremolo picking, and rolls. Essentially, if the part is really fast and loose our authors can mark it and a special graphic appears on the track. Players can then hit all the notes as long as they play fast enough rather than having to beat-match these really awkward parts.
[As for scoring,] in previous band games when you played with more than one person — say drums and guitar — you would record a “band” score and that’s it. In RB3 we re-engineered the scoring so that in that situation you record a drum score and a guitar score as well!
I wanted to ask a bit about World Tour mode: It sounds like essentially anything you do in the game now counts toward your tour status. So will there still be a definite goal that you’re aiming toward? Or is it just kind of ongoing advancement, open-ended sort of thing?
DS: There’s a loose narrative structure around the entire game. There’s a specific narrative tour, and a more open-ended career that is achievements-driven.
So, kind of both?
DS: Yeah.
OK, two more quick questions. There was a leak the other day indicating that the game is coming out on Halloween. Comment?
DS: No comment.
Then, the other question is, can you tell me any single song that hasn’t already been announced?
DS: …No.
Not even a hint? Little hint?
SM: They’re all awesome!
DS: What are you hoping for? Maybe I’ll confirm or deny.
Oh, I should have prepared for that. Uh, how about “Pressure” by Billy Joel?
DS: I can’t really talk about that. Wait, isn’t that already in our DLC library?
SM: Not by Billy Joel.
DS: Oh, Billy Joel?!
Keys, guitar, it’d be a great song!
DS: I’m going to have to come up with a good response for the Billy Joel questions.
SM: Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of Billy Joel questions. But we’ll be rolling out more of the set list in the next few months. I think people are going to be very, very happy.
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