Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - developer interview

How diverse are the environments going to be - is it all sewers, streets and rooftops?
It will be very diverse.We follow the environments used in the TMNT movie which expands beyond rooftops and sewers. There are really nice environments such as catacombs and South American jungles.

Are players going to be able to free-roam around New York, or is it only explorable within the confines of missions/levels?
We wanted the player to remain focused on the task at hand so you're confined to where we want you to go.

Above: Sometimes you can only play as one turtle but, when another arrives, devastation beckons

Could you explain a bit more about the fast-paced navigation element that will feature in the gameplay? Does this mean the turtles will be as acrobatic as PoP 's Prince?
Yeah that's right. More so, we believe. One of the elements important to us was capturing the experience of being a ninja, a teenager and a mutant turtle and with that in mind we created game systems that encourage you to be as flamboyant and speedy as possible.

You will earn kudos from your brothers by being acrobatic and skillful, and you'll earn rating points at the end of a mission for how fast you were. Because of all that, it was important that the player was always aware of where to go next and never had to stop and examine the environment to work out the puzzle, like you do in Prince of Persia, for example.

So, we say the turtles are more acrobatic because every move flows into the next - you can perform a leap, call a brother to throw you further, land ona wall from the throw, run along that wall, leap off the wall on to another wall to run along that, then leap on to some poles and then at the end of the poles leap off and again call a brother to throw you further, and so on.

What elements from Ubisoft Montreal's other games will players recognise in TMNT?
The game uses the same game engine as Prince of Persia, so naturally the acrobatic mechanics are similar, but like I said, they are faster and more fluid. However, everything - from the acrobatic system to the combat to the collaborative gameplay - was written from the ground up so it's a very different experience.

Are members of the Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell teams working directly on TMNT?
Yes - we have team members from Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Peter Jackson's King Kong, Far Cry and Rainbow Six working on the TMNT game.