Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - developer interview

Are the turtles always going to be outnumbered in fights? Will the combat be geared towards taking out multiple enemies at once?
The fight ratio is probably four bad guys to one turtle on average. Depending on your fighting style (dictated by which turtle you are using) you can go for sweeping ranged attacks to take out multiple enemies in one blow, or focused direct attacks to eliminate a bad guy more efficiently before moving on to the next.

The family moves are much more powerful and enable you to eliminate a whole squad of enemies in one blow, if you time it well.

Combat seems like it'll be a major part of TMNT. How have you improved the fighting over, say, the combat in Prince of Persia?
The combat for TMNT was written from scratch with the influences being games like God of War and Ninja Gaiden, but tailored to our target audience. So it's really about timing your attacks, blocking when under threat, moving within the arena to gain advantage, and using your brothers when appropriate.

Do the four turtles all fight using drastically different styles?
Yes. We tried to capture the essence of each of the turtles. Leo is disciplined and controlled so he's an all rounder, Mike is the most naturally talented but also the laziest so his fighting style consists of rapid attacks in succession while he's showing off some of his moves. Don, of course, has his bo staff so his style is sweeping motions that can hit lots of bad guys, and Raph is the most aggressive so his attacks are much more direct and powerful.

Above: Instead of being limited to the sewers, the levels follow the film's location and heads into the jungle

Is the game going to follow the movie step-for-step, or will it delve deeper into the history of the Ninja Turtles?
We're staying pretty close to the movie but exploring some turtle mythology where we felt it was appropriate to work for our philosophy in the game. Yeah, basically we have some characters from the turtles past in there - I don't think I'm allowed to say any more than that, sorry.

Will there be any multiplayer modes? Is this something people will be able to play over Xbox Live/PS3 network?
Because the movie is all about family and separation, it was really important for us to focus on that for the game systems. As a result we made an early choice not to put in multiplayer because it broke the message we were trying to convey - that being without your family makes everything harder.

Could you tell us about any differences between the current and next-gen versions beyond enhanced visuals?
We are improving the visual quality of the game, particularly with texture quality and using special visual filters to get even closer to the movie. We also intend to increase the number of enemies in fights, so the turtles will probably get more of a workout than ever! We also added some achievements for the Xbox 360 version.