The Conduit designer talks Wii waggle

One of the more exciting conversations that I had at Gen Con this year was with Micah Skaritka, designer for The Conduit. The Conduit is an FPS by High Voltage Software for the Wii and is slated to be playable this year at PAX. Among the smattering of topics we covered, a specific development point stuck out. Skaritka doesn’t like the Wii remote waggle and the game will reflect that.

We use the Wii motion to some degree. A lot of games use it, and it’s kind of annoying. What we tried to do is really incorporate the easy [motions]. We don’t have any of the pull back or push forward ones. But we did a little bit of the twist, but it’s subtle…

A lot of our weapons have a horizontal path. If you move the Wiimote to the left and right you are actually changing your reticule and the way the bullets travel. You can slice through the air and different directions. Little stuff like that really takes first-person shooters to the next level on the Wii.

As you can see, High Voltage is particularly cautious with how they’re approaching the Wii version of the game. Skaritka is aware that frantically tossing your controller around is an annoying activity. If only every developer would save me the time from having to look like an idiot in front of my girlfriend. I’m looking at you, Resident Evil 4.

The full interview with Micah Skaritka is here.