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IGN: How is it to work so in depth with motion-driven gameplay? How does that change development from something like this compared to a more traditional gaming experience?

Yukes: I think the biggest difference is that we want to put interactivity into every move, and every action in the game, whereas on the core SKU we just get the animation in there, and are done with it. As far as entrances for example, we have to look at how the user will want to play out these entrances, almost like it’s an interactive toy. How do we want users to relate to it? How do we want them to control and interact and enjoy it. Taking that mentality and bringing into the game is certainly one of the most unique aspects of it.

IGN: Last year SvR was very focused on using just the Wii remote and four main directions, but using those in every instance. Are you incorporating nunchuk this time, or if not, how are you maximizing what you’re going to get out of the Wii remote?

Yukes: Yes, exactly how you mentioned (nunchuk control). One of the things we realized though is that when you’re using just the Wii remote, it can be really hard for the sensor to pick up exactly what the user is doing, so what we’ve done is taken a series of tests and found out that it’s easier for the game to pick up what you’re doing if you’ve got both the nunchuk and Wii-mote doing the actions, so that it can check if you’ve done both together, one to the front and one to the side, or a varying level of motion that way. So we’re getting better results doing it that way, and internally we’ve actually constructed a simulation environment where we can have all different types of people come in and play with the controllers, and their different play styles are all spit out onto a graph, and we can see tendencies and exactly how people play the game. We’ve had guys that are hardcore gamers come in, women, and even kids so that we can get data on how they use the nunchuk and Wii-mote, and then see in turn how the game is interpreting what they do. Then we’ve been trying to use that data and find the best control scheme that makes sense, but also the one that has the best response and makes the best feel for the game. We feel pretty confident that the game’s response is much better this year, and we hope your readers will find it to be a much stronger experience because of it.

More of IGN’s interview with Yukes