One-on-One With Surlaw
An Interview by Kingston C. Rockwell

Throughout this issue there's one word you've seen come up a lot: Walthros, the 2002 fantasy epic set on a strange world populated with stranger creatures. Its creator, Paul "Surlaw" Harrington, has made a number of other games since, most notably Walthrus: Return of the Crystals, Super Walrus Chef: War of The Food, and the as-yet unfinished Surlaw Armageddon. As a community figure, his contributions include moderating on the Slime Salad forums and performing chief editing duties on the magazine you're reading right now. To celebrate the Walthros-themed issue, we got together and talked about the past, present, and future of the series.

KINGSTON C. ROCKWELL: This is something I'm sure a lot of our readers are wondering. Working in the background, I know this Walthros-centered issue came about basically by accident, but how do you feel about it? Any apologies to the people who may misinterpret this and think you're egotistically appropriating the magazine to be all about you this month?
PAUL HARRINGTON: Hopefully by the time this is published there will be more content that's not related to me! Really this has been a big help in getting me motivated to work on my games again, so it's good for me, but I'm sorry for anyone that doesn't care about my games and might not get a lot out of the issue.
KING: How about other themed issues? Think we might do this in the future with other games, like say the Epic Marathon Contest next month?
PAUL: Issue 15 was largely JSH themed until the last minute, but other than that we haven't really tried anything like this yet. I think it's a good idea, but would take more organization than a normal issue.
KING: But anyway, let's get right down to business with something very near and dear to my heart. Blueberry's Disco XXXtreme. When is it happening, what will it be like. Details! We want details, man! i am so dead serious right now
PAUL: It would be pretty funny to actually release this. I'd probably just rip off Surf's Up Yuk hard and make it a dance contest game, rather than a bad DDR clone. SUY was made in the image of Walrus Chef, so I kind of feel I'd have the freedom to copy it a bit in response. Of course, in our last issue, Only One In All released some OHR themed Stepmania files, so maybe he'd be the one for the job?
KING: We've got to get that one inevitable question out of the way, so let me ask you, where does the inspiration come from? Other than mescaline, I mean. Any notable influences?
PAUL: The basic plot of Walthros (find X crystals, save the world) has been around since the original comics (1992) which were largely influenced by Final Fantasy IV. I've tried to take the story in more interesting places, but that will always be its root. The characters come from a variety of sources; My brother drew the original design that I would later turn into Bob Surlaw (his version was a much plumper, elongated fish that actually looked like a real fish, only with crazy googly eyes and a cape), and the name came from a Sea World exhibit/performance I'd recently seen on a trip to California that involved a place called "The Island of Surlaw." A walrus swam around during the show and acted like a jerk.

Walrus Man is one hell of an odd story that won't make a whole lot of sense; I drew a comic about a kid who found "Walrus Armor" (actually just tusks) and slowly melted into an actual walrus and went mad as he used its power. At least, that's what's supposed to be happening; the actual comic is pretty incoherent, even for me.

As for more recent influences, Walrus Chef was based on the idea of, "What would Iron Chef be like if everyone involved was a massive jerk?" Surlaw Armageddon's plot structure is based on Stephen King's Dark Tower and takes some influence from the Silent Hill games.
KING: We've seen many sides of Walthros in many games in the past eight years, but which one of those games did you enjoy making the most?
PAUL: Walthrus was the most enjoyable to make, largely because I didn't have to worry about making sure battles were balanced or plotscripts worked. Even in my simplest games, I spend a long time tuning these aspects, even if the result is kind of hard for the player to notice. I also had a clear idea of where it was going, unlike, say, Gato Sucio, which required the same amount of design work but turned out far worse because I only knew where it would begin and end, and everything in between is weak filler. (The opening chapter is still something I'm proud of.)
KING: So would that make Walthrus your favorite of the series?
PAUL: Surlaw Armageddon is probably my favorite game, even though it's not nearly finished and most of what I love about it is still in my head. It's the most personal of my games, so it has the most value to me. Some of the content in the game will only make sense to a small handful of people who know me, but I'm making this more for myself than anyone else.
KING: Which leads us into the next series of questions. I'm sure I've made it clear I'm the biggest non-Brazilian fan of Surlaw Armageddon, so I've got a lot to ask about it. First off, in the mid-'80s DC Comics had Crisis On Infinite Earths to clear out the mess of a multiverse they'd set up over the previous 50 years, in the early 90s Douglas Adams ended Mostly Harmless by synchronizing the destruction of earth across infinite realities so he wouldn't have to write another Hitchhiker's book. Now Surlaw Armageddon is combining the realities of every Walthros sidestory as a setup to tell the one surviving plot in Walthros R, the long-awaited remake of the original game. Any relation, or a total coincidence?
PAUL: I wasn't intending on bringing elements of the other Walthros universes into Armageddon at first; it was just going to be a horror sequel to Walthrus. But as I worked on it, and left other installments dangling, I realized that I really wanted something that could tie everything together. I know I must have read Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the day (I know my brother owns them and I read most of his comics), so it might have been a subconscious influence.
KING: Now the game, in a lot of ways, reflects your personal philosophies regarding games, but there's just one thing that's bothered me about it. I'd mentioned it in my review last year, but in making it inconsequential whether you fight a battle or not, they've become pointless. Even the story battles are just obstacles in the way of progressing further in the game, the player's only fighting because you're making them do so. What're your plans to address this in the upcoming release?
PAUL: I don't want battles in this game to be a rewarding experience; I want them to be obstacles in the way of progress. I know this won't sit well with many people. All non-essential battles will be avoidable, and future areas won't have the infinite healing the current ones do, so avoiding some to maintain your health will be necessary. At this point in the story, fighting is largely a pointless exercise. When you're killing people that are already dead and earning nothing from it, I want it to feel pointless. I don't want to bore the player, and I want these battles to be strategic and difficult, but I don't want them to be what attracts someone to the game. There is nothing heroic in the battles in Surlaw Armageddon. By the time it's done this will probably be my most alienating game.
KING: MIKE.JPG has been a prominent motif in many of your recent games. With the more serious nature of Surlaw Armageddon and Walthros R, will MIKE.JPG just have to sit it out, or will we be seeing him again soon?
PAUL: The area in Armageddon that begins where the current demo ends is a Walthrus-esque joke world in design, so you might be seeing Mike again sooner than you'd expect.
KING: Good to hear. And that one's still on for Halloween, right? You know I need that to be on for Halloween so bad.
PAUL: I will at least release a new demo for Halloween. I know I'm terrible with keeping promises like this, but I really feel like I need to to keep the project alive.
KING: It's been a while since I've played the first game, but I remember it having a particularly large and interesting bestiary, a sample of which our readers can see in this month's new Monsterology feature. About how long did it take you to design the various enemies in Walthros, individually and collectively? Would you say that was a big percentage of the workload, or do you just have some well of surreal animals to pull from that makes this stuff easy? You ever consider putting a list of the ones encountered in Walthros R, something like the Final Fantasy remakes have done?
PAUL: Most of the bosses were new to the game, but most of Walthros' monsters were taken from the comics, so I had a good six years worth of them to pull from before making the game. My biggest issue with the original game is that the monsters aren't surreal enough, and too many are just "Earth animals but huge." I will address this in the remake. A lot of the monsters were the result of long time collaborations with friends, though some designs (Such as Elvis merged with a Yuk) never got used. The worst monsters we came up with were used in Gato Sucio. I would love to include an in-game bestiary, the custom menus in the newer engine versions should make that far easier to do.
KING: Your reputation and prolific output have afforded you rather a celebrity in the community, be it reverence from regulars or death threats from trolls. Why do you think this is?
PAUL: I've actually tried to stay out of the community more and more since I've been running HamsterSpeak; I want to be as impartial as possible. It's earned me less creepy stalkers and less outright hate, both of which are for the best. Besides, making fun of dumb posts on my own forum is a lot more entertaining than actually arguing with some of the crazies of the OHR community.
KING: Got any favorite stories about interactions with those crazies? Funny, horrific, both?
PAUL: All of the truly crazy people that have latched on to me (Redmage being the worst) always end up being sad stories and not funny ones. The best laughs should come from reading the Jerkstore threads on the Super Walrus Land forums. These contain plenty of posts that are both funny and horrific.
KING: How do you feel about your representation in community games, like your appearance in OHR House 2, or Bob Surlaw's appearance in OHR House Heroes?
PAUL: I think RMZ did a good job blending the Bob Surlaws from Walthros and Walthrus for House Heroes. He has a simple minded attitude (and love of food and TV) from Walthrus while interacting with others more like he does in Walthros, and I think a good character has come from this. Surlaw in Walthros R won't be this simple minded, though.

I actually really hated the Surlaw character in House 2 and was sad that he won the show. I found him funny for the first couple of episodes but it wore thin incredibly fast and I didn't see anything appealing about him after that. I did love that he lived in a tent in the main hall and his adventures in Wonderland were pretty funny. I mostly don't like that there doesn't seem to be a consistency with the character from episode to episode. He goes from an incoherent hobo to a wise old Jew to a pedophile (I really hated this) and none of it really meshes well.
KING: Now, I've got a personal stake in this one, so I've gotta talk about it. I know we all approached the characters from our own perspectives, which is something that probably hurt the show over all but I think made seeing each writers take on the cast an interesting contrast on the others. I always thought of Surlaw's more devious tendencies as stemming from much more innocent intentions, for instance, while his exuberance for Aethereal was only mistaken for violent by the guy who had the good sense to show up in a bunny suit, but I digress.
PAUL: I liked the naive, slightly deranged hobo version, and how he pretty much took the crazy events in week 4 in stride. I really dislike his dialogue in most of the show, but you got around that in this one by not having him speak much. I think the ending of the series made me more bitter, because god damn did I hate that.
KING: And that is where the differences came into play, the whole deviations with innocent intentions coming off as outright perversions. I never saw him as a pedophile, just having some odd non-sexual fascination with little girls and rabbits, though I'll admit that's kind've a weird way to look at anything. It could be misconstrued easily, as much of what he did could, but there just needed to be more room left for doubt. If I had to guess the origins of the whole thing, it would probably stem from all the pictures of anime girls in the comedy games. I'll be honest in that I didn't write a lot of dialogue for him because could never get a hang how he talked, so most of the time I did it always sounded stupid to me and is probably why I have more visual gags involving him. But I've gotta applaud JSH's efforts to keep the show to its core when he had Giz turning everything into a good ol' party and me crossing the line twice and changing everything between his episodes.
PAUL: Well, I should add that while I really disliked most of the Surlaw character, hated the ending, and wasn't a big fan of the post-hiatus episodes, I did enjoy the rest of House 2 a lot, even if it felt a bit schizophrenic.
KING: But enough about my games, let's get back to yours. What are your thoughts on the cathartic benefits of making short barely-games? What I mean is the games like Summertime Surlaw, Zoidberg: The Musical! and Scottie Goes To Hell, the ones that aren't so much interacted with as they are experienced.
PAUL: Taking a couple of hours to turn out a quick, stupid game is a great relief from serious work, and the reason I haven't made any of these games lately is directly tied to the fact that I haven't done much serious game work lately either. These games really have no value after they're released, but releasing one was always fun, because no one knew what in the world they were at first. By now they'd probably be too predictable, which is why my last joke game became Stinkmace, which had the structure of an actual game, just with terrible plot and graphics.
KING: Are we ever gonna see more out of that one?
PAUL: I still want to make Stinkmace, but I may need to collaborate with someone, because I can't script mini-games entertaining enough to support the game, and that's all I wanted the gameplay to be. The problem is that I'm not really into collaborating with other people on actually making a game, which is probably a pretty big flaw.
KING: What about the bunny, going back to Summertime Surlaw I guess. Got the bunny lately?
PAUL:
KING: Now we've referred to Walthros R a number of times so far, but recent readers may be unfamiliar with the project. Where does it stand right now? You've mentioned it's your last big foray into the world of Walthros once Surlaw Armageddon is done, but I'm just wondering how it's changed in the various reboots from what you'd said about it three and a half years ago. Karma rating and and branching storylines still intact? Cosmetic changes depending on equipment? How have various updates to the engine changed the custom menu? Any new features we should know about?
PAUL: Karma ratings and branching the storyline will still be intact, they're essential to my idea of where the game will go. I want everything to have a consequence, because I'm sick of RPGs where actions don't matter to either the player or the characters. Cosmetic changes based on equipment is something I really want to keep, but it's exhausting to redraw every character for each set of armor. This is something that will be in the game some day, but maybe not at first. The engine updates (specifically sound effects and layers) will make work on the game a lot easier, and the custom menus should make what I was trying to do far, far easier. Getting my own custom menu to work and look nice before was quite a hassle.
KING: How far do you expect to takes the Karma system? With the ability to set tags in battle, will the way you fight even determine your path in the game?
PAUL: This was something I had always wanted to do but was never able to until now; I want the crystals to be usable in battle as extremely powerful weapons, but I want using them to give your karma a severe hit. Aside from this, most of the karma boosting/lowering moments come from dialogue choices, of which I intend there to be many, several of which have no clear right or wrong answer, but end up with good or bad consequences. With custom menus this should work even better, since you won't be limited to just two choices.
KING: Taking a common trope and applying realistic consequences to it has always been my definition of Deconstruction in art. Is this more another reflection of the way you look at games, or a commentary on the way most games never think about these kind of things?
PAUL: I want actions to matter in games. I still enjoy games that are completely linear, or games with no plot/thematic value (I love arcade style games. Space Invaders, is still fun to me today) but when I've encountered something in a game where my actions actually mean something, it really makes me stand up and take notice.

Two of my favorite examples of actions having consequence in games are in Metal Gear Solid 3 and in Suikoden 5. MGS3 punishes you for every soldier you kill throughout the game; towards the end, Snake is knocked unconscious and walks down a dream river full of the spirits of these dead soldiers, each lamenting the way you killed them. This to me was one of the most powerful scenes I've encountered in a video game; I try not to kill many soldiers in Metal Gear games, but this scene made me feel personally bad about the ones I did.

In Suikoden 5, there's a scene where an enemy army is attacking your base. Your military adviser urges you to retreat immediately, and, thinking this was a typical Japanese RPG, I chose not to. I was impressed that the game allowed me to stay and fight against all warnings, and even more impressed by the consequences; staying to fight WAS a bad idea, and a major character dies if you choose to do so. That's it for him. He can't be saved, he's completely out of the story, and it's your fault for making a poor choice. This really made me respect the game, and this is the kind of feeling I want to bring to Walthros R. I want the player to be able to make bad decisions, and I want them to matter.
KING: It's true the original tried to show us as much of the world as it could, but some things never really got their moment in the sun. What about this would you like to change in Walthros R?
PAUL: Walthros R opens earlier than Walthros, and shows us more of Bob's life before everything gets out of control. It starts with him on basic excavation digs, exploring mundane settings around his home. I want to show that the events of the game shape who he is, and to do that I need to show what he is beforehand. The various wars will also be more present in the minds of the world's citizens, and won't seem so out of nowhere. Hopefully the ending won't be rushed this time; the Sun Shrine was meant to be a turning point in the game and not the climax, but I rushed the game at that point for various reasons. Part of me is glad I did, because otherwise I might not have finished it.
KING: A little related, but for the little it had, Walthros Mercenaries was interesting at least for the different perspective it gave of the world. Where would that have gone if it had continued? Was Zero just a blank slate to serve as a player avatar, or would we have gotten to know anything more about his past life?
PAUL: The idea behind Mercenaries was that you would be able to side with any faction in the wars, and it would have ultimately made little difference because of how utterly pointless they were, which would lead to Zero founding his own mercenary state to strike back against the rest of the world. I still like this idea, but Metal Gear did it better.

Zero was meant to have a good amount of backstory, in which we find out that he was a horrible tyrant in his past life before being reincarnated as a weak, normal man. Redemption was to be the major theme of the game. Now, after talking about it, I want to work on Mercenaries again but definitely don't have the time.
KING: Back to Walthros R, what about the characters? Any that won't be returning? What kind of new faces can we expect?
PAUL: Everyone from Walthros will return, but some might not be playable. There's really no need to have all five mice as playable characters, it just bloated the team with too many similar looking heroes. There will be plenty of new characters, especially on the dark path. Expect playable Ralz characters and some new races.
KING: All in all, how much about them will have changed between the different depictions in the first game and the comedy games?
PAUL: Walrus Man and Dinosaur Triple will be more like toned down versions of their Walthrus personalities. They are my favorite characters in the comedy versions, and I want them to be the comedic core of the remake. Scottie will maintain his bratty, obnoxious personality from Walthrus, but won't be quite so vile.
KING: One thing I noticed about Walthros' characters, aside from the mice and Scottie, is they were all sole representatives of their races. Were the races more inspired by the characters, at the beginning at least? I'm sure the Sky Flyers came before the fish, seals and worms, and is that mainly what this stems from? Is this something you'll be addressing in Walthros R?
PAUL: The main reason there are generally only one of each race in your party is simply that I didn't want the heroes to look too much alike. I wanted visual variety, which is why having five mice was way too much. One thing from Walthros about the races I do want to change is that in the original, there was a city (or continent) for each race, and they didn't really mingle outside of that. I want them to be more evenly distributed in R. For example, Ciadna will still be a city primarily of seals, but it will have a strong representation of other groups as well.
KING: When can we expect a demo?
PAUL: There will be a demo after Armageddon is finished.
KING: Alright, very cool. Now, before we cut this off, got anything to say to your Brazilian fans?


PAUL: Obrigado por seu apoio assustador para Surlaw: Armageddon! Faça prova dos outros jogos. SA não parecerá tão insano depois de jogar os outros mas poderá aproveitar mais dele.
(if you don't know Portuguese, that's "Thank you for your surprising support for Surlaw: Armageddon! Try out some of the other games, SA won't seem quite as insane if you do but you might get more out of it.")

Special thanks to Moogle1 for the Portuguese translation.
~Kingston C. Rockwell