Sleeping Dog dev has “respect” for GTA, but throws a punch at the competition

Given all the talent that has gone into the various facets of gameplay, Sleeping Dogs is looking to be one polished experienced, but given the open-world nature of the game, comparisons to the Grand Theft Auto series is inevitable.

When asked about going up against the long-running king of the sandbox, United Front’s Stephen van der Mescht said that “there’s room” for a new game to exist alongside the GTA and Saints Row series.

“I think what we’re trying to do with the game, specifically with it being an undercover cop story, is bring a different sort of model of perspective, or a different feel to it. The story is about being a cop, not about being a gangster or a thug. It’s about facing those difficult decisions that people in undercover situations have to make.”

“As far as the game itself goes, I think everybody does something a bit differently,” he went on. “GTA is obviously the grandfather of them all, and we have a ton of respect for what they managed to accomplish within the open world genre. Saints Row, I think, has carved out a really interesting niche for themselves. They obviously go for the real over-the-top gameplay style.

United Front have a point of pride in Sleeping Dogs’ free-flow hand-to-hand king fu action. “We’ve taken a different turn with ours, and we’ve really pushed much more on the hand-to-hand mechanics than any of our competitors. When it comes down to the core combat system – melee combat, using melee weapons, bringing the environment into the combat system – there’s going to be stuff that people are going to be able to do in this game that they can’t do at all in other open world games.

“Hong Kong cinema – a lot of the movies have classic martial arts combat, fluid, being able to move around the environment, fight people, use the environment in really interesting ways – that’s something we’re really passionate about. If you could get to feel like Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chow Yun-Fat, or one of those guys in an open world setting, that’d feel pretty awesome.”

Sleeping Dogs is set to release on 14 August.