Recently, our new site staff member, Brian Elston, and I had the opportunity to sit down and interview Paweł Biela and Krzysztof Król. The pair are the co-founders of 7Levels, the game studio responsible for the Kong: Survivor Instinct game. Along with the interview, we’re also thrilled to present five exclusive pieces of concept art from the game that you won’t see anywhere else!

Toho Kingdom: How was the game conceived? Did Legendary approach you or vice versa?

Paweł Biela: We were the ones to pitch the initial idea to Legendary, and our original approach convinced them to keep talking with such a small indie studio as ours. From the very beginning we wanted to offer fans a less obvious, less explored perspective on the Monsterverse. What followed were weeks of productive meetings and discussions to flesh out the concept and arrive at a shared vision.

 

TK: How involved was Legendary in the making of this game?

Krzysztof Król: We worked very closely on everything connected directly to the Monsterverse: from the storyline, to monster designs, and to Monarch logs. After all, this is an official game that’s canon to the IP, so we had to make sure everything is consistent not only with the already released media but also with other projects in development at Legendary. Game development takes quite a lot of time, around 4 years in this case, so it was no small challenge to coordinate it properly.

 

TK: Are there any monsters that were cut from the game, if yes who?

Król: No, I can confirm loud and clear that no monster was cut. If anything, the game grew bigger during the development than originally planned.

 

TK: On the topic of new titans that debuted in the title, were they created just for the game or are the monsters intended for future Legendary media?

Biela: New monsters debuting in KONG: Survival Instinct are now officially a part of the Monsterverse. We hope to return to them sometime in the future, but we’re in no position to announce anything on the behalf of Legendary in terms of future appearances of monsters from the game in other mediums.

 

TK: Was the genre of the game decided from the beginning?

Biela: As with any game project, there were various ideas thrown around at the preproduction stage, for example a greater focus on survival and resource management was discussed, but generally speaking the core hasn’t changed much.

Król: As 7Levels, 2.5D action-adventure games are simply something that we focus our efforts on, so our game was never meant to be a fighting game or an open-world sandbox.

 

TK: Was this always envisioned as a Kong game?

Król: Basically, yes. Of course at the very beginning various ideas were on the table, but Kong was there from the very start of actual production. We’ve read some theories online about Kong, or Titans, being added late in development, but they are simply not true.

 

TK: How much creative freedom did you have over the game?

Biela: Lots of it, if not all of it. Of course, we couldn’t contradict the canon, but why would we want to? Also, we worked together with Legendary and their awesome creative team to make sure the game is as truthful to the Monsterverse as possible. They were very enthusiastic about our proposals and always open to novel ideas that could push the whole universe forward. Not every idea made it into the final game, but that’s a natural part of the creative process.

Król: They would also often come to us with their own ideas on how to make the game better, but they would never force us to do something that we weren’t convinced to do.

 

TK: How did you decide on bringing Abaddon into the game over the other Titans?

Biela: Nobody knows their fanbase better than Legendary and it was their idea to debut a new Titan via the video game rather than a movie. They knew it would immediately catch the fans’ attention, and they were obviously right about it. We’re pretty sure we haven’t seen the last of Abaddon.

 

TK: What other video games, if any, did you draw inspiration from?

Król: In the video game industry there are always two kinds of inspirations. The first kind is the one people usually think about when asking such questions: these are games that influenced us personally and ignited that creative spark inside us. In this sense, I would mention The Last of Us and This War of Mine as strong influences.

Biela: But there’s another kind of inspiration – games that are similar to what you are currently trying to create. Game developers study them for ideas on how to overcome challenges they face during production. Many players rightfully compared KONG: Survival Instinct to Tequila Works’ Deadlight and Epic Games’ Shadow Complex, as these are indeed some of the titles that inspired us during the development process.

 

TK: Does your team have any favorite Godzilla/Kong/giant monster video games?

Król: Everyone has their own experiences, but I think many of us speak fondly of the original Rampage from the 80s. Some of us played it at arcades, some on Atari or Amiga computers, but the fun was always unforgettable.

Biela: I also enjoyed Peter Jackson’s King Kong video game very much. It’s probably the best giant monster game of its generation.

 

TK: David Martin doesn’t have much established backstory beyond his relationship with his daughter, but he’s clearly a very intelligent and physically capable man. Could you talk a little bit more about who he is?

Biela: David’s a single father and an oil rig worker in his early fifties who lives a peaceful, solitary life in a small town. The type of guy who doesn’t pry into affairs of others and expects the same for himself. His relation with Stacy was a close and loving one, but it loosened once she moved out to a bigger city to study and work.

Król: In a world where the existence of Titans is a well-known reality, where some people start literal Godzilla fanclubs, we wanted to paint David as someone who used to be rather indifferent, who barely watched the news until it became personal. In the movies, you usually follow the plot through the lens of people who are “in the know” one way or another: scientists, amateur investigators, Monarch employees, etc. With David, we aimed for the perspective of an outsider.

 

TK: Any relation to Raymond Martin from Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted?

Biela: No, it’s a pure coincidence. But you’re right that David’s last name is a kind of an Easter Egg, a reference to an older character even from before Monsterverse. We’ve seen some fans already connect the dots. No actual, in-universe relation, though.

 

TK: With Kong, Abbadon, and Tiamat all appearing in the same place, why didn’t Godzilla appear to fight them?

Biela: We do have our internal explanation, but since it’s possible that a future Monsterverse project might want to fill in the gap, we won’t go into details. People would treat our words as the official version, while only what’s actually in the game can be considered canon.

 

TK: Why do the monsters appear smaller in this game than in the past few movies?

Król: I’ll let you in on a little secret: even in the movies the sizes are not 100% consistent and are sometimes adjusted between scenes to achieve the best possible final effect. This is also what we did in the game: we looked for the ideal ratio between the player character and the Titans to deliver the best gameplay we could.

Biela: Another thing to remember is that game development takes a lot of time. Two movies came out since we started working on Kong: Survival Instinct. We had to set the sizes early on and couldn’t really scale them up later on as it would affect too many systems of the game.

 

TK: Abbadon’s spawn, the Plague Weavers, immediately brought to mind the massive spider in Mothra’s temple at the start of Godzilla King of the Monsters (2019). Was that a Plague Weaver, or something else entirely?

Król: We can’t really speak on the behalf of the creators of the movie.

 

TK: If you get to work on future Monsterverse titles, what other Titans or Superspecies would you most like to utilize?

Król: That’s an easy one: Godzilla. While we love Kong, it’d be exciting to have them both in one game.

Biela: Seeing the warm reception of Lahamu, we’d like to continue her story and, who knows, maybe add another new monster to the ever expanding universe.