Recently, I was given the great pleasure to talk to Mr. Christofer Sundberg, the Creative Director, and Linus Blomberg, the Technical Director, of the future hit – Just Cause, released on 22nd September for PC, PS2, Xbox and Xbox 360.

Andy: First off, thank you very much for taking time out to answer my questions.

Christofer: Thanks! It’s our pleasure.

Andy: Before we move on to talk about your new release, I was wondering if you could tell our readers about Avalanche Studios, and what games you have been involved with in the past?

Christofer: Avalanche Studios was founded by me and Linus Blomberg in early 2003. At the time, we were a four-man studio working very hard trying to get the company running after experiencing some very rough times with our previous company Rock Solid Studios (we were developing the game based on Tremors).

It was great though getting a fresh start and we were one of the first developers focusing on outsourcing to minimize the many risks independent developers are exposed to. As things started moving and we got publishers interested in Just Cause, Eidos was the best partner (as they were based in Europe and the production crew, at the time headed up by Dave Rose and Martin Alltimes, was great).

As the project was signed by Eidos, we started building up the team and we knew people that we wanted on the team and we managed to hire 100% of our “targets” and it all started from there. Just Cause is our first game as Avalanche Studios, but our team has worked on numerous award-winning and best-selling titles in the past. We have also hired some of the best talent from universities and game schools here in Sweden. All in all, I’m very confident when I’m saying that we have one of the strongest development crews in the world.

Andy: And now you've just about finished Just Cause, can you tell us a bit about the game?

Christofer: Just Cause came up after Linus and the technology team started designing a new game engine (not just a graphics engine) and we started designing a game that would be played in a huge game world. We wanted to develop a contemporary game, and a wide range of vehicles was an absolute must. After a late night in a bar, with lots and lots of rum, we decided that the Caribbean was the given setting. It was a quite unique setting three and a half years ago…