PLEASE NOTE: This report talks about my experiences at Elixir Studios, rather than specific game points, which have been covered in a different report and in the FAQ.

At 7:00 my alarm rang, waking me from a restless sleep. For the last seven months I had tried to organise time to visit Elixir Studios to see the much talked about, but rarely seen game, Republic: The Revolution. At last, the day to visit was upon me, and for once, the early start did not matter to me one little bit. After picking up a friend to accompany me, called Jamie (known as "Just Jamie" on the Elixir forums), we both drove down to Crewe, in Cheshire, to catch the early morning train to Euston, kindly paid for by Elixir (luckily we had managed to get the price of the tickets down from £150 each to only £30, making them a little more realistic!). Bang on time (surprisingly), we pulled into the large London station, resembling more like an airport terminal then the train stations I knew at home :)

The short trip down the Underground to Camden Town was simple enough, but finding the building which Elixir worked in was not so - especially seeing as every street in the whole district seemed to start with the word 'Camden'. Understanding the difference between 'Camden Street' and 'Camden High Street' was a rather annoying hindrance, but luckily, with the help of the local hippie in Waterstones, we found ourselves outside the clean and modern looking, yet strangely normal looking building, home (on the 4th, 5th and 6th floors) to Elixir Studios. On the way to London, Jamie and I had been chatting about whether we would hear any 'real' Cockney accents whilst in Camden - and to our delight we heard the many market traders shout out the rather cliched phrases so often associated with London loud and clear; "pound of 'apples, Guv'nor?" was the one which cracked us up the most. :)

After being 'buzzed in' past the door repairers, Jamie and I tramped upstairs, glad to be in the pleasantly cool building compared to the high temperatures outside. It was at this time that it suddenly hit me that this was it - I was here, and in only a few minutes I would be meeting and talking to the people who I had been writing about for the past year, not to mention finally seeing the all-important game. Upstairs we waited in a lovely modern waiting area, complete with leather chairs, and awaited Chris, a full time employee at Elixir, whose jobs include PR and creating the official websites, amongst many others. I had spoken to Chris numerous times via e-mail but had never met him.

Chris finally came after Jamie had taken a couple of photos of Elixir's large office, which could just be seen from the waiting area. We were led upstairs to the 5th floor, where we immediately came into the general 'hub' of the company - where most of the programming actually took place. As we walked through to put our coats and bags in the boardroom, it struck me how impressive the office looked - a large, light and airy room, with modern looking wooden floors and computers humming everywhere. There were probably getting on for 20-30 computers in the area (more on the other floors), with many of the team members using more then one if required. Gone were the images of boring white walls and cubicles which I had somehow associated with computer programmers, and in came a really friendly working atmosphere which I could see the team members enjoyed working in.

We were led into the small, but again modern looking boardroom, with a distinctively minimalistic feel - only one table and chairs for around 10 people and a large projector shining onto one of the walls, which at the time showed the well-known Windows 2000 Professional operating system with the Elixir logo as the background wallpaper. After gladly accepting a glass of water (my mouth had suddenly becoming amazingly dry), Chris took us to see three people, whose names have unfortunately escaped me for the moment, to see the intricate technicalities of how the game was put together.

Firstly, he took us to a computer where someone was creating some of the actual buildings used in the game. The program he was using was designed in-house specifically for Totality, and was impressive to say the least. At the time he was designing sections of a derelict building - boarded up windows and smashed glass, etc. The smashed glass was especially interesting - it showed a reflection of a different map (in the actual game it will naturally show the correct reflections), and it was amazing to see that the individual shards of glass were individually modelled rather than being one simple bitmap. He also took time out to compile and show us a recent BT-Tower style building, which he was able to view and rotate from any angle. The graphics were nice to look at, although I was told they were to look even better for the final release. I didn't see anything as intricate as the heads of screws as has sometimes been mentioned in interviews, but of course, this doesn't mean that they don't exist... After a quick photo of him next to his computer, we moved on.

The next area we went to showed a guy called Richard (I believe!) who was involved with designing the images - and specifically at the time, the different styles of people's heads. This was perhaps the most impressive thing of the whole day - the detail in the characters was absolutely incredible - down to the tiniest detail. Some of the models that he has created in Visual Studio MAX 4.x were close to photo realism. We were shown the way the computer could pick and choose different styles of hair, eyes, nose, mouth, chin and many other attributes and place them seamlessly onto a standard head, so that a young looking 'student' not unlike David Beckham could be changed to a ragged old tramp with balding hair, scars and warts on his cheeks and patchy stubble. We were also shown a model of a thug, and it was impressive to point out the small patches on his hair where the razor had cut right down to the skin, and the evil glaring eyes. Lastly, we were shown a model which was similar to Chris himself, which gave Chris the cue to move us swiftly along, but not before Jamie had grabbed another photo to add to the growing collection!

The last area which we were specifically shown had a computer running with a city design tool in action. This is where all the smaller elements of the game (such as the buildings we had seen before) were imported to and placed in the grand scheme of things. There was little which the chap at the computer was really able to show us, as it was not easy to compile the entire town to show us, but I got the idea about how it worked. After a brief chat about the game mechanics and how the city design tool worked, we made to leave back to the boardroom. Jamie asked for a photo, to which the guy at the desk reluctantly agreed, mumbling (good naturedly) something about not putting any decent clothes on. A shout from someone a few feet away saying that he rarely changed his clothes anyway brought a smile to our faces, and after finally getting the shot, we left him to his work.

Back in the boardroom, we sat down and waited while Chris went to find the man behind the game and the company, Demis Hassabis. While we waited for him to arrive, I asked Chris a couple of questions, mainly to do with the possibilities of modding in the game (modding, for those who don't know, is the term used to describe editing or creating new features in a game, be them level maps, different character skins, or different actions, as the case may be). Chris was deliberately vague in his answer - he knew that the idea of releasing tools to allow modding was something they had thought about at Elixir, but had not come to any specific conclusions. (For more about this, and other technical aspects of how the game will work and play, please refer to my FAQ and to my more technical reports on my trip to Elixir, which focus more on the game ideas which Demis told me about.)

Shortly, Demis strode in and we shook hands. He was slightly shorter then I imagined he'd be, but his face was instantly recognisable from the photos I have seen of him. He sat at the end of the table next to the keyboard and mouse which controlled the computer displayed on the wall. Obviously used to talking to people in the media, as well as to Eidos bosses, Demis eased quickly into detailed chat about areas of the game which were totally unknown to me. He talked quickly and clearly, and was physically very animated - he was obviously eager to impress upon me aspects of the game which had been worked on over the last seven months, which pleased me. I was worried to start with that Demis would be brief just because I only had a small "hobby" website, but my fears soon went as he talked for a good ten minutes before starting the demo. As I've said, the actual technicalities of what Demis talked about are to be found in another report about my trip, and in the FAQ section. I should point out, however, that I was pleasantly suprised when he added half way through talking that some of what he was saying was information which no-one outside Elixir and Eidos had previously heard - and that included the well-known UK computer games magazines.

Then came the moment itself - Demis started the Demo. The game took a couple of minutes to load up, but we were soon presented with the typically Russian-looking options screen, where we were presented with four standard options - 'Start Campaign Game', 'Start Scenario', 'Options' and 'Exit'. There was nothing particularly fancy about this screen, although Demis didn't mention whether it was a final design or not.

Demis explained that to best show me some of the features in the game, he would have to start a saved game at the city level, around 4 hours into the game. He also mentioned, as the game loaded, that the demo which we were watching was not a fully playable game yet (this will be shown at E3 in May), but the latest month-old demo, which had also been shown to Eidos during the previous month. Suddenly the screen flickered to life, and the camera panned down to the city.

The map we were shown was 2x3km square, which is roughly about a quarter of the size of the final cites. The city itself was called "Pugachev" (I'm not entirely sure about the spelling!), and as Demis pointed out, was a fairly dreary industrial town, a far cry from the splendour of the capital itself, which Demis said resembled something like St. Petersburg. The first glimpse of the game was actually fairly similar to some of the screenshots currently on my site, and whilst impressive, did not actually jump at me in the way I thought it would. As Demis panned around the city from a high level, there was a strange sense of having seeing it before, and I was wondering what had actually been worked on since the old screenshots came out last year. I looked and saw many buildings, but many of them (such as the houses your faction members lived in) seemed slightly bland, and the lack of many cars and people walking around gave it a kind of ghost-town feeling. There were actually a few cars and people making their ways around the map, but not anything like the bustling crowds and traffic jams I had, perhaps unrealistically, expected. Demis later e-mailed me to say that the final game would have many people and cars - the demo was just an early test with a few people.

That aside, many of the points that Demis showed me shone with brilliance. We panned into a nearby tree, where each individual leaf was modelled with many polygons, and when we looked down I could see that each individual leaf had its own shadow. I didn't ask what the computer specifications of the machine the demo was on was, but I imagine it was fairly top of the range. Demis also moved to where two people happened to be passing under a lit lamppost, and it was amazing to see the shadows of the people move round and then elongate and begin to fade as the people moved away from the light source.

Many of the buildings were impressive to look at - especially the local government buildings and the large football arena, to which travelling fans would arrive to once every seven days. Although we couldn't see inside the arena, we could see the turnstiles the little people went through, which led Demis to tell me about the possibilities for football riots, etc. Many of the special buildings had lovely ornate roofs and little gold statues at the top - nice touches.

Demis continued then to show us the system of interacting with the game world. The specifics of this I'll talk about in a different report, as I've said, but I should point out that it is fairly similar, in terms of layout, to what has already been seen in a couple of earlier screenshots. Amongst other things, there is a moving clock to tell you the time, a selection of buttons in the bottom right hand corner to choose actions, a large space for text alerts (many of which will be hyperlinked so you can jump to view whatever the game has told you about), and at the top, various self-explanatory score dials.

The game had some wonderfully humorous touches... such as when a hypnotised man walked into his own door and hurt himself, and when a wimpy guy refused to create a blood pact with one of our faction members because he was scared of cutting himself. The way he fussed and kept on looking at the bleeding finger during his conversation with my man was entertaining to watch.

The infamous 'Fight Club', which will forever now be known as a 'Boxing Club' was also demonstrated to me, with two stupidly dressed individuals fighting it out.

Demis continued to pan around to different areas of the city, showing me a couple of the moves available (some of which worked great, some of which refused to work at all...), and I could see the scripted camera movements which were fired when you clicked on certain actions. Demis also explained the way in which the different actions could be tweaked whilst taking place, but it was obvious that this technology was not in the demo.

After around 45 minutes had passed, Demis stopped the demo, and said that we best get going to lunch (Elixir treated Jamie and I to lunch), as he had a meeting in the middle of the afternoon. Blinking as we stepped from the darkened room into the bright corridor, we collected our things and moved out. Chris and Poppy, Demis Hassabis' personal assistant whom I have also been in contact with over the last few months, came as well, and we got in the lift to go the ground floor. Whilst Jamie chatted with Poppy (I think he quite fancied her), I walked ahead with Demis and Chris, chatting about specific aspects of the game and Demis' busy daily schedule of meetings and programming. He mentioned that he had often browsed the forums at around 2:00am after finishing work for the evening.

We reached the cafe/bistro place on Camden High Street, and went in, finding one of the last free tables. Whilst we ordered drinks and food (I went for the burger and chips, although I wished I had had the omelette after seeing the one Demis had - it looked really nice...), I took the time to ask Demis several questions about the game specifics, and gaming in general. He mentioned some of the games he was looking forward to playing, and said that he tries out many games to get ideas about what works and what doesn't. After I finished the questions that I had with me, the conversation moved onto football and became quite heated as we discussed which were the best and worst football teams in the country (I love Man Utd and hate Arsenal, Demis loves Liverpool and hates Leeds). We mused over the recent international games, action films, and then back to computer games as we discussed our favourite games. Poppy and Jamie joined in the conversation, which kept things going (I hate awkward silences!). I asked Demis the question on everyone's lips - for details about the second game, but he naturally refused to say anything. I refrained from asking about the release date - I knew what the answer would be. The release date on my website is the most recent guess, and as far as I know, the team is still on course for this date, but like all games development, it is incredibly hard to give a good estimate.

I also asked Chris briefly about the websites. He said he had wanted to show me Novistrana.com, but unfortunately it was a bit late now. He did say that he would possibly send me some screenshots of it, however. Demis also added that the reason the current official site had not been updated for so long is because a new design is currently in the works, which will be implemented at around E3 time (late May). Whilst we were on the topic of websites, I mentioned the other two excellent German fan-websites, PlanetElixir and ElixirStuff, and I mentioned that I was getting on quite well with the main webmasters from both sites. We laughed (and Chris groaned) as I recalled the farce last December when Elixir released a sound file to all three websites, with each website thinking that it had been sent exclusively for them... I still feel a bit guilty for making the sound file available early in December, whilst ElixirStuff were keeping their copy back for December 24th, thereby ruining their 'Christmas surprise', but of course I was not to know...

Towards the end of the meal, I saw that both Chris and Demis were frequently looking at their watches, and I know that they had to dash off to their respective meetings, so the meal was short and sweet. I think I got most of the questions answered which I had wanted to ask (of course, I thought of many more I should have asked on the way home, but there was nothing I could do then...). Demis was slightly taken aback I think, when I asked him for his autograph - it was something I hadn't planned on asking him, but suddenly popped into my head as he was paying the bill. I'm still debating whether I should have asked him or not...

We shook hands and Chris and Demis departed swiftly. I spoke to Poppy for a while longer, asking if I could come back with her to Elixir, to take some video of the office, and to possibly meet some of the team members who I hadn't seen earlier. Unfortunately this was not convenient, but Poppy promised to send some shots of the office, and some piccies of the team members to me instead. Any people who I didn't meet with I'll contact via e-mail and hopefully get some more questions answered then.

And then we were alone again - the Elixir experience was over nearly as soon as it had started, or so it felt. Jamie and I trudged back to the Underground station, and decided to go down to Trafalgar Square and see the sights (it was only 2:30pm when we left Demis and Poppy). The rest of the day will naturally not interest you, so I won't bore you with the details, except to say we reached Crewe at around 7:00pm, very tired indeed after quickly walking round all the sites shouting "London, baby!" every two minutes.

And so to sum up. Overall I had a great day. It has been something I have wanted to do for so long, and it was really quite weird to actually do. It was even weirder when the day finished and I realised I might never get the chance to do something like this again. Looking back, there are many questions I wished I had asked and many people I wish I had spoken to. But the last thing I want to do is complain, as I got to spend a good 90 minutes chatting with Demis, not to mention the fact that Elixir paid for my train AND my food. So thanks Elixir - much appreciate it - and hopefully the game will as successful as it deserves to be.