Psionic Monkey Motions

Finishing a mo-cap session two hours early, Levine was bullied by Jon Chey into just doing something to justify the time they’d paid for. “So I said  [to the motion-capture actor]: ‘Do monkey motions’,” Levine says. “We had no monkeys in the game, but we did it anyway.” These assets had to find a home, and Levine hit on the idea of lab-experimented apes gaining sentience, and being justifiably annoyed about their treatment at the hands of Man.

“All those story elements we had to back-solve. I find I tend to write best in those situations, when I have a constraint set already,” Levine remembers. “I had these psychic monkeys… so I had to work out how and why, in a way which wasn’t ridiculous and hopefully kinda scary. When my back’s to a wall, I tend to work better.” Not that everyone saw the appeal of psychic monkeys from the outset: “Everyone else was: ‘Dude, you’re ****ing insane. We’re not having monkeys in the game!’”