“Instead of being 80% UFO and 20% on foot, we flipped it”: How Destroy All Humans’ sci-fi action oddity conquered all

(Image credit: THQ)

When given the chance, the small yet spirited Australian team consciously went against the grain. An offshoot of the original Pandemic, based in Los Angeles, their office was in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.

The first game they delivered was 2002’s solid if uninspiring Army Men: RTS. Having proved their worth with existing intellectual property, they were keen to develop some of their own.

“After Oddballs didn’t get picked up, we started brainstorming again. We had an email trail of like 60 or 70 games that we were pitching, including some joke ones,” recalls designer Dan Teasdale. “Someone pitched the idea of an alien invasion, but you were the alien. I remember very clearly, it was right before we were going to lunch at this teriyaki place, and we were constantly riffing on this idea. It just took off from there.”

Their excitement was a clear sign of the concept’s potential, but early versions of DAH! bore little resemblance to the final game. The UFO was the primary focus as you flew around cities destroying buildings and gathering humans to feed to space beasts. The team were fascinated with the idea of these grotesque monsters that grew as they consumed people and could eventually be used to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, others were less keen.

“I do still miss space beasts,” says Creagh. “Memory would maybe have been a problem, but I think one of the excuses was that it didn’t fit into the Roswell mythology of aliens. Whereas we all just wanted to be able to collect humans as meat, process them into giant space beasts and unleash them back onto the unwitting inhabitants of Earth! We loved that idea, and it was hard to let it go.”

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(Image credit: THQ)

It was a funny game – really offbeat and quite different to things that were around at the time.

Lachlan Creagh

Another significant change reshaped DAH!, bringing its protagonist, Cryptosporidium-137, to the fore. Teasdale remembers concern from higher management, and publisher THQ, that the game’s focus was too narrow.

“Instead of being 80% UFO and 20% on foot, we basically flipped it,” he says. “That turned it into the game that it is. It’s more GTA-style. It’s more about exploring on foot and being closer to Crypto as a character, which is one of the reasons that people still talk about it.”

The chance to play as the idiosyncratic Crypto became one of DAH!’s biggest selling points. A belligerent, wise-cracking alien soldier, he’s determined to take revenge on humanity after his predecessor, Cryptosporidium-136, is captured by the US army. All snarling disdain and hair-trigger temper, the impulsive Crypto is given orders by Orthopox, his superior officer, but doesn’t always follow them.

“We wanted that dynamic where Crypto’s a loose cannon and he’s going to have to be reined in,” explains Teasdale. “Originally, we wanted him to sound British. We thought we could get some humor in there. Then there was a publisher push that was like, ‘Hey, what if you have his voice more like Jack Nicholson?’ There was a lot of doubt, but we put that in and it worked. The way we developed his character reflects that. His behaviour grew into that voice.”

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Both named after causes of disease, Pox and Crypto are the game’s two main characters. They are Furons, members of an advanced alien race from the planet Furon, whose defining features are grey skin, large heads, sharp teeth and an insatiable lust for power. But using atomic weapons with wild abandon has caused a damaging genetic mutation, leaving Furons without genitalia and unable to reproduce.

(Image credit: THQ)

We wanted to collect humans as meat, process them into giant space beasts and unleash them back onto the unwitting inhabitants of Earth!

Lachlan Creagh

Cloning has proved unreliable, introducing more errors to their genetic code, so an infusion of pure Furon DNA, which can be found in human brain stems, is needed to save them from extinction. For the Furons to prosper, humans must be killed and Crypto is eager to do the honours. This bizarre premise propels the story forward.

Sent down to Earth, Crypto’s first port of call on this ‘crummy planet’ is Turnipseed Farm, where he mistakenly interrogates a cow before humans are alerted to his presence. This setting was a late addition to the game, as the team were readying a demo for E3, and set the tone so well that it became the opening level tutorial.

Drawing on a wealth of sci-fi classics and schlocky B-movies, Pandemic already had much of Crypto’s path through America laid out for it. DAH!’s twenty-two missions are split across six different fictional locations – the remote Turnipseed Farm, rural Midwestern town Rockwell, Californian suburb Santa Modesta, industrial port Union Town, the secretive Area 42, and seat of power Capitol City.

“A lot of it was just hitting those archetypes of Fifties Americana. It was kind of written for us,” says Teasdale. “We’ve got to have the farmhands going crazy, the fair, suburbia, a secret military base. If you’re taking over the world, you’ve got to take over Washington. The one that probably fit the least, but worked out, was the dock-style area (Union Town). That came from our prototype.”

(Image credit: THQ)

I think the tone is also a product of it being built in Australia. We have a larrikin culture of trying to make other people laugh.

Dan Teasdale

From the playful script to the eerily atmospheric Bernard Herrmann-style score, DAH! is packed full of genre-film references, satire, parody and pop-culture savvy.

Throughout, a young Australian team enjoyed affectionately mocking American society, its omnipotent self-image and predictable cinematic tropes. They created a world where hidden conspiracies lurked beneath the shiny façade of big cars, fast food, drive-in movies, celebrity worship and tabloid media.

“In sci-fi, aliens aren’t invading Sydney! It’s America, and the rest of the world just doesn’t exist,” laughs Teasdale. “Comedy in games is depressingly rare as time goes on. I think the tone is also a product of it being built in Australia. We have a larrikin culture of trying to make other people laugh.”

“Our struggle on the comedy side was just having faith in ourselves. You write a joke and then you have to hear it over and over again for the next two or three years. You’re like, ‘Is this even funny anymore?’ I felt like I was in a fugue state every time I had to play the first five minutes of the game. Then you’d put it in front of someone else and they’d be cracking up.”

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Although generally successful, the humor didn’t always hit the mark. Often silly and immature, some jokes, especially those concerning Miss Rockwell, were uncomfortably crude and have aged poorly.

It was notable that the 2020 remaster of DAH! included a self-aware disclaimer at the start, emphasising that the original game had been modernised, but the content remained the same.

Throughout his invasion, Crypto often favours blunt force, but mind control, speed and stealth are sometimes required to achieve his aims as Pandemic attempted to balance out the rampant destruction and make DAH! more rounded. There are no checkpoints within missions, so failure means starting over again, which isn’t a problem until the game’s final stages when the difficulty level notably increases.

For the most part, DAH! isn’t particularly challenging, with simple goals and forgiving combat sequences. As Teasdale acknowledges, the team wanted to create a fun and memorable experience above all else. It was about the joy of being Crypto – the freedom to explore unique environments and cause random chaos. The ragdoll effect of the Havok physics engine made blowing up enemies or flinging radioactive cows around feel immensely satisfying.

(Image credit: THQ)

It was like, ‘Well, who’s doing that? I guess I’m doing that.’

Lachlan Creagh

With upgrades available as the story progresses, Crypto gains access to an entertaining array of weapons (the Zap-O-Matic, Anal Probe, Disintegrator Ray and Ion Detonator).

His flying saucer boasts several more – the Death Ray, Abducto Beam, Quantum Deconstructor, and Sonic Boom – each serving different purposes. He also has a jetpack to travel over shorter distances and psychokinetic abilities to imitate human appearance, read minds or move objects. Overpowered as Crypto may be for some early missions, the sheer ingenuity and fun factor is worth it.

Lumbered with ‘stone tools’ compared to today’s technology, Creagh recalls Pandemic’s improvisational approach to cramming so many elements into the game. “With a small team and a tight schedule, there’d be a bunch of things that would crop up and it was like, ‘Well, who’s doing that? I guess I’m doing that.’ All the programmers had to be supremely capable. Eric Smolikowski was a bit of a genius for setting up the animation system.”

“When you’re surrounded by people who are good at their jobs, there’s no embitterment about anyone not pulling their weight, although there was one infamous funny guy who’d fall asleep through the day. When he was starting at the place, he was told that if you’re the last one to leave, just turn the lights out. He flicked the switch on the servers!”

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After overcoming so many obstacles to make it this far, E3 2004 was a major turning point. Putting together the demo, and seeing how it was received, crystallised the team’s sense of what DAH! should be. It attracted serious attention and was nominated for Best Original Game in the Game Critics Awards.

Suddenly, the pressure was on to meet rising expectations. “Going from four of us on a couch throwing around dumb ideas to walking into E3 and having a huge theatre recreated in the middle of South Hall with Crypto standing on top of it was like, ‘Holy shit! What is going on? This is wild!’ Seeing people excited about it and lining up to see the booth demo was incredible,” says Teasdale.

Creagh, meanwhile, felt a mix of emotions. “If you bombed at E3, your forecasted sales were screwed, so you had to do well. We survived that and generated a lot of interest because our game was different. Once we’d got past that, it was semi-relief, like, ‘OK, it’s on.’ But it was also like, ‘Oh, fuck, we’ve got to make the rest of this now.’ Getting good feedback is like the point of no return.”

(Image credit: THQ)

Getting good feedback is like the point of no return.

Lachlan Creagh

For the next year, the Australian team were overwhelmed with work as they battled to get DAH! out the door. Towards the end, extra staff had to be drafted in from LA.

“It was brutal. It broke relationships. There were cases where it was too much. People just disappeared and we never saw them again. We were all in our 20s so we put our lives on hold for a year and broke ourselves making this game,” says Teasdale.

“It’s hard thinking about that sometimes. You’re young with no attachments, and you’re so invested in this thing that you just want to get it out. It comes down to this very existential thing of like, ‘Why do we make games?’ The reason I make games is because I want to make people happy and put joy into the world. If that’s what we’ve done, then it wasn’t for nothing.”

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I want to make people happy and put joy into the world. If that’s what we’ve done, then it wasn’t for nothing.

Dan Teasdale

DAH! certainly delivered in that respect. A short, fun and punchy game, the main story doesn’t take long to finish, but players are encouraged to roam and complete additional challenges.

There are brain stems to extract, probes to collect, rampages to carry out and internal thoughts to scan, revealing a wealth of subversive jokes. With the media’s help, the government spin Crypto’s destruction as freak accidents or the work of Communists.

Although Pandemic eschewed the dark realism of GTA, it did imitate its map style and alert system. As Crypto’s activities draw more attention, he is pursued by escalating law enforcement agencies – the police, the army and the Majestic, a shadowy FBI-style organisation overseen by Silhouette, his ultimate adversary. DAH! ends with the Furons having conquered America as the rest of the world awaits, lining up the sequel.

The game received broadly positive reviews, averaging 76 on Metacritic for the Xbox, and sold more than one million copies in its first year. While it wasn’t to everyone’s tastes, with some complaints about frustrating stealth missions and the arbitrary restrictions of its open-world environment, its sheer boldness made a strong and lasting impression.

(Image credit: THQ)

After leaving Pandemic, Teasdale enjoyed huge commercial success with Rock Band, but found that it’s rare to provoke the same instinctive affection that Crypto’s first adventure did. “It landed in a way that I don’t think we really expected. Every day I’m still seeing people resonating with it and loving it.”

Still living in Australia, Creagh has had similar experiences, demonstrating DAH!’s endurance and global reach. “I have randomly bumped into people in the last couple of years who just adored the game. It somehow made such an impact on their lives. For a while, you felt like a bit of a worker termite completing it, but at least the days and nights you spent working late were time well spent.”