Sleeping Dogs’ Honk Kong Based on Thousands of Photos and Video Footage

Sleeping Dogs, the revived game that started life as True Crime: Honk Kong, will be very faithful to the culture of the city it is based on, although the company will not attempt to recreate the entire layout block by block.

Stephen van der Mescht, who is an executive producer at United Front Games, told the official United States PlayStation blog that, “We took 35,000 to 40,000 reference photos and hour upon hour of video footage, but it’s not a street for street depiction.

“It was important for us to capture the essence of city. Lots of the landmarks are there, many of the names are similar yet, first and foremost, we wanted to make that space fun to navigate around. “

The developer also answered questions about how his team researched the information required to create the game world.

United Front Games aimed for authenticity and talked to a number of sources, including the former leader of the organized crime bureau of the Honk Kong police force.

Stephen van der Mescht added, “There was also someone we became chatty with who gave us insight into how Triads work within their stamping grounds. It’s not how you imagine it, Triad culture.

“They’re not always thugs who hang out causing trouble. They’re well integrated into their local communities, and to summarily remove them would cause those local societies to crumble.”

Sleeping Dogs will have an open-world structure and will allow players to engage in a number of activities, from street races to firefights.

The story of the game will focus on a police officer who attempts to infiltrate a criminal organization.

Sleeping Dogs is being prepared for an August 14 launch in North America and three days later in Europe and the game will be available on the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.