Even though Grand Theft Auto 4 shattered records by netting over $500 million in its first week, the voice of protagonist Niko Bellic, actor Michael Hollick, is not happy.
A New York Times article on Hollick looks at just how little the aspiring actor made for his voice acting work in the profitable game. According to the article, Hollick was paid about $100,000 over the 15 months of voice acting and motion-capture work, and his contract allows for no royalties or residuals.
Actors in most other fields, including television, movies, commercials, receive residual payments depending on the success of their work after the initial payment, as per the Screen Actors Guild. Video game actors lack this protection.
Continue reading ‘‘GTA4′ Star Dissatisfied With Pay’
A sequel to Beyond Good & Evil is in preproduction, according to French Web site Jeuxvideo. It has not yet been approved by Ubisoft, but Michel Ancel, creator of the original game, and a dozen designers are setting up the structure.
“I work on Beyond Good & Evil 2,” said Ancel in an interview with Jeuxvideo, translated by MaxConsole. “We have been in préproduction for one year, and we carry out a research task in small committee. But for the moment, it is at the stage of outline, Ubisoft did not give its agreement yet.”
Beyond Good & Evil was released in 2003 to critical acclaim and poor sales. It’s one of the best examples of storytelling in a game that I can name, a great action-adventure narrative revolving around the moral investigation of a female reporter named Jade.
“We want to be in the continuity of the first: a large variety of phases of play, much of emotions in the gameplay and the attaching characters,” said Ancel, who also created Rayman and designed the video game adaptation of Peter Jackson’s King Kong.
EDIT: A trailer for the game is up at Gamersyde. Hopefully its screening at Ubisoft’s annual trade show Ubidays means that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is in full-fledged production.
I picked up Grand Theft Auto 4 last week and was immediately struck by how fantastic its storytelling is.
To tell it’s gangster-themed plot of Serbian immigrant Niko Bellic’s arrival in Liberty City, GTA4 uses excellent cut scenes with great characters and writing. Niko and friends often continue the conversations while driving to mission objectives, adding more to the story and cutting down on boring grind time.
Gameplay contributes to the narrative development in GTA4, adding to the player’s immersion in Niko’s world by keeping him there. Trains, taxis and helpful paths to show you where to go on the radar make getting around the massive Liberty City easy, without the need to frequently pause the game and check the map or have a convoluted interface.
Niko’s cell phone is cleverly used to manage plots, chose which missions to do, ask Niko’s friends to hang out or help out, and to talk to characters while on a mission. It also plays other roles in the game, such as sending and receiving pictures. It’s a very good device for managing a complicated game without breaking the immersion with convoluted and show-stopping menus.
The plot for GTA4 is fairly linear, and the missions are as well. Some missions are unique, but most have Niko either hunting down a target in a scripted chase scene or fighting through a building full of enemies, and there’s really only one way to do either of those.
Continue reading ‘REVIEW: ‘GTA4′ Initial Impressions’
Three key members from the staff that made the 1998 cult classic Xenogears have reunited to develop the upcoming game World Destruction for the Nintendo DS, says Wired blog Game | Life.
Writer Masato Kato, character designer Kunihiko Tanaka, and composer Yasunori Mitsuda are all heavily involved in the development of the new game. All three are Square veterans who held similar positions on the staff for Xenogears.
World Destruction is a fantasy RPG developed by Image Epoch and produced by SEGA. It will be released, along with an accompanying anime series, this summer. The Japanese language site is already up with a few pictures, and the current issue of Famitsu also has screenshots.
The game follows Kyrie and Morute, two revolutionaries who join an organization out to destroy the world, where humans have been enslaved by monsters, according the Wired blog.