Archive for the 'News' Category

BioWare Unveils Two Trailers for ‘Dragon Age’

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on July 13, 2008
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BioWare released two trailers for their upcoming computer RPG Dragon Age: Origins this week.

The first trailer shows the beginnings of a rain-soaked battle between humans and an army of monsters. The second starts off the same, but includes some more combat sequences.

Neither trailer shows any gameplay or story features, and the graphics look incomplete. More information on BioWare’s new game should come from this week’s E3.

Dragon Age: Origins is scheduled for an early 2009 release on PC and is the first in a new franchise for BioWare. Billed as the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate series, the game is set in an open, epic fantasy world with a strong party element, and will hopefully be more complex than the studio’s recent console games.

Previews of ‘Too Human’ Enjoy Story But Not Shortness

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on July 3, 2008
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Early run-throughs of Silicon Knights’ upcoming game Too Human have drawn interesting responses from critics.

Creator Denis Dyack has already promised that story will be essential to his upcoming opus, following the tradition of past Silicon Knights games such as cult classic Eternal Darkness.

Chris Kohler at Wired enjoyed Too Human’s story, a cyberpunk retelling of Norse mythology, but saw combat gameplay, not story, as the game’s main drive.

“Too Human is not the story-driven Silicon Knights title that we, the long-suffering fans of Eternal Darkness, have been waiting for these last five years,” says Kohler.

“Just as I came to grips with the gameplay,” Kohler adds, “and just as the story seemed as if it was starting to ramp up into overdrive — the game ended.” He took ten hours to finish Too Human’s campaign, which ends in a cliffhanger.

Tycho at Penny-Arcade took a more leisured fourteen hours to finish the game and was more satisfied with his experience.

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Blizzard Rumored to Announce ‘Diablo III’

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on June 25, 2008
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UPDATE: Blizzard officially announced Diablo 3 Saturday. Their Web site has a teaser trailer and gameplay footage, plus screenshots and information on two character classes, the returning Barbarian and new Witch Doctor.

Signs have popped up all over the Internet that Blizzard is prepared to announce Diablo 3 this Saturday at the Worldwide Invitational in Paris.

WoW Insider reports that a leaked schedule suggests a Diablo-related announcement, and DiabloII.net claims that industry insiders have confirmed that Blizzard will announce a new Diablo. Blizzard acquired the Web address diablo3.com earlier this year.

This information accompanies a piece of viral marketing on Blizzard’s homepage, which has been taken over by an evolving icy image. The ice has grown larger and opened up over the past three days, and two runic symbols have joined the original one.

Blizzard.com Screen on Wednesday, June 25

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Warren Spector Sees Shorter, Creative Games in Industry’s Future

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on June 18, 2008
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“100 hour games are on the way out,” said Warren Spector at last week’s Game Education Summit, reports Gamasutra.

How many of you have finished GTA?” asked Spector, of Wing Commander, System Shock, and Deus Ex fame. “Two percent, probably. If we’re spending $100 million on a game, we want you to see the last level!”

Spector and Mark Meyers of Disney Interactive were keynote speakers at the summit and discussed changes in the industry and the new role of game education programs in entering it.

“Up until five years ago most people got into the game industry by accident,” commented Myers, who began working as an engineer.

The game industry is growing up, getting more high tech with top-notch facilities and training programs replacing ramshackle buildings and self-trained amateurs. Both speakers grew up alongside the ever-enlarging business.

“Building a game is as complex as making as a Hollywood movie,” said Spector. “Do we have the right people and how do we harness creativity without crushing it?

“We are in a business that is both software engineer and entertainment, and we have to balance it,” Spector continued. “It used to be that you could trade off gameplay for graphics, but you can’t do that anymore.”

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“Metal Gear Solid 4″ Boasts 90 Minute Cut-Scenes

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on June 2, 2008
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Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has more than one cut-scene approaching 90 minutes in length, reports CVG.

The series is known for the complexity of its plot, but, according to MTV’s Multiplayer blog, Konami is trying to cover this exorbitant feature up as the game approaches its June 12 release.

“I’ve been told by two gaming media sources who asked to remain anonymous that Konami representatives had been asking print reviewers to keep some technical details out of their reviews, namely the length of the game’s cut-scenes and the size of the game’s installation on the PlayStation 3,” said Stephen Totilo in his post last week.

The MGS4 box lists a 4.6 GB installation, which is smaller than Devil May Cry 4‘ s 5 GB install.

Some reviews mention cut-scene length as an issue. “If you found previous games’ story exposition laborious,” said PSW, “then you’d better find yourself a nice cushion and plenty of teabags in readiness for MGS4’s.”

Whether the cover-up rumors are true or not, 90 minutes is excessive for a cut scene. There’s no reason to have movie-length scenes in a video game, where interactivity allows for much more engrossing storytelling.

Those scenes should either be playable or broken up by playable bits, especially big cinematic combat sequences like the Raiden fight from the first MGS4 trailer.

‘GTA4′ Star Dissatisfied With Pay

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on May 31, 2008
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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.

Niko Bellic

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.

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‘Beyond Good & Evil’ Sequel In the Works

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on May 17, 2008
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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.

‘Xenogears’ Veterans Back Together For New Game

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on May 3, 2008
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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.

BioWare Founders See Narrative As More Than Just Story

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on April 26, 2008
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Another interesting interview with BioWare folk sprang up this week, this time with the two doctors who founded the well-known studio, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.

Muzyka and Zeschuk see multiple narratives within every game. “The story, VO, and the character interactions for us is an important one, but it’s not the only one,” said Muzyka in the interview.

“There’s also you as explorer, exploring new areas with that sense of awe and excitement,” he continued. “Or you and combat as you as a combatant and progressing your abilities. Or developing your skills assuming your personal identity, growing your character, or interacting with other players in your online guild or community.”

Both Muzyka and Zeschuk are incredibly smart industry veterans with opinions worth listening to. In this interview, they comment on dealing with Fox, their upcoming MMO, Nintendo, film and, most interestingly, narrative and storytelling.

“It’s not narrative in the game that’s the thing,” said Muzyka, discussing games as a medium for art. “I think it’s the emotion, that whatever play experience you’re having, whether social interaction or gameplay interaction, or in the game having combat, it’s the emotion you’re feeling that makes you feel connected to it.

“That’s why art resonates,” he continued, “as you start feeling something for the characters or the experience.”

BioWare Writers Discuss Their Craft

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on April 20, 2008
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BioWare writers Mike Laidlaw and Drew Karpyshyn discussed dialog, working with user-created characters, and world-building in an interesting interview with CVG.

“Getting to the same level of quality as film is good,” says Laidlaw, “but just trying to make a film isn’t the right direction. Interactivity gives us something no other medium has.”

Karpyshyn agrees: “We’re finding that the technology is finally reaching the point where it’s starting to feel very realistic - we can actually have interactive conversation where you talk with people rather than them just talking at you.

“I like to use the analogy that we’re at the point where Hollywood was in the early ’30s where they’re just starting to add sound, they’re starting to get the technology locked in place. It’s all about our skill set, coming up with our own conventions, our own language of telling stories, something film has developed over the last century.”

Not surprisingly, writing an open-ended narrative is extremely tough. “Fortunately at BioWare,” said Karpyshyn, “we’ve kinda got used to it, but that’s why it requires a full team of four or five writers for one of our games.”

There’s a lot of fascinating tidbits in here. The BioWare writers reveal how they create characters, from the protagonists to the quirky barkeep, and how they develop their appearance alongside their dialog.

One of the most interesting things they reveal is that the team spent nine months planning out the details of the “Mass Effect” galaxy before deciding on characters or plot. Hopefully that means the sequel will get here sooner.