Cult of Rapture

A few days back a new website was put up by 2k Games, called Cult of Rapture. It seems to be a more community-oriented site, and there will definitely be things to look forward to like podcasts and development related info.

BioShock preview in PCZone

The February issue of PCZone has a preview of the game and an interview with Ken Levine. A new bit of concept art makes the cover, and there are new screenshots in the mag. Nothing significantly new is revealed, but there are a few interesting things, like this quote:

"Why can't I just run that way and get out of here? Because that car is in the way? The sad truth is games are a bit of a fib. I want to make games that minimise the fib."

I'm sure the screenshots will eventually appear on the official site or in an online preview, now that they've been exclusively shown by the mag. Meanwhile, I'm looking out for scans.

Introversion's new game

Apparantly called Subversion. The guys apparantly intend to reveal parts of the development process as they work on the game, which is especially interesting as they aren't going to say exactly what kind of game it is until a much later stage. I'm a big fan of the company's first two titles, Uplink and Darwinia (still not quite put much time into the third, Defcon), though I haven't completed them. I'm really looking forward to learning more about Subversion.

BioShock marketing campaign begins

Of course, interesting things would start happening while I am completely unable to benefit from them. A day or so ago someone over at TTLG, presumably from Take Two, posted in a BioShock thread that she'd be getting the marketing of the game started up until spring, when it's supposed to be released. So, the new site has been put up, and a new trailer has been debuted which as of right now is only on the Spike TV site.

I won't be able to see the trailer, unfortunately, but I am able to check out the new site and the various new material that's been put up. There are a few new screenshots, showing mainly new weapons like the flamethrower and some kind of machine gun. There's an interesting new section called "Rapture", which seems like it'll show different places in the city, with a little information and some pictures; currently there are only two places available.

I'm pretty excited now that things will start moving for the game, they must be quite certain about the Spring release date which really isn't that far off.

[Update]
I managed to see the trailer thanks to a YouTube rip. It seems standard fare for a TV trailer, silly narration over a montage of quick all-action moments. Some of said moments, though, are pretty frickin cool. I was floored to learn that the planecrash scene was completely real-time. That water is just beautiful, beyond my conservative-realistic hopes. Some other interesting things in the trailer are the flamethrower which isn't even being weilded by the player, it's being used by one enemy on another. Very cool. There is visual confirmation of the report that you could catch a grenade thrown at you by an enemy with a telekinesis power, and with the same power project it at another enemy.

The marketing manager, '2K Elizabeth', also let slip that the game was headed for a June '07 release, which sounds about right.

Ken Levine interview at Evil Avatar

Part 1, and part 2. Nothing really new revealed, and I think the interviewer was trying to be a little too intellectual for his own good.

BioShock article in PC Gamer

There is a one-page preview of BioShock in the January issue of PC Gamer US. There's nothing really new, it describes the demo shown at X06, but the two screenshots used are new. Plus, there is one little point about the plasmids that I have not seen mentioned anywhere that I think is really interesting :

"... They are also stackable (meaning you can combine the effects of multiple plasmids), and in Bioshock's submerged ruined city of Rapture, their creative implementation will be essential to your character's survival."

The number of plasmids and their variety keep changing with each mention of them, but we've known the basic idea behind them for ages; however I think this small detail changes the whole aspect of the game quite a bit, if it's true. It will definitely help to introduce emergent gameplay and some very interesting situations indeed. I'm quite intrigued by this bit of news and I'm looking forward to seeing this in action.

Nabeel interviews Flagship Studios

Actually that's an exaggeration, it wasn't all of Flagship Studios, just a couple of guys in the team ... and I didn't interview them, just asked a question. But I'll start at the beginning.

Basically I've recently gotten back onto irc again, just a few channels in which I used to hang out years ago. A few days back on one of the networks I got an invite to the #hellgateguru channel, which is the irc channel for the site Hellgate Guru, which in turn is a fan site of the upcoming game Hellgate: London. They were due to have a chat session with Ivan Sulic, community manager at Flagship. I knew about the game and had read up quite a bit but I don't really have that much interest in it, but any kind of dev chat has my attention, so I joined the channel to wait for the chat session. The idea was that once Ivan arrived, the channel would be muted, ie. noone could say anything except for those select few who were voiced (in this case the moderators and Ivan), and questions that we wanted answered could be passed onto the moderators who would choose out out of those amongst themselves. I didn't have any real interest in the game, and I knew that the fans in the channel would end up asking the usual mundane questions about the game concerning stuff they would find out anyway once it came out, but were things they just had to know now. But this was an opportunity to interact with a game dev so I forwarded a few questions, more regarding the development side of things than the actual game, basically stuff which had little chance of getting chosen. As it happened, they did choose one of them, the most boring one admittedly but it was cool anyway. The chat log is here, but here is the relevant part:

<QBot> Question #2 [nabeel] What other games are you drawing inspiration from, other than Diablo and Deus Ex? Do you think Hellgate: London combines its basic gameplay ingredients (RPG, FPS, MMO) succesfully enough to make a unique new kind of single game genre?
<Ivan-Flagship> Other than Diablo, we draw inspiration from EVERYTHING. First-person shooters of all types, horror games, popular fiction... But honestly, it's all about our past. And our past is all about Diablo. The game is an action-RPG. Mechanically, it's Diablo with lots more stuff. Thematically, it's medieval sci-fi, if that makes any sense.
<Ivan-Flagship> Done
<Ivan-Flagship> Oh
<Ivan-Flagship> Not done
<SolInvictus> Ooh, do elaborate.
<Ivan-Flagship> Whether it's successful or not will be determined by whether you buy it or not. We sure think it's successful.
<Ivan-Flagship> Okay
<Ivan-Flagship> Now I'm done.

Not quite the answer I was hoping for, but Ivan isn't really part of the development team really, he's the in the PR side of things so I couldn't really expect him to give a definite subjective opinion about the game.

Bioshock makes Games For Windows readers' most anticipated game of 2007

I've not said a word about Bioshock, but this game was another reason for starting this blog - so that I could post up whatever news I'd find anywhere about it since I'm looking forward to it so much I scour the web for any little mention of it. As it so happens I started this up just at the end of a torrent of news of the game so there has been absolutely nothing to talk about. In fact, this is not even news, but what the hell. The first issue of Games For Windows magazine had an online poll for the top ten most anticipated games of 2007, and Bioshock tops the list - though it was a close thing with Team Fortress 2 and Spore taking up almost all the rest of the votes.

[Update]
Well I managed to find another bit of news that I'd not seen mentioned at any of my usual sources. Lead designer Ken Levine got interviewed by Major Nelson for the latter's 200th podcast. It starts at about 12 minutes if I remember correctly. It's a pretty standard interview, nothing new revealed except for an interesting thing about a possible making-of DVD or something to show how the game evolved over time. That's something I would love to see. It completely fascinates me how a game is developed and what the team goes through from beginning to end, and this is a particular game where that kind of thing would be really interesting to me especially since there's so much to it - the fact that it's being made by Irrational and also that this is the first time that they're making a game with so much support from their publisher.

Sometimes you don't even have to be a hardcore gamer ...

to get hilarious in-jokes.

Halo movie on hold for now

"As was previously confirmed, we deeply regret that both Universal and Fox did not choose to move forward with financing the Halo film under the original terms of the agreement. At this time Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, along with their partner, Microsoft, have mutually agreed to postpone making a feature film based on the Halo video game universe until we can fulfill the promise we made to millions of Halo fans throughout the world that we would settle for no less than bringing a first class film to the big screen."

Which is a damned shame, because this one seemed like it could be a video-game-to-movie that would not suck. It had a huge financial backer and a brilliant producer. After the recent close call I thought it was back on track but looks like it's not. Even though I think that movies based on games are unnecessary in most cases, and would have thought so in Halo's case especially, this seemed really in the right hands, it looked like they really got the concept of producing a movie alongside an already existing franchise and making it work with the games' story instead of trying to reinvent the wheel in some cheesy way.

MGS 4 non-exclusive!? Yes plz

To the rumour that Metal Gear Solid 4 could appear on the XBox 360, I say Hell Yes! Will it happen? I say not, but a man can dream. Not that it will be of direct benefit to me, because I'm a PC gamer, but it's a smaller jump from an 360 port to the PC. This is especially a good time for Kojima's team to get pressure from above to go multi-platform, with the PS3 looking so doomed (and this, and this). It makes sense for them to spread their risk a bit, but MGS4 is pretty much the PS3's Halo, or at least one of them, so it's possible it'll help Sony sell the system which means they need to hold it close to their chest.

Finally ...

I finally finished Knights of the Old Republic this morning. I'd started the game at the beginning of this semester, so about 3 or 4 months back, and got to about 2 hours from the end, and then I kind of left it. I'd played through as a completely Light character and I wanted to start over as Dark so I had to at least finish my current game. The game's pretty easy so it was no big deal getting back into it and finishing it off. I guess I should post a review or something, one of the reasons I'd started this blog in the first place, but I'm feeling a bit lazy right now so maybe I'll put it off til I finish the second run, if I ever do. I'm definitely going to have to try the second game, if I can get hold of it. I have quite a large backlog of games that I need to finish - I have a recurring habit of starting a game and then leaving it, even though I do badly want to reach the end. I just tried the demo of Beyond Good & Evil which I thought was really good, so now I'm tempted to start that.

Aw

I guess it was too good to be true, even with the flames fanned a little more for good measure. But, alas, Jack Thompson skips jail, gets away with jackassness one more time.

[Update]
Shut up already Jack, just shut up.
And, AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

This is getting ridiculous

EA are going goddamn nuts. First charging for unlockable content in games, then selling in-game money, and now selling frickin' video tutorials. As with any stupid idea given the push by a large force in the industry, these have a danger of actually catching on and forcing gamers to pay more and more for things they should already be getting with their games. There are possible models out there for gamers to buy parts of a game's experience that they want, but I don't trust the industry to deliver a good model, not after the way they are handling this microtransaction/"consumables" business.