Video Game Development – Page 29

Far Cry 3 Set in Africa

Wow, it seems like only yesterday I brought you the news of Ubisoft Montreal announcing Far Cry 2. With that game coming close to release now, Ubisoft Montreal goes further to announce another addition to the franchise. No, it’s not the Far Cry: Africa Pet Zoo for the DS, it’s a full-fledged Far Cry 3.

Announced at Leipzig, it has been confirmed that the game will be set in Africa. Ubisoft Montreal seems to be keen on boosting African tourism industries with their repeated interest in African wildlife and the promise it holds. I agree with that, too: you can only fight so much in Normandy! Still, I was expecting a Far Cry set in, say, an East European urban setting, or maybe the Great Wall of China or someplace equally exotic.

The team has made a commitment to Africa, supposedly, but shows interest in the Antarctic setting as well, which would be totally cool in my opinion, no pun intended. They also admit that the Africa setting will save time. Hmm.

The game will use the same engine as Far Cry 2 and we don’t have any more details on it, as usual. Suffice to say, it’ll involve lots of exotic, open-world, instinct-based action. Crytek is, as usual, out of the picture, probably too busy working on Crysis 2 or some such.

Gearbox Working on Halo 4 for Next Xbox?!

One of the industry’s best upcoming FPS studios, Gearbox Software has been long rumoured to be working on a secret project that is “bigger” than anything they’ve ever tried. Since this is the team that made the entire Brothers in Arms series, the Halo PC port and many awesome expansions of Half-Life, this is something.

Rumour has it that they’re working on nothing but a Halo 4. Apparently the fight isn’t quite finished. Supposedly, the game is in development for a next-generation Xbox console. It should be noted that while we don’t have any announcements of a new console generation, we haven’t even heard talks about anything like that.

The rumour comes from the Official XBox Magazine, and there doesn’t seem to be any hard verification. Still, it doesn’t seem unbelievable or contradictory. Gearbox only has one product on their plate, Borderlands and Bungie announced that they’re done with the Halo franchise.

In any case, Microsoft milking out the Halo franchise definitely isn’t news, what will all that promotion during Halo 3‘s launch. What is news is the weird, outlandish rumour. So is Microsoft working on a next-gen Xbox? How powerful is it? Is Gearbox actually working on a sequel to Halo 3? Will it come anytime before 2015? Questions galore.

We have no doubt that Microsoft has an answer to them all. ‘Microsoft does not respond to rumors’ or some such.

I Am Alive to Become Major Franchise

With the race for awesome graphics having finally rested, developers are coming up with some really innovative titles at last! Probably spurred by Portal, EA will be doing Mirror’s Edge and Ubisoft will do I Am Alive. What is so innovative about that, you ask? Well, I Am Alive will put you in your own disaster movie as you will have to use real-life skills and techniques to save yourself from an earthquake.

It looks like Ubisoft is all ready to turn the game into a franchise already. This is a pretty weird trend I’ve been noticing lately, with developers starting franchises before the completion of the first game (Mass Effect, Crysis being examples). Well, it’s not bad, so who’s complaining?

It is no genius guess that in the potential sequels, we may have our hero facing other objects of natural fury: floods, tsunamis, tornados, storms, maybe volcanos. In any case, you just know that if I Am Alive‘s style can be used on earthquakes, further iterations are inevitable. Oh well, guess the franchise idea wasn’t that far off either!

Also, the first trailer of the game was rather mysterious in itself. Perhaps the events of I Am Alive aren’t as natural as you think. Of course, we, who have been raised on the X-Files will be first to theorise this being part of some global conspiracy, alien invasion or some test created by our alien benefactors. So Ubisoft is going to have to come up with something more original in the story department.

Another question is if the game will at all work. I’m not saying that non-violent games don’t have a chance, but Portal was a work of utter genius, and I’d be shocked if we get a Portal every year. I Am Alive will focus largely on character interactions and problem-solving. Now that we mention it, I’m starting to think that a zombie survival game along the same vein would be awesome…

Hmm, I hope Ubisoft is listening.

Epic Making New IP with EA

Epic, impressed by their work on the Gears of War PC port, bought People Can Fly not very long ago. Now’s the time for action. Epic has announced that their Poland-based PCF studio will be working on a whole new IP to be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, all by EA. About time.

And we just got you excited on that, then sorry, we don’t have much else to report. That’s pretty much all that has been released upto now. No title, no hint of story, nothing. Still, being the keen industry analysts that we are, we’re guessing it will be a sci-fi first person shooter, involving either a dystopia or an alien invasion.

Epic seems to have been on a roll recently. While they have always prospered by selling their uber Unreal Engine to other devs, they took a walk out of the tent with Gears of War and are working on its sequel as we speak. They’re also doing great licensing Unreal Engine 3 and have a 4th version in the works.

Their flagship product, Unreal Tournament 3 didn’t do so well, however. This has left the franchise abandoned for the while, as no more news has been announced regarding it yet. Still, in an informal chat conducted by BeyondUnreal, an Epic employee (hehe) had said that Unreal Tournament will last as long as Epic does.

Should Rockstar Be Prosecuted For Thai Murder?

The murder of a Thai cab driver at the hands of an idiot teenager in Thailand has stirred up a controversy that is to GTA4 what Hot Coffee was to San Andreas. With global response to the incident, Rockstar seems to have riled up a bunch of video game violence critics.

In the latest chapter of this story, we have Somchai Jaroen-amnuaysuk, deputy director of Thailand’s Welfare Promotion, Protection and Empowerment of Vulnerable Groups Office going against poor old Rockstar, developers of GTA4.

He says that when a player “copycats a crime he or she sees in the game”, the makers of the game should be prosecuted. Prosecutions will force the game makers to act more responsibly, the director says. This is a pretty much WTF kind of idea, because till now, I’ve only heard these critics go against publishers, distributors and the like.

The fact that Rockstar is in good ol’ America is consoling, seeing as if it were a Thai company, it would probably have been “prosecuted” already. And speaking of Thailand’s legal system, let me remind you that the 19-year-old kid who killed the cab driver may be sentenced to execution by lethal injection. Not good news for the game makers.

Siggraph 2008: The Year of Softimage?

It may be difficult to comprehend now, but it was only two years ago that many in the video game world had given Nintendo up for dead. Despite the early success of the DS handheld, the company’s Gamecube had finished in distant third vs. its same generation competitors. And with the next generation of consoles dawning, the XBox 360 was lighting up the charts and the Playstation 3 was about to become reality. Then at E3 2006, Nintendo unveiled the Wii and the rest is history.

While nothing unveiled at this week’s Siggraph conference in Los Angeles will have that level of mainstream consumer impact, the event may feature a similar underdog story that will have far-reaching consequences for the business of video game development.

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