Exploring Stuff That Makes Life Great
Regardless of whether you listen to fools or not, it’s now officially official that Electronic Arts will be publishing Brütal Legend, Tim Schafer’s next title. This comes as a wave of relief for Schafer fans, since the title was floating in limbo since Activision Blizzard dropped it.
Continue reading “EA To Publish Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend”
Aye, it’s Garbled Zombie, your local Deus Ex fanboy and chief editor of all things Deus Ex 3 on StuffWeLike. What arouses me from my slumber? It seems that Gamereactor got some brand new concept art for Deus Ex, and by it looks friggin’ sweet to my eyes.
There’s also a crumb of extra info, i.e. we learn that the protagonist of Deus Ex 3, Adam Jensen is a security chief for a biotech company called Sarif. The company is raided by men in black, and everybody without the name Adam Jensen are killed. And of course, it’s upto Adam to find out who did this, and why. One important piece of news we learn is that the game will come sometime in 2010. That’s 10 years after Deus Ex. Hot dayum.
And now, I analyse the concept art.
This one seems to be set in Paris, with the bridge up there labelled “Passerelle 01”. What I believe to be some sort of a cafe to the left uses a neon sign saying “Le Canne”, so I think that kind of confirms it. The “Connaught” sign down their highlights “aug”, signifying Augmentation. Possibly an augmentation-related advertisement? Then we see a postmodern building to the right, with the name “DWM”, which must be some sort of a corporation’s headquarters.
With Paris around, I’m guessing we may see the origins of the Silhouette. Maybe even explore Everett’s Illuminati and even see Beth DuClare alive! This sounds like fun.
This one is a little blurry, but it shows the Renaissance influence on the game. Nothing particularly remarkable here, but to the left there’s an information terminal (or maybe a security terminal) that’s reminiscent of the news terminals in Deus Ex. This one looks bulkier and integrated into the wall, so I guess it’s a natural progression. To the right, there’s a computer with a holographic display. Again, reminiscent of Deus Ex. This one appears to be a Star Wars-ish hologram, since it’s blue-tinted and kinda faded, whereas the ones in Deus Ex were exact and colourful. So at least that’s one step in the right direction.
This here is Shanghai, according to the PC Zone scans we found. It’s also pretty clear since there’s a dragon illustration to the bottom-left. On closer inspection, I think there’s supposed to be some sort of a transparent display there. Screenshot is mostly a standard cityscape, a little futuristic. The cool looking guy to the right may or may not be Adam Jensen. I kind of hope he is, but what the hell.
I can’t believe I missed this! While I did get you the deal on what little info was found about Deus Ex 3, it looks like somebody got their hands on the actual magazine scans, which have been put up here. Okay, they’re not scans, they’re outright photos and pretty bad ones at that: most of the text seems to have been clipped out.
So we’ll have to do with the concept art/screenshots, and they are definitely some tasty eye candy. The Cyberpunk/Renaissance art design becomes visible here, though I think making NPCs wear 16-century-ish clothes is a little overkill. I love the environments, though.
Augmentations are a lot more “in your face” says the caption, and that they are. With what looks like direct prosthetics for your arms, you won’t find the subtlety of JC’s nanotechnology-enhanced augmentations. This goes with the story, since JC and Paul were the first test subjects in augmented agents.
The protagonist of Deus Ex 3, Adam Jensen appears to be an agent with mechanical mods, like Gunther Hermann or Anna Navarre from the original game. In any case, he looks pretty cyborg.As for the Biomods themselves, here’s what I found from the pages:
Another bit of info that can be found is about Stealth and Hacking, both of which disappoint me greatly.
Okay, I’m totally not sure about this. An RTS-style mini game for hacking? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m also not comfortable with replacing the shadow-based stealth mechanic from the previous two games. Deus Ex had handled stealth without making it too technical, I’m not sure if Deus Ex 3 will be able to do it.
All in all, I’m both impressed and disappointed. Still, since its Deus Ex, I won’t be missing it. 😉
Ask me my favourite video game genre and I’ll tell you it’s the FPS/RPG hybrid. Deus Ex, is of course, my favourite game of all-time, but other notable games in the rare genre are the System Shock games, or Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. But these games, like my second-favourite genre, Adventure games faded into an abyss.
But let’s hope this is set to change. With a Deus Ex 3 already in the works, we have some more optimistic news. Harvey Smith, who partnered Warren Spector to design Deus Ex now has his own studio: Arkane, which he is going to use to create “immersive” FPS titles, in the same vein as Deus Ex. Talking to Gamasutra, he says that Arkane’s focus will be on these immersive titles.
He didn’t release any specifics just yet, but that is as good an announcement as any. Oh, and they’re working on a strategy game for the iPhone, if you are interested in that, for any arcane reason.
Is this finally it? Are FPS/RPG games making a comeback?
Right, okay, let me get this straight. First we have rumours that Gearbox is working on Halo 4 for the next Xbox. Now /gamer reports that it won’t be Halo 4, but a goddamn Duke Nukem game. That’s right, Gearbox is developing a Duke Nukem title, according to the rumour.
/gamer’s mysterious source contacted them, informing them that there is, in fact, no Halo 4 going on. Also, he mentions “When it is announced fans of a series from the past will be surprised.” Note how he says “a series from the past”.
Now, they are contacted once again, with their source hinting at an article they wrote about Duke Nukem Forever. Why the source is not willing to state directly is unknown, but by his enigmatic words, this most probably would mean that 3D Realms is handing the reins of Duke Nukem to.
This wouldn’t be very surprising. Hell, it’ll be great, considering we won’t have to wait another century-and-half for another Duke Nukem game. Besides, the guys at Gearbox are trustable enough to deliver a quality shooter like Duke Nukem’s calibre.
In an age where pretty much everyone believes that PC gaming is dying a slow death, it’s nice to see some optimism from developers. While Blizzard and Valve have already shown their love for PC, there’s another developer scurring behind them, and that’s Gas Powered Games, known for their PC-exclusive games, such as the Dungeon Siege series, Supreme Commander and last year’s Space Siege.
Chris Taylor, supreme commander of GPG said in an interview that he believes that PC gaming is, in fact, rediscovering itself. The last 10 years of it, have been all about breaking system requirements, and the audience was also crazy enough to buy the latest gear for it. That is starting to change.
“We have to be careful we don’t create games that require four gigs of RAM to run. It’s just not responsible. It kind of was, in the old days; now, well, hardware’s pretty quick. We don’t really need to do that. We should be focusing on the characters, the story, the UI, the design.”
Nice to see it come honest and clear from a game developer. While console gamers have only to buy a disc and pop it into their drives, PC gamers have to inspect the game, compare the requirements, install it, and then hope it’ll run as it should. No wonder even the most hardcore PC gamers have been taking to consoles!
Taylor also thinks that Blizzard has the right idea, “using art direction rather than pure technical showmanship to create visually appealing but less-demanding games.” He says that GPG is working on something very similar with Demigod, their upcoming RPG-Strategy hybrid.
We’ll just hope Taylor’s optimistic tone holds up. Long live PC gaming!