Actully, for this thread, I'll do a callout. KAN, Go on, TELL ME games are NOT innovative.
All from the X06 showoff.
Mass Effect
Linka!GS
Looks promising.BARCELONA, Spain--Earlier today during a meeting with BioWare at Microsoft's X06 event in Barcelona, we had an opportunity to check out the latest work-in-progress version of Mass Effect. Currently scheduled for release sometime next year, Mass Effect is an ambitious sci-fi role-playing game in which you'll assume the role of commander Shepard--the only human elite agent in a peacekeeping organization known as Specter. We weren't allowed to get our hands on the controller on this occasion, but we did get to see plenty of new features as a BioWare representative played the game.
After a brief recap of what was shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this year, the demo began by showing a map of the galaxy. From this good-looking and fully interactive map, you'll be able to zoom in on specific solar systems and then, if you wish, on specific planets, before deciding where you'd like to go. BioWare hasn't yet revealed how many planets will be in Mass Effect, but our best guess after today's demo is "lots." Although some of the planets in the game will have to be visited to advance the storyline, many of them exist only to give you the freedom to go and explore them. The planet that we had an opportunity to check out during today's demo is called Caleston--a barren planet on which a mining colony has been overrun by intelligent machines.
Upon landing on the reddish planet, Shepard and his two colleagues (the same female soldier and alien tech guy that we saw at E3) got into a conversation about the fate of the miners and about whether or not they should let the situation interfere with their main mission. When the alien stated that he believed the main mission was more important, we had an opportunity to see Mass Effect's real-time conversation system in effect. The BioWare rep playing the game interrupted the alien to remind it that it'll do what it's told and that rescuing miners was now their priority. The voice acting was good, and the midconversation interruption was completely seamless--if we hadn't known that it had been triggered in real time, we almost certainly would have assumed that the sudden change in the conversation (and of the camera angle) was scripted as part of a cutscene.
When the conversation was over, the trio climbed into their customizable combat all-terrain vehicle--a six-wheeler that comes equipped with not only plenty of weapons, but also jump jets that can be used to hop up in the air or to right the vehicle after it takes a tumble. The vehicle looked like it was a lot of fun to drive, and we couldn't help but smile when we watched it jump into the air from a stationary position so that it could get a shot at an enemy who was otherwise not in the driver's line of sight. The vehicle portion of the demo came to an abrupt end when the crew stumbled on an impassable roadblock, at which point they all climbed out of their ride and proceeded on foot.
In combat, you'll be able to switch between all of the characters under your control on the fly, and we're told that the artificial intelligence of those accompanying you won't disappoint. However, you'll have the option to give them simple commands using the directional pad and even to issue more complex orders by pausing the game and using a Full Spectrum Warrior-style interface. The whole screen gets a yellow tint when you pause the game in this fashion--it's overlaid with a tactical-looking grid--and your colleagues are represented by 2D icons that almost look like chess pieces. Using this interface, you can tell the other characters where you'd like them to go (behind cover, for example) and which of their abilities or special powers you'd like them to use. It's an interesting control mechanic and one that promises to afford you a far greater degree of control over your allies than most.
The abilities and special powers that your characters have at their disposal will be determined by the skill sets you assigned them at the start of the game and how you've been spending your experience points since then. Some of the more memorable powers that we got to see in action on this occasion included a telekinetic "lift" that could be used to pick up objects and enemies, and a tech ability that let our alien friend drop the shields on a large, four-legged mechanical boss. We also got to see a couple of the game's numerous weapon modifications put to good use--namely an incinerator upgrade that set fire to enemies and a vaporizer add-on that made them disappear completely.
Our time with Mass Effect was much shorter than we'd have liked on this occasion, but before we left for our next meeting, we did have an opportunity to check out some pictures of other planets in the game. Nothing too surprising was shown, but we can at least confirm that you'll be visiting planets with icy, jungle, desert, and industrial themes on your in-game travels. We look forward to bringing you more information on Mass Effect as soon as it becomes available. Stay tuned.
Alan Wake
And an interesting look at the REALLY differant tech behind Alan wake.BARCELONA-- We haven't heard much on Alan Wake since the moody title debuted at Microsoft's E3 press conference. The game is named after its main character, a troubled writer coping with the loss of his girlfriend. At today's behind closed door meeting with Finnish developer Remedy at X06 we found out what's going on with the unique psychological action thriller.
The demo was lead by Remedy's creative director and Alan Wake's lead writer who traded off speaking during the demo. The pair reiterated Alan Wake's action thriller approach and laid out the game's premise. You'll play as Alan Wake a writer who's going through a rough patch. It seems his fairytale life took a bizarre turn when, after meeting the perfect woman and writing a bestselling novel, his special lady disappears in circumstances similar to those seen in his book and he's wracked by insomnia. We expect he should have been a touch concerned upon realizing that his novel almost wrote itself (courtesy of the voices in his head), but hey sometimes you just need to roll with those creative surges of energy right? At any rate he's hit pretty hard by the disappearance and heads out to a clinic near the slightly too picturesque town of Bright Falls where, wouldn't you know it, he starts having odd visions of his lady and finding that his journal is being written in. Creepy? Yes. Good set up for a psychological action thriller? Totally.
The game demo showed a bit of the game's intro off, which started off with a nice eerie array of images as logos drifted in and out of view, and panned to a dramatic zoom of Alan hanging out on a mountain top. The view from his vantage point offered a stunning showcase of the area around Bright Falls. The game is recreating a 10 by 10 kilometer slice of the pacific northwest which should offer plenty of places for you to explore.
Once the impact of the opening passed, the demo shifted to gameplay and showed off how you'll be getting around and interacting with folks. The basic structure of the game is modeled after a season of a TV series. The episodic structure is being used to support multiple endings in the game and allow each episode to be broken up into different parts to complement the game's storytelling style.
The demo showed one of the early missions in the game and found our troubled lead starting to explore his surroundings. The game's interface is being kept simple with a task bar on the lower left hand corner of the screen displaying your current mission in handwritten font. For the demo Alan was tasked with going to a mountainside cabin. Alan spoke with a gas station employee and got a key before heading out to the cabin which was near the charmingly named Cauldron Lake (we're sure it's a fun, happy place). As Alan drove, his inner monologue served as commentary on his situation- a gameplay element that happened a number of times in the demo. Not long after he starts his drive to the cabin Alan encounters a hitchhiker who he picks up (we'll say right now we're a little concerned that Alan might not be the brightest lead character we've ever seen in a videogame). During the drive things take a turn for the creepy as Alan chats up his passenger with a fun fact: the events taking place are reminiscent of a hitchhiker scene in Alan's book where said hitchhiker is killed. A little later in the ride the pair come across a car wreck. While Alan leaves the car to check out the busted vehicle, a truck zips on by and hits his car head on, apparently killing the hitchhiker. A few disoriented moments later Alan drops like a sack of potatoes.
Unfortunately unconsciousness isn't the pleasant break from harsh reality you'd think as Alan must deal with disturbing imagery that ends in what appears to be his lady beckoning him to wake up. When Alan wakes he finds himself sprawled on the road where he dropped holding a gun and a flashlight. Fortunately the cabin is nearby and he heads over to it via rickety rope bridge. As he nears the cabin the view changes to a cinematic showing something wicked coming Alan's way. Just what the mysterious, invisible thing is remains unclear but if you're thinking it's bad then you're probably right. The demo ended with Alan encountering what appears to be the hitchhiker on the rope bridge which served as a pretty snappy cliffhanger to the experience.
The visuals in the game are looking very sharp, thanks to a cracking level of detail. The environments shown off in the demo featured crisp detail that the Remedy boys took pride in showing off as they adjusted the time of day and tweaked environmental effects such as wind and fog. The game is set to feature HDR lighting that was shown to good effect as time of day and weather conditions changed. At one point Alan entered a garage at night with all manner of light sources casting shadows every which way which was mightily impressive. To really sell the environment's dynamic nature, the team created a tornado that ripped through a house near where Alan was standing and showed all the particle effects it stirred up as it tore in to a house. Just as impressive were the character models which, while still work in progress, were looking quite impressive, due in no small part to Remedy's desire to create the most realistic looking characters it could drop into the gorgeous, but disturbing, playground of the game world.
The audio added a lot to the demo thanks to the speakers set out around the room. The incidental music had some bite to it and helped sell the game's atmosphere. The voice acting was so so but we expect it will see some refinement as game development continues.
Based on what we saw, Alan Wake is looking like a promising original title from Remedy that's trying a lot of interesting things. The story and the episodic nature of how it's structured is something we're very curious to see play out. What little we've seen of the game's presentation has a very good feel and seems to be striking the right balance between something you watch and something you play. Look for more on Alan Wake as it becomes available.
Atech
More on Alan Wake & Multi-core Gaming
We had a chance to sit down with Markus Maki and Lasse Seppanen of Remedy Entertainment, Ltd. to talk more about their upcoming psychological thriller: Alan Wake.
Alan Wake was demoed during Paul Otellini's keynote on an overclocked Core 2 Quad system running at 3.73GHz, mainly because the game itself is significantly multithreaded and could take advantage of the quad-core system. While development is still continuing on the forthcoming game, we did get some insight into exactly how Alan Wake will utilize multiple cores.
Surprisingly enough, Markus indicated that Alan Wake would pretty much not run on any single core processors, although it may be possible to run on single-core Pentium 4 processors with Hyper Threading enabled, with noticably reduced image quality/experience.
The game will actually spawn five independent threads: one for rendering, audio, streaming, physics and terrain tessellation. The rendering thread is the same as it would be in any game, simply preparing vertices and data to be sent to the GPU for rendering. The audio thread will obviously be used for all audio in the game, although Remedy indicates that it is far from a CPU intensive thread.
The streaming thread will be used to stream data off of the DVD or hard disk as well as decompress the data on the fly. Remedy's goal here is to have a completely seamless transition as you move from one area to the next in Alan Wake's 36 square mile environment, without loading screens/pauses. With Alan Wake being developed simultaneously for both the Xbox 360 and the PC, efficiency is quite high as developing for a console forces a developer to be much more focused than on a PC since you are given limited resources on a console. Markus admitted that being a PC-only developer can easily lead to laziness, and developing for the 360 has improved the efficiency of Alan Wake tremendously. With that said, Markus expects the visual and gameplay experience to be identical on the Xbox 360 and the PC when Alan Wake ships, hopefully without any in-game load screens.
The physics thread will be used to handle all of the game's physics, which is driven using Havoc's physics engine. As Alan Wake uses Havoc's engine, there is no support for AGEIA's PhysX card and thus the host CPU must handle all physics calculations. During the keynote Markus mentioned that the physics thread used an entire core by itself, later clarifying that on a normal Core 2 Quad processor approximately 80% of one core would be used by the physics thread. With 80% of a single core being used for physics alone, the dual core CPU requirement is no longer so shocking.
As a mostly outdoor game, Alan Wake features a tremendous amount of varying terrain that is generated semi-procedurally as you encounter it. The generation/tessellation of the terrain as its encountered occupies the fifth and final thread that Remedy's game spawns. If Remedy can get the game running on Pentium 4 CPUs with HT enabled, it will be with less smooth terrain tessellation (so you may see some popping of terrain) and obviously with fewer physically simulated objects.
Although we are very curious to see how the Cell processor would run Alan Wake, given that Microsoft Game Studios is Remedy's publisher the game's Xbox 360/PC exclusivity needs no explanation. Remedy's Alan Wake team is approximately 30 strong, which is quite lean for a next-generation title, although most artwork is outsourced under the direction of Remedy. Remedy will supply specifications for the art it wants designed, and then hand it off to external art firms that will then produce it to the specs. By outsourcing the artwork, Remedy is able to focus on its development strengths and keep the overall team size down while leveraging the expertise of dedicated artists from around the world.
The demo ran extremely well on the test system, which was a Core 2 Quad running at 3.73GHz with a GeForce 7900 GTX. Markus said that it would have run just as well if the Core 2 Quad was running at its default clock speed, which we assume was 2.66GHz. The game looked even better than when we first saw it at E3 and we eagerly await its release. If Alan Wake is any indication, it won't be long before gamers start thinking about the move to dual/quad core if they haven't already.
Gears of War
Wow, thats a shitload of good games being shown off.
BARCELONA--At last night's X06 post-conference "party" we had an opportunity to spend some quality time with Gears of War's warzone (team deathmatch meets last man standing) multiplayer mode. We've since learned--following a meeting with Epic Games' lead designer, Cliff Bleszinski--that the game will ship with a total of three different multiplayer modes, although the specifics of "execution" and "resurrection" aren't being discussed at this time. We can also report that Gears of War will ship with eight multiplayer maps and that (surprise!) post-release downloadable content is already planned. The aforementioned "Cliffy B" certainly does a good job when it comes to talking about his latest game, but in truth Gears of War is a game that's more than capable of speaking for itself, which is why, as soon as our meeting was over, we headed down to the main floor of the X06 event to get our hands on its campaign mode for the first time.
Both solo and co-operative play was available for Gears of War was available, and--partly because the lines were shorter and the TVs were bigger--we opted for the latter. On this occasion we started playing through the demo at the same time as our partner, but in the finished game you'll be able to jump in (via spectator mode) and out of co-operative games at any point, replacing or being replaced by a CPU-controlled character as appropriate. You'll even be able to earn cheap achievement points in this way if you really want to, though in doing so you'll miss out not only on what promises to be a great gameplay experience, but also on other achievements that are only possible to unlock through your continued presence--collecting "COG tags" from fallen soldiers, for example. Co-operative play will be available on a single system using a horizontally split screen, online via Xbox Live or, as we were playing on this occasion, using two linked systems.
The sequence that we played through was taken from the start of the game, when Dom Santiago rescues main character Marcus Fenix from a prison. We fought our way out of there without too much trouble (we later learned that we were on the easiest difficulty setting) and, just a few minutes later, we were boarding a helicopter at the start of the same sequence that we were shown at the Tokyo Game Show just last week. We were at the controls this time, though, so when the action got underway again we were able try our hand at tossing frag grenades into Locust emergence holes, moving between areas of cover, and, of course, putting the chainsaw bayonet to good use. We didn't talk to the guy we were playing alongside at any time, but between us we instinctively did a pretty good job of having one guy provide cover fire while the other flanked the enemies. At one point we actually heard one of our CPU squadmates order us to "flank left" (you won't get to give orders until later in the game), and when we followed that order we were pleased to find that it was most definitely the right course of action.
Other memorable moments during our time with Gears of War's campaign mode include reviving our colleague when he got killed, making an awful mess of an enemy by scoring a direct hit with a grenade (if you melee attack with a grenade equipped you can actually shove it up inside the enemy's body), and unlocking one of the game's many achievements--we think by managing to get a number of "perfect reloads" of our gun consecutively. The finished campaign mode, which it's estimated will take around 10 hours to play through, will tell a story that lasts for approximately 36 hours in-game. So although everything that we've seen of Gears of War in recent months has taken place in the daytime, it seems reasonable to assume that the first footage we ever saw (of the squad desperately trying to stay in lit areas at the dead of night) was taken from somewhere in the middle of the game in between the two days over which the story takes place.
That about wraps up our coverage of Gears of War from X06, save for us letting you know that even grenades that miss their targets will often make your enemies wince for a second, and although the chainsaw bayonet seems overpowered at times, getting hit by a single bullet when wielding it will make you stumble and lower your weapon briefly. We thoroughly enjoyed every minute that we spent with Gears of War in Barcelona this week, and we hope to bring you more coverage of the game in the not too distant future.
