Morgoth

Harvey Smith On Gaming With A Social Change You certainly heard of Harvey Smith, Lead Designer on Deus Ex (awesomeness!) and Project Leader on DX:IW (oh noes!!!). While I think he made some very dumb decisions (and no, the crippled engine wasn't the only reason why DXIW sucked) with DXIW, I still enjoy interviews when Harvey talks about his design visions. Give the gamasutra feature a try. Oh and yes, I agree with Harvey that things like involving ecology, social structures and better non-combat AI is still totally underdeveloped (Bioshock seems to take a step forward at least) or just totally lacking in current games. I just felt it again while playing Prey how dumb this game is. Cool Doom3 engine didn't save it's superficial and lacking vision of how to draw a player into a world that he ought to care about. Meh. I'm really curious what Midway Austin is up to with their future prospects. Discuss. PS: And please stay on topic this time. Yes that means YOU Hades! No "Is it a CRPG?" silliness please.

I found a first benchmark of german mag PC Games: If that is true, my comp might run it at 12-15 fps with medium details! Mummy!!!

You can download an AC diary movie from Jade Raymond. I tell ya, hawt game with hawt PR chick? Ubisoft definitively has a winner there! Irrational hopefully too.... Don't be sad Ken, we still love you.... as the clown vending machine, that is.

I agree. That's why he's the perfect candidate for a clown! Man I hate clowns btw.... Watching It while being an eight year old did not make me love them.

Seems like prescibers of the largest German print mag GameStar already received their issue, with a 17-page Test of Gothic 3. Final verdict: 85% (that's the withdrawn Goldmaster-version), but receives 89% if the bugs get fixed (so they'll re-test the Shelve-Version again in the next issue). Just for comparison: G1&2 got 88% from the same magazine. Here's just a rough translation of some pros and cons: (Green pos, Red negative) Graphics 9/10: detailed environments, nice Spelleffects, very atmospheric illumination/lighning, partially ridiculous animations Sound 8/10: orchestral Soundtrack, very good voice actors, ambient soundeffects, partially sparse effects, bugs in Dialogs Balance 6/10: three difficulties, dangerous regions will be guarded by huge monsters, level of balance fluctuates, tough level-up Atmosphere 9/10: world is full of life, well working reputation system, Day-Night-change, weather, several logic bugs, partially sturdy AI-craziness Controls 8/10: easy-to-use controls, clear character-screen, usefull skill-bar, Quest-log, menus Length 10/10: three huge regions, mass of quests, three guilds, replayability, tons of sectrets to discover Quests & Plot 9/10: exciting story that is well implemented, different solutions, sometimes strenuous quests Combat 6/10: lots of combos possible, each enemy demands different tactics, in larger groups imprecisely, bad fellow-AI Characters 10/10: extensive skill-system, melee-magic-bows, usefull professions, good planning of character advancement Items 10/10: Guild-specific weapons and armory, mass of Spells, crafting own items possible Well, seems like it's still Gothic at it's best! I'm confident G3 rocks content wise, although bugs are stinkers, so I'll better wait a few months more before I get it.

Cool video, nice atmosphere, awesome art direction.... but I'm not yet convinced about the creepiness. Shock2 scared the hell out of me, so I hope Bioshock will deliver too... who knows what disturbing life being the devs will throw against us?

A general note about the video/Semi FAQ OMG! That video was from the E3! And the next one will even look better. But on top of that, Ken is gonna lend his voice for an evil clown vending machine!!! :cool:

This is getting ridiculous! A withdrawn Goldmaster, a non-playable Review-Version, publishers who offer sword fights instead of decent QA and that all like three weeks before release? I sense a total catastrophe!!!! Better I postpone G3 to 2007.... it's not like it's running me away or something. There's already too much to play this fall. Grrrrr. <_<

IGN insider only? Damn. Does anyone know an other mirror? I want the 640 res!

That's that game were you can draw strokes into the world, like cutting a villain into two pieces? The idea is awesome, but I don't have a PS2. If Capcom is the publisher, we might see a PC port in the future, since RE4 also gets a PC port.

They're establishing an own team for handhelds that is devoted to make handheld-games exclusively...so they don't need to take away people from, let's say Mass Effect. LOL. Like 5 people taking away would hurt such a big team anyway. But then again, it's Bio. They aren't minimalists. So I foresee a team of at least 100 people just for one handheld game! With motion capturing and detailed facial expressions! That's right! :D

N64 equivalent huh? The only two games I've ever played with my neighbor on a N64 were Mario Cart and Golden Eye - in multiplayer - and I tell you we had a hell of fun! So well, the hardware isn't that bad then.

Tactics is for the PSP. But the DS owns the PSP! Double screen means having the game on the top screen, and dialog options on the lower screen for example. The PSP doesn't have that functionality. Oh, does anybody know what hardware the DS has inside? Is it a Gamecube equivalent? Like the PSP basically has PS2 hardware?

Bioware forms handheld development group No surprise. Consoles, PC, MMO, and now handhelds. Bio's now teh ultimate dev house! Now they only need to invent a hologram-game where I could have... I hope they don't port any BG game to the DS, because I've already played them to death. Of course, the price would first have to drop under ~80 Euros or so (Ebay maybe?) before I get such a toy.

As I said before Leonard Boyarky works now for Blizzard. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Glad to see he went some place that will like his talent. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Let's just hope Leon isn't in charge as an Art Director for any other girlish-looking games like WoW. Leon and Starcraft 2! I want terrifying slimy Zerg and chain-smoking, dirty Space Marines crafted my Leons superior Art skills!

Of course they denied it, would look pretty bad otherwise in the public. The last third was rushed, that's a matter of fact, for a game that was postponed several times due to the late release date of HL2. And again, Source was pretty much completed in Summer 2002. Valve had to work on their own game as well, after all. Remember the E3 2003 gameplay? Don't tell me that one appeared buggy or slow to you. Valve just managed their own tech better than Troika did.

It seems like the deers are discussing about an agreement whether to show the NLH the hidden place of marijuana plants or not.

Nah...Irrational never let me down... but then again, they've only made PC games so far, so I can understand your fear. But Irrational doesn't use a crippled engine, the new consoles have far more power and RAM (big maps finally possible) and they certainly are aware of any other creative and technological constrains. So the chance they screw it up a'la DXIW is veeeeeeeeeeeeery low.

Delay it till christmas if you want, because I don't intend to buy it any earlier. And you can also implement the DMC which should make fanboys and cry-babies shut-up once and for all.

DX:IW, good Sir, has nothing to do with Irrational or Bioshock!

Levine defines accessibilty as it pertains to BioShock Let me get this out of the way first: "F*ck Levine and F*ck Irrational! What do they think we are, idiots?! How dare they try to make BioShock accessible!!!!" As I said in another thread, we're going to be getting into information on this site in a deeper way than you might find a on generalist gaming site. Why? Because we've been posting here for about 100 years and we don't have to worry about losing anybody when we get deep in the weeds on BioShock. When I say accessible an interview, here are some things some of you might think I mean: No ammo types. No character growth. No hacking. No logs. No open-ended level layouts. No difficulty. No weapon mods. No research system. No limited resources. No ghosts. No dozens and dozens of plasmids. No radically different play styles. This is, of course, a filthy, filthy lie. Here's what Irrational is doing to make BioShock accessible. 1) Dynamic Training. This is the big investment we're making, and we believe it's a key element to bringing deeper games to non-core gamers. And for the rest of you, it's our stake to the heart to tutorial-itis. It's a system that watches how you play and dynamically genereates advice to point you towards game play options you might be missing ("hey, ever thought of hacking?"), systems you might be using wrong ("hey, how about some armor piercing rounds on that bot!", or even game systems you just don't get ("hey that's 12 security cameras you've been spotted by in a row. want to learn more about the security system?"). You can, of course, turn this system off if you don't like it. 2) It's going to be pretty! Guess what: Shock 2 having ugly character models and no translucency in our sprites was not a design choice! 3) People who play the game guns blazing will have a AAA experience as well. In Shock 2, we don't think we really were fair to the guns guys. Without compromising all of the systems I described above (hacking, crafting, research, etc), we're going to make things blow up nice. 4) Performance. I think a big barrier of entry on Shock 2 (for the mass market, not TTLGers) was the long load times and mediocre performance. One of our core goals with BioShock was making sure frame rates and load times were competitive. If anything, BioShock is the deepest game we've ever made. Having real time and money to make it also means it will be the most accessible. (edited to add "No limited resources.") Translation: Ken will market the game as teh new Doom3 2.0, but in truth, it's deep and should offer more than the biggest hardcore System Shock fan has ever asked for. Sell it as a FPS! It's the only way to enlighten the dumb masses! And no, it's not the other way around. Ken would never do that. Never.

NEWS: First two Playstation 3 Screenshots revealed! While those 2 screens aren't really new to me, I didn't know they belong to the PS3. So, seems like the Sony fanboys have reason for raving around too now.

That's not quite true. Valve finished Source in Summer 2002, that's what Gabe said, and that's the version Troika got. While not perfectly optimizied, I wouldn't say it was buggy. I think Troika just didn't quite understand how to use it properly (from 2D to 3D is always a hard transation the first time). They also ripped out the native sound-system (made it with Miles instead of using Valves rocket-solid sound-system), and had to do alterations with the scripting (they used an outdated version of Python...hence some broken Quests I presume?). Also, from what I've observed, the Leveldesign was sloppy (see 2D to 3D transition). Like Santa Monica, where the upper part and the Sewers where one single map, therefor the choppy framerates. On top of that, I didn't quite get the feeling Troika since then had any contact with Valve for updates/technical support whatsoever. Activision didn't seem to care about it either. While those are factors that had to seen into consideration, it's not an excuse Troika messed up the last third of the game (messy dumb action). That's clearly a sign of sloppiness. And that for a game that was supposed to come out in Summer 2004....they had enough time to fix that, instead they just sat on it waiting till HL2 was released. That's just too bad. Troika was sloppy and Activision didn't care about it's own product too much. It was a dead born child.

Screw RPGs. Obsidian should make a simulator called "TheDevs" with some RPG elements and inspirations from The Sims and Dungeon Keeper. In the groundbreaking "TheDevs", you'd be in command of managing all your developers, like guiding them to the toilet with just a few mouse clicks, ordering in Pizzas, organizing interviews or just give out the paychecks in order to increase contentedness of the whole team. If your "Devs" are behind the schedule, you have to summon the "Fergienator" (who is upgradeable with viciously powers like "MightyWip" or shout-spells like "IwillFireyou!") who's appereance will increase productivity dramatically. On top of that, the mighty "Fergienator" could also be used to bring order to the stall. I.e. if your "Devs" start hammering on keyboards or start discriminating the QA staff, you have to use the "Fergienator" carefully to put everything back in order. If you succeed to achieve a milestone on time, the "Fergienator" will level-up and the "Devs" will be rewarded with either candy or 5 hours of WoW. The single-player campaign ends if you have delivered the Gold-Master to the publisher, although the open-endness nature and the revolutionary AI of "TheDevs" allows player to continue playing the lively world of "TheDevs" on their own and experience amazing things you've never seen before!

Yet another interview at IGN.