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Halo co-creator's iOS game Morning Star getting a tie-in comic app
Morning Star, the upcoming iOS first-person shooter from Industrial Toys and Halo co-creator Alex Seropian, will be getting the comic book tie-in treatment in the form of an interactive graphic novel designed for Apple's mobile devices. Called Morning Star Alpha, the comic is being penned by Redshirts author John Scalzi with art by Mike Choi, who's known for his work on the likes of Witchblade, X-Force and Green Lantern. The plot of Morning Star Alpha will tie directly into the game -- and on some pretty deep, interactive levels at that. Readers will be able to make choices while reading the comic, which will then affect the game. In-game discoveries will, in turn, make new elements of the comic available for reading in order to provide more context to the on-screen action. There's no release date set for Morning Star -- which will also feature a score by System of a Down's Serj Tankin -- or the Morning Star Alpha tie-in, but we'll have more on both as Seropian and company reveal it.
Former Halo creator working on Morning Star for iOS
Alex Seropian is one of the first game developers I ever interviewed -- he's one of the original creators of Halo back at Bungie Studios (back when it was being planned as a real-time strategy title for the Mac), and I met up with him when I worked at a PR firm one floor below his company Wideload Games (which was later bought up by Disney). Now, he's started a new company in Los Angeles called Industrial Toys, and today they've announced their first title, a shooter called Morning Star that the team hopes will "reimagine" the genre "for touch." There's a teaser trailer for the game (embedded below), and as you can see, Industrial Toys isn't skimping on graphical quality. Other than a few fleeting images, however, there's not much more information about this one. It's got aliens, shooting and a new control scheme that's supposed to work great on touch devices. Industrial Toys says its "totally unreasonable goal is to completely change the expectations core gamers have for their mobile games." That's a totally unreasonable goal that plenty of iOS developers have already tried to accomplish, and one that I'd argue a few companies (most notably Epic, with the very popular Infinity Blade) have actually completed. But Industrial Toys does have a lot of cred with Seropian and the rest of the crew, so Morning Star will be one to watch.
WoW Moviewatch: Morningstar, Episode I
When the quixotic Quixotica recommended Morningstar, Episode I by Xephir Verdis, I had no clue what to expect. I read through the description and saw the usual bullet points. Undead, check. Wumpscut, check. Alchemy, Sylvanas, Horde. Check, check, and check. Firing up the video itself, I was pleasantly surprised to find a thoughtful, moody piece with an obvious narrative progression. In the spirit of constructive critique, I'd pick up the pace of the story a tad; good video, but it drags on a tad at 10 minutes. The subtitle font could use a replacement; the extant font is good but it gets distracting after a while. This is the first episode; the series gets tinkered and changed as it progresses to episode 4. Morningstar is worth the watch, though. Take the time to check it out. It's some of the best quality story machinima I've seen in a long time. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
