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DICE aims to bring Frostbite engine to Mac
EA developer DICE is looking to bring its Frostbite engine to the Mac, according to a job listing on the studio's website. DICE is seeking a Mac OS X engineer to work with "a team focusing on bringing Frostbite to Mac." The engineer will also "work closely with game team customers and the Frostbite team to deliver an engine as great on OS X as it is on Windows and traditional console platforms."Presumably, the listing refers to Frostbite 2, which would enable Electronic Arts to bring a large back catalog of games to Apple's platform, including Battlefield 3, the most recent Medal of Honor games and Need for Speed: The Run. More importantly, it would allow EA to publish future Frostbite games on Mac, including Dragon Age 3, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel and the next Mass Effect.
DICE vows continued support for Battlefield 3 in light of Battlefield 4 announcement
EA officially revealed Battlefield 4 today as a project being developed at the company's Sweden-based DICE studio. Beyond that, however, no one's saying a peep about the game. Lest you forget, three more DLC packs are planned for DICE's last game, Battlefield 3, and that apparently means DICE isn't ready to talk Battlefield 4 just yet."There is no further Battlefield 4 news at this point," reads a post from DICE on the Battlefield 4 subpage. "With the Back to Karkand and Close Quarters expansion packs already out, Armored Kill around the corner, and End Game and Aftermath still on the horizon, we're looking forward to many more hours of gameplay with you, and can't wait to see the stories you will tell through Battlelog and player created videos."With Medal of Honor's 2010 reboot, EA set out to match its competition's annual shooter, Call of Duty. EA's Los Angeles-based Danger Close studio is in charge of EA's Medal of Honor franchise, apparently trading off years with DICE and the Battlefield franchise. The two franchises currently share DICE's Frostbite 2.0 game engine, and Danger Close's next MoH employs DICE's Battlelog system as well. Thus far, EA has yet to best Activision's Call of Duty powerhouse (in terms of sales and critical reception) with its two shooter franchises.
See gameplay 'target' footage of Spielberg's canceled Project LMNO
It's common practice for developers to create "target" footage of their games early in the development process in order to give their artists and designers something to shoot for. Following its look back at the now-canceled collaboration between EA and director Steven Spielberg, Project LMNO, 1UP has posted what it says is target gameplay footage from the cooperative "escape" game. It's a (very) brief clip, but it clearly shows the A.I.-driven future girl "Eve" from a first-person perspective, and actions that imply that it's the player's character looking at her. The player sniffs a rose that's sitting in a vase on the table of the diner they appear to be in, and passes it to her. Eve smells it next, showing a range of reactions on her face, then abruptly bolts from the table when a sinister black Humvee pulls up outside. This is presumably the beginning of an escape sequence, and sees Eve performing inhuman acrobatic moves to traverse the restaurant. The footage is clearly pre-rendered, and it's not much to go on, but it's unquestionably neat to see what Project LMNO could have looked like. You can see for yourself just after the break.
1UP examines Spielberg's LMNO, the game that 'tried to do too much'
If EA and the Steven Spielberg couldn't pull of a first-person hybrid built on "escape gameplay" and driven by an emotional co-op dynamic, featuring an AI-controlled partner -- spoiler alert -- from the future, whose character evolution was to be determined by non-verbal interaction with the player, then who could pull it off? Probably no one. "LMNO," as this project was code-named, was officially canned by EA last month -- and it's been dead for at least a year, according to 1UP's new in-depth investigation into the game. The report -- and definitely read the whole thing -- is a compelling tale in and of itself: the inside scoop on a big-budget experiment (a "hyper-replayable" 2- to 3-hour game with no multiplayer) that would later morph into an Uncharted clone (complete with "an alien version of Megan Fox"), dubbed The Escape Artist, before being canceled altogether. But the LMNO story is also a striking reminder of just how inflexible AAA game development has become. EA tried admirably to invest in new IP several years ago, but its actually released games didn't provide the returns the publisher had expected from consumers. Had it come together as original designers Doug Church and Randy Smith once envisioned, LMNO could have been EA's most ambitious original IP to date. Instead, it fell apart as the industry fell back on iteration (you know, "sequelitis") and made jaw-dropping investments in socially-networked casual gaming as the path to future profitability. LMNO once carried the heavy burden of being the video game that would finally "make you cry." Assuming that the industry has yet to recognize this milestone as having been achieved, the mission now seems better suited for an indie developer with nothing to lose; one free from the concerns of the corporate goliath: namely, staying in business. [Pictured: Pre-Megan Fox "Eve" character concept; source: 1UP]
NYCC 09: Battlefield 1943 Pacific hands-on (XBLA)
Battlefield 1943 Pacific is just like ... well, other Battlefields. That's a compliment, by the way. 1943 is no janky spinoff. It's small in scope, sure, but it offers (and even improves upon -- read: no more health packs!) the core experience of its disc-based brethren. This is visible -- even playable -- in a pre-alpha build (XBLA version) on the New York Comic Con show floor. We got our hands on the Wake Island map, one of three in the downloadable game, which is modeled on the actual geographic location with a few gameplay-enhancing improvements. 1943's color palette is distinctly vibrant, clashing against the epic destruction that ensues once a match begins. As featured in Bad Company last year, the Frostbite game engine's destructible environments are exploding and imploding in 1943 as well, with buildings reduced to mere foundations as players carelessly toss grenades, launch rockets and even bomb from the skies (bombers can be somewhat controlled from within specially-marked, protected bombing HQs). Destruction is a gimmick -- but a good one. %Gallery-43905%
