Gamescom-2013
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The Order: 1886 is not steampunk, Ready at Dawn boss says
The Order: 1886 debuted in a trailer at E3, showing three people in elaborate military formals, riding in a plush carriage through London's Victorian era. Dirigible-inspired hovercrafts float around Big Ben as the carriage rolls into Whitechapel, a dank, industrial part of town, and the trio carry heavy-duty weapons engraved with fleurs-de-lis. When they're attacked by a group of bipedal beasts, one passenger pulls out a gun that shoots lightning. These details caused us, and most other viewers, to casually label the game as "steampunk." The Order is not steampunk, Ready at Dawn co-founder Ru Weerasuriya told me during Gamescom. "It's a word that we don't use – it's the 's' word," Weerasuriya said. "We don't use that word purely because I think there's a connotation of 'steampunk' that's already been built into a lot of things out there – movies, anime, all that. That is not exactly the one we try to endear to. I think our world is a lot darker, grittier, dirtier and more real." If "steampunk" is the "s" word, then "fantasy" is the "f" word – Ready at Dawn isn't interested in creating an exaggerated, fantastical world full of things that could never exist. Weerasuriya wants The Order to challenge the validity of our real history, proposing an alternate timeline of events in Europe, specifically London, directly after the Industrial Revolution. "What if everything you know today and the events that happened did happen, but they didn't happen for the reason that you believe?" he asked. "What could be different in the way that we view our world? It's full of mystery and it's fun to see where those mysteries lie."
Battle Worlds: Kronos out in November, open beta in late October
Battle Worlds: Kronos, the turn-based strategy game by developer KING Art, which took in over double its $120k Kickstarter goal with $260,235, will launch in mid-November. The game will initially be available on PC, Mac and Linux, making its way to mobile and tablets by mid-2014. The hex-based, Advanced Wars-esque game will also begin an open beta several weeks before launch. The game, which has already passed Steam's Greenlight process, will be available through that digital distribution network, along with GOG.com and KING Arts' website. The studio hasn't decided on a tactical price yet for the game, but the strategy is to keep it under $30. The German developer isn't used to their games being on an international stage, nor having so many sales through digital distribution networks, since Germany still has a very robust retail PC business. "80 percent of our Kickstarter was internationally supported," KING Art studio head Jan Theysen told us today at Gamescom. "Also, 80 percent of our sales will be digital versus boxed." A boxed version is planned for Germany and the studio is having meetings about boxed versions for other territories. Battle Worlds: Kronos will also add free downloadable content after launch to all players. Theysen tells us depending on sales, the company will discuss making a Kronos sequel or move on to create another game. Either way, Theysen says the studio has enjoyed the freedom the Kickstarter model gave them in bringing Battle Worlds: Kronos to the public.
Project Spark, Kinect create mini mocap studio in your living room
Up next from the "could be cool but will inevitably get real creepy, real fast" research team at Microsoft comes the news that Project Spark will be able to use Kinect to bring your likeness and even your voice into the game. Speaking at Gamescom, Team Dakota demonstrated how Kinect can accomplish facial motion capture and have it applied to an in-game character, how full-body captures could create new animations, and how audio could be recorded and modulated in a number of ways. You can just go on ahead and start counting the minutes until this is used for a particularly nerdy marriage proposal and/or breakup. (Though, breaking up by animated cutscene? Almost worth it.) Team Dakota also revealed that invitations will by flying out to Project Spark's registered beta participants at the end of October for Windows 8 devices and in January for Xbox One owners. You can register for the beta here. Revealed at E3, Project Spark is a user-creation driven game that Microsoft has described as an "open-world digital canvas that allows you to create your own games, stories, worlds, and share them with everyone." You can check out 40 minutes of Spark in action here.
Diablo III PvP mode a 'tricky question' for Blizzard
Diablo III's long-awaited PvP mode might require a great deal more patience on behalf of the playerbase -- perhaps eternal patience. At Gamescom, Game Director Josh Mosqueira was cagey about the mode ever seeing the light of day: "That's a really tricky question to answer. It's got to be Blizzard quality." Late last year, Blizzard scrapped its current plans for a PvP mode in favor of starting over. Mosqueira said this week that the team is still struggling to overcome several obstacles in creating a new PvP mode, including a limited number of team members for the project, a desire to see PvP at all levels, and a problem with converting the existing PvE gameplay to work for PvP. "In Diablo, the core mechanics are really built around one character fighting scores of monsters, right?" Mosqueira said. "There's a lot of control, a lot of AOE, and some of that stuff starts to not necessarily break down, but it starts to fray at the edges when you're actually now focused on two people, or four people."
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare growing to other platforms
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will sprout first on Xbox One and Xbox 360, as Microsoft was keen to point out at its Gamescom showcase this week. A PC version will arrive shortly after, and now we've learned from PopCap producer Brian Lindley that other platforms are also in the works. "We'll reveal more details about other platforms in the future," he tells Joystiq. Of course, we can only guess at what those platforms might be. Given the prolific nature of the original Plants vs. Zombies, and the expected outgrowth of its recently released sequel, we're going with a low-ball estimate of "all of them." Sony platforms, at the very least, seem like a shoe-in."
Dungeon of the Endless is roguelike, tower defense sci-fi and fantasy
"We were drunk." Amplitude Studios Game Director Max von Knorring introduces Dungeon of the Endless to me at Gamescom with the story of a late-night, booze-infused, group brainstorming session. He recalls that when his team stumbled into work the next morning, they all had ideas for a new game: something retro-inspired, a roguelike with elements of tower defense, RPGs and Dungeon Keeper, and something to play with friends. One week later Amplitude had a prototype for Dungeon of the Endless, a 2D pixel romp set in a 3D world, within the sci-fi-fantasy universe of Endless Space and Endless Legend. A brief trailer teased Dungeon of the Endless earlier this month, showing an emergency space pod crashing into a nearby planet, the crew of three inside brushing off, standing up, and one of them opening the door to fire a pistol at ... something. The trailer ends with the question, "What's behind the door?" The second reveal trailer answers that question in two parts: Monsters. And then dead monsters.
Warface hits the trenches today in final closed beta
Crytek's perpetual in-beta freemium shooter Warface has initiated another closed beta run today, open to all who're registered through Crytek's Gface service. This will be the final round of beta testing before the game launches in North America, Europe and Turkey later this year. Warface, a free-to-play online shooter with multiple classes spanning both competitive and co-operative game modes, is a joint effort between Crytek and Trion Worlds. Warface, in combination with Gface, marks Crytek's first steps toward becoming a fully free-to-play company, which it hopes will happen within the next five years.
Yoshida takes a leisurely look at PS4's interface
Sony opened its Gamescom 2013 press conference with a subdued presentation of the PlayStation 4's interface by Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida. The exec explored the menus, watched and then joined a game stream, showed off some social functionality and concluded with a tweet to start the show. Hang on, we're not sure we can use the word "subdued" to describe a video with several minutes of Killzone: Shadow Fall gunplay, so let's say "confident."
Fable Legends trades character creation for character definition
In the first three Fable games, the player's character has essentially been a blank slate, a hunk of marble waiting to be chiseled by player choices (and the occasional player mistake). It has always been up to the player to decide what their hero specialized in, to choose exactly how their hero looked and to govern their hero's morality. The character was yours from top to bottom. Fable Legends, just announced for the Xbox One, is taking a different approach. You'll still be able to customize your hero to a certain degree – at the barber shop, etc. – but Fable Legends ditches the blank slate of previous games for more defined characters. They all have unique voices, personalities and abilities. Yes, that means the sorceress you see in the video above will always be a sorceress. This more rigid character system is a fundamental change to the Fable formula, but the interesting part is it may not even be the most significant departure.
Need for Speed franchise strives to feel more cohesive
EA executive producer Marcus Nilsson told Joystiq he wants the Need for Speed franchise to have more continuity, and for its various games to feel more connected to one another. Looking back on the uneven history of Need for Speed games (remember that one where you took down an international crime syndicate?), Nilsson said the brand has "potentially" lacked some clear strategy for where it's going. "That's something that we, as we get new ownership into it, can react to and try to establish," Nilsson said at Gamescom, referring to Need for Speed: Rivals developer Ghost Games, which has taken on the racer franchise from Criterion Games. That goal becomes complicated when there's a movie in the mix, though Nilsson said there is "inspiration going back and forth" between Hollywood and EA. "But what I'm saying in the future is that there'll be probably be a much more handheld approach between where you see each product of Need for Speed going, like you can understand what's happening. "Why does it have to be: okay, Need for Speed this series is black, Need for Speed that year is white. Whatever I do, I want to know [what I'm getting]."
Super Joystiq Podcast Special: Gamescom 2013 Day 3
It's the first official day of Gamescom 2013, and number three of five Super Joystiq Podcast Specials from Germany. The big announcements may be over, but the big show is just getting starting. The regular crew is back with guests Ananda Gupta and Garth DeAngelis from Firaxis, and Jasper Koning from Awesomenauts developer Ronimo Games. On the slate for today: details on XCOM: Enemy Within, insight into the Awesomenauts Kickstarter and expansion Starstorm, impressions from the show floor, and more. The Great Gamescom Podcast Giveaways of 2013 continues full steam ahead! In today's episode, we reveal the password required to enter to win a Racanooki Tanooki suit hoodie from 80stees.com. Instructions for how to enter can be found on this post, and after the break. Be sure to catch each episode every day this week for a new giveaway. See you back here tomorrow! Listen to the Super Joystiq Podcast: Subscribe to the Super Joystiq Podcast in iTunes Add the Super Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator Download the MP3 directly Details about each segment are available after the break.
Gamescom 2013: SMITE's latest god, new game mode, and Tencent partnership
MOBAs are great for the MMO gamer afflicted by that nasty distraction called life. They offer progression, PvP, and even some theorycrafting you can take to the water-cooler gatherings at work. In some cases, MOBAs even grant the player a variety of ways to play the game. SMITE is one of these gems. During our pre-Gamescom chat with Todd Harris, co-founder and COO of Hi-Rez Studios, we learned a few details about SMITE's coming additions of a new Match-of-the-Day game mode and the Chinese-themed god named Zhong Kui.
Gamescom 2013: In-depth looks at EverQuest Next and EQ Next: Landmark
SOE's David Georgeson walked Gamescom attendees through some of the finer points of both EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next: Landmark today, focusing on the emergent gameplay, destructible environments, and vast flexibility you'll potentially find in both halves of the game. Most of the information provided on EverQuest Next falls into the "things we already knew" category: The world is procedurally generated, destructible, tiered, and made of voxels. AI responds to your actions in lieu of sticking to specific spawn points; for example, Orcs will naturally search for areas with low guard patrols and high traffic so they can make the most of their thievery and will leave for greener pastures should you start making their work difficult by killing them or alerting guards. There were new details on Landmark, however (check out this great post from MJ to see what we knew before). You can choose between male and female heroes and will begin as an Adventurer class at one of the world's great landmarks. From there, you can adventure freely into the world, find a spot you like, and claim it as your own. Once your spot is claimed, you can build on it however you see fit or move on to claim other areas and link them all together.
Endless Space dev reveals surprise new game: Endless Legend
The reveal trailer for Dungeon of the Endless crash-landed earlier this month, teasing a new, retro-styled game from Endless Space developer Amplitude Studios. That announcement implied its mysteries would be revealed at Gamescom, but Amplitude had an entirely different secret waiting for us: It's also developing Endless Legend, a 4X strategy title not styled in pixelated 3D or related to interstellar travel. Both Dungeon of the Endless and Endless Legend are due out in alpha by the end of the year. Endless Legend is a "civilization fantasy game," Amplitude Creative Director Romain de Waubert de Genlis told me at Gamescom today, during a run-through of the game's early-alpha build. Players craft empires in a fantasy setting, complete with orcs, castles and Broken Lords, a playable faction of "vampire knights." These noblemen must slaughter civilizations in order to survive, but they have souls and don't inherently enjoy killing people. Whether they're "broken" because they care or because they kill is up to the player.
Gamescom 2013: Diablo III unveils its first expansion, Reaper of Souls
What happens when an angel gets ahold of a demon's soulstone in Diablo III? You probably don't want to know; it's not going to be pretty. The game's first expansion, Reaper of Souls, was announced today at Gamescom, and the fact that Malthael the angel possesses the soulstone harboring Diablo himself is all the justification you need for fighting him. This is a very bad thing. All right, the mechanical side of things does come into play. Even if you don't care about the lore or about fighting off fallen angels, you can still care about features like a refined loot system that focuses on providing less loot that's more likely to be useful instead of quite so much garbage. There's also a new class being added, the Crusader, who looks similar at a glance to Diablo II's Paladin. Add in a new NPC who can reallocate stats on gear and you've probably got all of the incentive you need to look forward to the expansion.
Call of Duty: Ghosts' Blitz mode caffeinates Capture the Flag
Playing a first-person shooter with a horde of strangers in a noisy trade show party is never ideal, but the fundamentals of Call of Duty: Ghosts' new multiplayer mode, Blitz, are pretty easy to grasp. Two opposing teams are dropped onto a map. There are two capture points on the map, one in each team's base. The goal is simple: Each team must capture the opposing control point while simultaneously protecting their own. The first team to 15 captures wins. But there's a twist: The instant a player steps into an enemy control point, they are immediately teleported back to their base. You don't have to hold the control point for even a second. There's no flag to carry back to your base. The score tally just ticks up instantaneously and then you're right back in your own base, ready to defend it. Basically, Blitz is capture the flag on amphetamines, an adaptation of the classic game type for the twitchy, split-second confrontations we've come to expect from Call of Duty.
Knack features local co-op built with younger players in mind
Knack includes a local co-op mode that should, according to game creator and system architect Mark Cerny, help kids around 5 to 7 years old play the PS4 launch game. At Gamescom, Cerny showed us a brief demonstration of the same-screen mode, in which a second player controls a robot version of Knack who provides support for the first player. Like Knack himself, the silver robo-Knack can combat and defeat enemies to grab their parts and grow bigger. The difference is that when Knack gets hurt and becomes smaller and weaker, robot Knack can donate his parts to the damaged Knack. Cerny noted that the two-player mode allows a parent to jump in and help his seven-year old child playing as the main Knack, and for a younger player like a five-year old to play as robot Knack without harming the overall experience. "Progress is gated by what Knack does," said Cerny, indicating the second player won't hinder the first player as he or she progresses through the campaign. Cerny wants Knack to be an inclusive, family-orientated game; he previously showed how developer Japan Studio built a giant DualShock to help its developers see how it would be to be an 8-year-old holding the controller. Knack will be one of the games available on the PS4's launch day, November 15 in North America and November 29 in Europe.
Beyond: Two Souls has multiplayer, an app that turns touchscreens into controllers
Beyond: Two Souls features two-player, co-op multiplayer, with one person controlling Jodi Holmes, the main protagonist, and the other controlling Aiden, the entity tethered to her entire existence, Quantic Dream founder David Cage revealed at Gamescom. Players pass control between Jodi and Aiden, on a single screen, by pressing triangle. Yes, press triangle to Jodi. In multiplayer or solo, Beyond is playable with iOS and Android touchscreen devices, with the "Beyond Touch" app. It's a free app that allows players to control a character – it's a blank slate, with no buttons or on-screen sticks, that players use like a touchpad. Slide one finger around the screen and the character moves. The game automatically switches to easy mode when a touchscreen controller is in use. Cage said the touchscreen feature is an attempt to reel in casual players or those who don't play games often. Most people are comfortable with a smartphone, though avid players will want to use the DualShock controller, Cage said.
Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls expansion revealed
Today at a Gamescom press conference, Blizzard announced the "Reaper of Souls" expansion pack for Diablo 3. Game Director Josh Mosquiera took the stage to reveal a new class, the Crusader, a burly and heavily armored character. Reaper of Souls will feature a new act, a higher level cap, new endgame options and, of course, more loot. Reaper of Souls centers around Malthael, the angel of death, who has seized control of the black soulstone, which houses the soul of Diablo himself. Blizzard promises a "darker" game this time a round, and Malthael is certainly dark, able to siphon souls from the people of Sanctuary, even allowing him to turn citizens into his minions. Of course, Reaper of Souls will include new monsters, including fallen angels.
Call of Duty: Ghosts upgrade from PS3 to PS4 costs $10
Players that own Call of Duty: Ghosts on PS3 will be able to purchase the PS4 version for $10, €10 or £10 for a limited time, Activision announced today. This follows Sony's announcement last night that PS4 games will be offered at a "significantly discounted" price – also for a limited time – to those who already own the PS3 version. Sony didn't mention a specific price at the time, but the $10 point lines up with retailer next-gen upgrades. Ghosts, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Watch Dogs and Battlefield 4 – and specifically the publishers Activision, Ubisoft, EA and Warner Bros. – will participate in the PS3-PS4 upgrade program. Player stats from Ghosts will transfer from PS3 to PS4, Activision previously announced.
