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Del Toro in Insane talks with 'very, very big company'
Though THQ is no longer producing Insane, Guillermo del Toro's game continues its slow progress toward existence. Another publisher has shown interest in the game, the intellectual property of which was returned to del Toro after THQ dropped the project."We are in talks with a very, very big company. I can't say who, but it's one of the big ones," del Toro told the Toronto Sun. "They really responded to the game, they responded to what we were trying."The publisher isn't the only part of the project undergoing changes. "Some of the devices of the game I need to update, because now I've seen them in other games that just came out," del Toro said. "That always happens. But the principle we're trying to do with the game is to make it a really immersive narrative experience. It's still a really challenging proposal."Now, what game overlapped with Insane's planned systems? We're guessing Style Savvy: Trendsetters.
It 'seems' like Guillermo del Toro's Insane may live on after THQ
Even though THQ's reconfiguration earlier this year presumably spelled deAth for inSane, Guilermo del Toro still tried to shop it around. He's hopeful that the game is back on track to production now, going on to say "it seems like we're going to be developing it after the first meeting we had." "I can't disclose where it was, but we went to a great developer on the first meeting and it seems that they're picking it up because they love the package." He says that a year and a half has been spent working on the game already, with potentially two years' work ahead before the game can be released. "We put a good year and a half into it and we have the universe quite figured out, but we are now going to take that and start doing all the leg work with coding it, creating the engine, and starting to test it. It's going to take a good two years of modeling and rendering and creating the environments and all of that. The basic tenants of the game is that it's created, but now we're going to need to start actually making it."As for the original plans of creating a trilogy, that idea is not so set in stone any more. "I think we're going to concentrate on making it a great game and then we'll see. Obviously, among the assets was that idea, so I think there's a possibility. But we are not exploring it."
Del Toro still shopping 'Insane' concept around, hired GlaDOS for his movie
THQ may have put the kibosh on director Guillermo del Toro's Insane project, but that doesn't mean the idea is dead and gone forever.Del Toro is in the middle of doing press for his upcoming Pacific Rim movie at the New York Comic Con this week, and he mentioned that he's still trying to find a good game company partner for Insane. "Now we are talking to developers," Del Toro said, according to Kotaku. "When something doesn't happen in one way, I just continue pursuing it in another way. I'm not giving up on Insane."Asked for a dream developer to work with, Del Toro said he's a big fan of Valve and the games they make. In fact, one of the robots in Pacific Rim will be played by voice actress Ellen McClain, also known as GlaDOS from Valve's Portal series. "I called the guys at Valve and said, you know how much I am a fan of Portal, can the AI be GlaDOS?" Del Toro said.
Guillermo del Toro's 'Insane' franchise also out at THQ
THQ president Jason Rubin just announced that THQ game Insane is no longer in production. "We have decided not to pursue further pre-production on Insane, and have returned all of our IP rights to Guillermo del Toro," Rubin said. It is a project the embattled publisher is no longer pursuing, and was cited alongside Facebook, mobile, and social as "outside of our core business."Director del Toro could take the rights and produce the game elsewhere. He's retained film rights since the project was first announced.Insane was announced during the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, but never showed up during various gaming events across the past two years. Aside from it being a project developed in tandem with film director Guillermo del Toro, little is known. Saints Row developer Volition was working on the first game in the planned trilogy, and is now known to be developing a full sequel to last year's Saints Row: The Third.Update: THQ says the game "was in very early development," and that "no teams/staff are affected by this decision." When asked whether del Toro also retains any code/assets created for the project thus far, we were told, "The rights for the property have been returned to Guillermo for his future use/exploration."
THQ's new head promises no more job cuts, but 'everything is up for change'
For a guy who's only been on the job for a dozen days, newly appointed THQ president Jason Rubin is awfully comfortable answering very specific questions. He probably should be, given his title, but it was impressive nonetheless that he was able to speak with such specificity to nebulous projects like Guillermo del Toro's planned "Insane" trilogy. "Currently it's still in the slate," Rubin told Joystiq in an E3 interview. That doesn't mean the barely detailed project is a sure thing, of course. THQ will be "a different company" in the next year or two, according to Rubin. Will ambitious projects like Insane make the cut?"I'm taking every project as clay, a clay statue that's been built. It's not nearly been completed. It can be augmented, it can be shrunk, it can be changed. Everything is up for change to make the best possible product that could be," Rubin said.With THQ's financial troubles as of late, it's fair to wonder if the trilogy will ever materialize, not to mention Turtle Rock's unnamed FPS project, or THQ Montreal's new IP. "I'm well aware of the other projects that are kind of in what you would call 'nebulous states' (though internally they may not be so nebulous)," Rubin said. "I have to go around and look at everything over the next few weeks, next month, and I have to then decide which of the titles are the titles we're gonna focus on based on what I believe our future should be."Thankfully for THQ's employees (approximately 1,750 as of March 31, 2011), the coming change within the publisher doesn't mean a reckoning. "We have the appropriate number of teams and the appropriate number of people working on products, and we're not gonna be continuing to cut teams," Rubin told us. "But as far as product goes, I think we'll have to find out exactly where that's going."
THQ reaffirms existence of inSane, other games
Director Guillermo Del Toro's THQ project, inSane, "is not cancelled" according to THQ's Executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson. The executive went to Twitter last night to make the declaration.The statement comes a couple days after THQ, which reported a loss of $239.9 million in the previous fiscal year, announced during an investor call it was looking to unload Tomonobu Itagaki's Devil's Third for a few extra bucks.During that same investor call, the company also reiterated that the Turtle Rock Studios (Left 4 Dead) FPS and Patrice Désilets' game, speculated to be 1666, are still in production.
Jetman soars over Rio, flies circles around historical landmarks (video)
Why would you want to leap out of a perfectly good aircraft? To fly a winged jetpack over the city of Rio de Janeiro, of course. It sounds nuts, but it's just a day in the life for Yves Rossy, the self proclaimed "Jetman" who flew over the Grand Canyon last year. Since soaring over the Rio Grande, Rossy has pitted his carbon-fiber wings against a rally car on Top Gear, taken to the skies over Abu Dhabi and, most recently, buzzed Brazil's famous Christ the Redeemer statue. Jetman rocketed past the monument on an 11 minute flight earlier this week, beginning his journey by dropping out of a helicopter over Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas. Rossy pulled his Rocketeer trick and eventually parachuted to safety on Copacabana beach. Sound fun? Head past the break to see the man in action. Us? We'll keep our feet planted on terra firma, thanks.
The OverAchiever: Help update our list of evil achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the abyss stares back. Almost two years ago, I wrote a series of articles for OverAchiever that turned out to be one of the most popular themes the column's ever visited: evil achievements. It turns out that a lot of folks care deeply about achievements that have been -- allow me to quote myself -- "milked from the angry teat of Satan himself." Now, it has to be said that all achievements are technically optional. No one is forcing you to do anything, why do you play this game anyway if you aren't having fun, yadda yadda ... all true. But I assume you're reading The OverAchiever because you really like achievements and you think they add something to the game. (Either that, or you're just reading because you're bored, but that's fine too.) Personally, I don't think players really mind difficult achievements or even achievements that they have to peck away at over an extended period of time. But there's a line between an achievement that is genuinely difficult on its own merits and one that makes you privately think the developers want you dead. So with that in mind, how would we reconstruct a list of evil achievements in 2012 during the Cataclysm era? You can find the original series here if you're interested in a trip down Memory Lane, although I'll give you a quick rundown on them past the cut: Evil Achievements: Spotlight on Justicar/Conqueror, The Immortal, and Accomplished Angler Evil Achievements: The 25 most evil achievements, #25-16 Evil Achievements: The 25 most evil achievements, #15-6 Evil Achievements: The 25 most evil achievements, #5-1
New Year reveler crafts Kanye-approved EL Wire glasses: light up as the bass pounds (video)
The bar-laden spectacles that Kanye West popularized have just been reborn, and dare we say, they're harder, better, faster and stronger. YouTube user ch00ftech decided to borrow a few good great ideas while adding in a few twists of his own, resulting in the creation of EL Wire Kanye glasses that actually light up when the beat pulses. There's a deep, deep dive into the technicalities down in the source link, but for the 99 percenters in attendance, the video just below says it all.
NASA building a harpoon to fire at comets, suddenly renders plot of 'Armageddon' plausible (video)
Whatever Michael Bay uses to propel that "high-concept" imagination of his, he's obviously passed some of it to the boys at NASA's Goddard Space Flight center. A team there is developing a hollow-bodied harpoon that can be fired from a cannon toward comets too dangerous to land on. Once landed, it fills up with sub-surface samples before winched back aboard the waiting space craft. It's currently being tested by firing the harpoon (using a six foot ballista) into a bucket of dirt -- if they fired it horizontally it'd travel about a mile. After the break we've got video explaining this madness in some detail -- which we promise is Aerosmith-ballad free.
Ken Levine and Guillermo del Toro talk films, monsters, and narrative on latest Irrational Interviews
We've got a perfect excuse for you to once again don that Big Daddy costume from Halloween of aught seven: a podcast. Wait, wait, hear us out -- the podcast is Irrational Games' own "Irrational Interviews," and stars none other than BioShock and BioShock Infinite creative lead Ken Levine. Oh, also, it's totally Halloween again, so you probably need a costume anyway. Furthermore, Mr. Levine's speaking with film director slash game developer Guillermo del Toro -- behind films such as Pan's Labyrinth and Blade 2, and heading up creative duties on THQ's inSane -- and it's just the first half of a two-parter. If it were ever a good day to hear two creative virtuosos wax philosophical about making scary monsters, today is that day.
Del Toro's Insane to be a sandbox game, Guy Davis doing creature designs
Like a shambling horror in one of his own films, Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming project with THQ, Insane, is slowly creeping into the light. In an interview with MTV, the filmmaker turned game creator revealed that Insane will be a sandbox game, which makes sense given developer Volition's pedigree (Red Faction, Saints Row). He also offered hints about exactly what kind of horror to expect, noting that Insane is "Lovecraftian in a very sick way." He added that the game's creatures are "obscenely fun and unique," which they should be, given they're being designed by Guy Davis. Davis is best known for his work on the Hellboy and B.P.R.D. comics, both of which have a Lovecraftian bent. The art department will also be bolstered by Francisco Ruis Velasco, who worked on Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. The first planned installment of Insane will (hopefully) begin terrifying gamers in 2013.
inSane planned as trilogy, but 'if the first game doesn't work, there won't be a trilogy,' Bilson says
Guillermo del Toro's forthcoming franchise for THQ -- the awkwardly innercapped inSane -- may be planned as a trilogy, but that doesn't mean it'll necessarily play out that way. Though THQ is confident in del Toro and the franchise, Core Games veep Danny Bilson has a realistic outlook on the franchise's ability to expand to a trilogy. "We have aspirations to make a trilogy," Bilson told a gathering of press at GDC this week, including Joystiq. "If the first game doesn't work, there won't be a trilogy. It's not complicated." Bilson cited Hollywood's ability to make trilogies as an example of how not complicated this concept is. "If Avatar had been a flop then there wouldn't be two more sequels. And if the first Matrix wasn't a success there wouldn't be two more sequels." For Bilson and THQ, it means delivering quality products first. "We have to succeed on the first one. And then we have to succeed on the second one! And then you can make the third one. It's not really that arrogant, if you will, to plan a trilogy because we're very realistic." And unlike Hollywood, "we can't make two at once," Bilson jokes. "It doesn't cost that much to plan, right?" Volition president Mike Kulas said. "We're not building a bunch of assets for the future games." Instead, Kulas estimates that "a couple percent of the total budget of the second game will be spent before we have a better idea of how the first one's shaping up." As the studio responsible for collaborating with Del Toro on inSane, Volition has to succeed where many others have failed: working with Hollywood to create a successful video game franchise.
inSane trilogy game rights held by THQ, del Toro keeps movie rights
Wanna hear something crazy? Guillermo del Toro's inSane game project is gonna be a trilogy. Of course, that lengthy proposal, as documented by THQ, will still be bound by reason -- at least, by the reasonable success of the "first chapter in the series," due in 2013. (Remember how that Too Human "trilogy" started ... and stalled?) "With this new series of video games, I want to take players to a place they have never seen before, where every single action makes them question their own senses of morality and reality," said a confident del Toro as if narrating atop the mysterious and positively creepy teaser (embedded after the break). "THQ and Volition, Inc. are equally excited to make this vision of a completely new game universe into a reality." Not only excited, THQ is heavily invested in what it's dubbed "an original trilogy of triple-A games." The publisher will retain the intellectual property rights to the inSane games, while del Toro holds the rights to any associated "filmed entertainment" projects. It sounds like our sanity could be tested. A lot.
From the VGAs Red Carpet: Guillermo del Toro and THQ's Danny Bilson
THQ Executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson stopped by our red carpet post at the VGAs this weekend with director Guillermo del Toro in tow, and Bilson talked with us about all of THQ's upcoming properties, including the quickly ensuing Red Faction movie on SyFy. "They're prepping right now," he promised, "And there's another one coming that we're going to announce soon." Would that be the elusive Saints Row 3? "I can't talk about it or they'll cut my head off," he said. "But we're going to be talking about it at some point in the future in a big way." For his part, Guillermo del Toro decided to work with THQ on the newly revealed inSane because he believes that gaming "is one of the most immersive mediums for storytelling right now." We asked him to tick off a few specifics, and he dutifully did. "Left 4 Dead has passages that are incredibly scary. Silent Hill is great, and Shadow of the Colossus was incredibly moving. There are Call of Duty moments that are better than any war movie." Bilson interrupted at that one. "Wait until they ride the bus in the first level of Homefront!" As for del Toro's inSane, Bilson says, "we're only focusing on the game right now, and whatever happens later happens later. But we're building an incredible world together that we will be talking about more later on." We'll look forward to it.
Guillermo Del Toro's inSane finally revealed
As promised, the Spike VGAs played host to the unveiling of the joint project between THQ and Pan's Labyrinth director, Guillermo Del Toro. Titled inSane, nothing was revealed about the game's actual gameplay -- it's being developed by Volition and won't be launching until sometime in 2013 (no joke!). Based on the initial trailer, it's clear that it'll be a horror game. Hit the jump for the trailer. Update: THQ's Danny Bilson offered a little more via Twitter, stating that THQ and Del Toro have been working together on the game for six months so far and just finished up "the story beats" yesterday, whatever that means. Finally, Bilson described the game as a "Horror Adventure Title."
Insane in the Membrane no longer requires Shen'dralar reputation in Cataclysm
Are you one of the true crazies trying to complete Insane in the Membrane before Cataclysm? Things just might have gotten a little easier for you, as Blizzard has officially clarified issues surrounding the achievement. According to this post on the new community site, Insane in the Membrane will still be in Cataclysm, as will the Bloodsail Buccaneer faction. The Shen'dralar, however, are disappearing once Deathwing returns, and as such, their faction has been removed as part of the feat of strength. Read the whole post after the break.
Guillermo Del Toro's THQ game to be revealed during VGAs
"You've heard rumors of us working with a big film director who is actually a big gamer," THQ core games EVP Danny Bilson said during his keynote at the IGDA Leadership Forum. Uh, dude, heads-up: those aren't rumors any more. As it turns out, we'll finally get an official announcement about Guillermo del Toro's THQ project during the Spike VGAs next month. "He's a gamer who wants to make a great game," said Bilson about director Guillermo del Toro, "and has very interesting points of view and is partnered very closely with myself and my writing partner, Paul." Bilson revealed that THQ "will be announcing the game title and the studio and all of that on the VGA awards in about a month." If you're late to the party, catch up on some of our previous coverage here. Del Toro's game will have Lovecraftian themes to it ---- which is great, because we've always felt there should be more awesome games about Cthulhu.
Best case scenario: Del Toro's 'Lovecraftian' THQ game in 2013
Pan's Labyrinth director and The Strain co-author Guillermo Del Toro has confirmed earlier reports that he's collaborating with THQ on high-profile video games. Speaking to MTV news, Del Toro said talks involved "huge games, huge world creation and long deadlines." How long, exactly? "With THQ we're looking at around a three year developing deadline for each game," he said. Though it's unclear how many projects are encompassed by the deal, the director claimed each is being explored in a "serious" manner. "Expect the first game, best case scenario, 2013." You can also expect it to be a "Lovecraftian thing" and a "very different type of horror game." Del Toro also recounted his experience with the cancelled "Sundown," one of several games that he had pitched in 2006. "It was eerily similar to Left 4 Dead, which I adore and am addicted to and that, in the household, is considered a 'family game.'" Wait ... if that's a family game, can you imagine how scary this THQ collaboration will be? We were just going to go with a "Boo Blox" joke, you know?
Report: Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro in talks with THQ
Writing on LA Times' Hero Complex blog, Ben Fritz reports that film director Guillermo del Toro is looking to forge a partnership with Red Faction publisher THQ. Though del Toro, who directed Pan's Labyrinth and almost directed The Hobbit, has refrained from naming the custodian of his video game vision, he recently admitted that he was in talks with a "big company" to collaborate on "technically and narratively very interesting" projects. THQ is no stranger to films and has adopted an enthusiastic stance on their intersection with games. The publisher is currently preparing an original sci-fi (and Syfy) movie based on the Red Faction franchise, set to debut alongside the latest game in March 2011. THQ's Core Games VP, Danny Bilson, has expressed belief in the "Hollywood model" of IP ownership, "which is that, the bigger the artist, the more important, the more successful they are, the bigger share they get." Bilson has been aggressive in acquiring high-profile talent and products for THQ (such as Devil's Third, led by Tomonobu Itagaki), and predicted that the company's lineup of partnerships would impress us over the next few months. "Wait till you see our announcements! You're going to go, 'oh my God'."
