Scott-Warner
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Halo 4 lead designer joins Visceral
Halo 4's lead designer Scott Warner has joined Visceral Games. Warner announced the career change via Twitter, and will be a design director with Visceral. Visceral, a subsidiary of EA, is the developer of the Dead Space series. Visceral Games is currently working on a project outside the horror franchise, and a Star Wars game for next-gen consoles.
What went wrong with Halo 4's Prometheans
"We had a number of concerns about the Forerunners that we thought went not completely according to plan and could be improved upon," 343 Industries design director Scott Warner told the audience at his GDC 2013 panel, "The Design of New Enemies for Halo 4," which discussed the design philosophies behind the game's new breed of bad guys.First and foremost, communication issues between the design and artwork departments exacerbated problems early in the studio's existence – growing pains associated with starting a new company. "We were a brand new team at 343," Warner said. "You have to consider the challenge that we had was starting from zero people and going to about 340 before we shipped."In a similar vein, the "absence of high level vision" on the various creatures' gameplay mechanics caused 343 to spend time developing ideas that would eventually prove fruitless: "It would have been easier for us to understand if we'd had more definition around these characters early on, as far as who they were." An early prototype build was shown as an example, in which two Promethean Knights balled themselves up like Samus and attacked Master Chief.
Mercenaries 2 uses 30% of PS3, but is that a surprise?
The official Mercenaries 2 board has been hopping lately and the lead designer, Scott Warner, has addressed many question, a few of which are interesting. The first to strike a "hmm, neat" chord was this tidbit: " There will be an initial load when you pop the Mercs 2 disc in but there will be no loading in the game world itself." Hooray! Loading sucks. Especially when trying to cross to a different side of the city in, say, the Grand Theft Auto games. No load times is good news. While unrelated, the only other game boasting little or no load times is the PS2 RPG, Rogue Galaxy. Looks neat for those Skies of Arcadia lovers (imagine... pirates, but this time, in space!).Now to address the subject line. Scott has admitted, "We estimate that we are currently only tapping around 30% of the PS3's potential power." But... Mercenaries 2 looks pretty nice already! Is this really news, though? Look at the first titles on most any system and compare them to titles a year later. There's a huge difference. Heck, just compare Final Fantasy 7 to Final Fantasy 8. Or... Halo to Halo 2? Not as good an example... whatever. The point is -- Sony's initial titles are already on par with competition graphically and a year behind. Granted the 360 isn't at optimum potential (usually happens at the end of a console's life), but with so much room to improve, we're all in for a treat! And a war! Look for Mercenaries 2 sometime in 2007.
