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Confirmed: Dead Rising 2 has multiplayer
Hey, remember when a representative from Dead Rising 2's middleware developer, mental mill, mentioned during a GDC presentation that Dead Rising 2 would have "multiplayer sessions," and then another mental mill representative said the first representative misspoke, and meant to say "multiplatform?" Good. Keep that hilariously convoluted exchange locked away in your mind for a minute.Capcom development head Keiji Inafune recently confirmed to Eurogamer that Dead Rising 2 will have some form of online multiplayer component. No specifics about the multiplayer offerings have been revealed, though it's nice to finally have a clear answer on the existence of this long obfuscated feature.[Via Shacknews]
Dead Rising 2 multiplayer not confirmed, Capcom says
Just like every other year, GDC in 2009 brought with it a bevy of new information (and the ubiquitous Pat Benatar rumor). And unfortunately, during the rush to post information, it's easy for publishing outlets (including ourselves) to mishear something, misconstrue a piece of information and/or not have time to follow up with the information source. So when Jeff Haynes of IGN heard Laura Scholl of middleware developer mental mill on a Dead Rising 2 panel speaking about "6000 characters onscreen during multiplayer sessions," he reported on the piece of information just as he heard it.Unfortunately for Mr. Haynes though, Laura Scholl apparently misspoke. We contacted mental mill this morning for comment on the quote -- a quote that would ostensibly confirm an unnannounced mode for Dead Rising 2, mind you -- and Loretta Stevens told us that she was present at the panel when Ms. Scholl misspoke, saying, "She meant multiplatform." And so we went one step further and contacted Chris Kramer at Capcom to find out what he had to say about all of this: "Here's how it is: I believe what one person says about this project, Inafune-san. I don't know anything about this middleware provider." When we asked him straight up if the game will have multiplayer or not, he had this to say, "We have not announced much about the game at this point," remaining clandestine on the subject altogether. So while Dead Rising 2 may contain some form of multiplayer, as of right now, it's officially not confirmed.UPDATE: Laura Scholl has contacted us with further clarification of her statement, writing, "In my 'Making of Dead Rising 2' presentation at GDC this past Friday, while I was describing how Blue Castle is using mental mill technology in character development, I mistakenly referred to the game as multiplayer instead of multiplatform. I apologize for the confusion. The game is indeed multiplatform, and Blue Castle has done an amazing job creating incredibly photorealistic characters – from their skin tone to their clothing – in heavily populated and complex levels throughout the game. Gamers are going to be thrilled with how the game feels, looks and plays."
GDC09: Dead Rising 2 will have most rendered characters ever
During a GDC presentation about the bolstered graphics engine powering Dead Rising 2, Izmeth Siddeek, the game's character art lead, made a fairly startling proclomation: "Dead Rising 2 deals with the rendering of the greatest number of characters ever seen in a video game," he said. In other words, the massive amounts of on-screen zombies featured in the original Dead Rising will apparently increase by a huge margin in the sequel.The enlarged zombie processing power can be attributed to developer Blue Castle's implementation of new visual technology called Mental Mill, which is capable of rendering large groups of characters without sacrificing graphical quality. Mental Mill product manager Laura Scholl claimed the new software will allow over 6,000 zombies to appear on-screen, providing undead multitudes that will be easy on the eyes, but rough on our formerly uneaten brains.
