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Red Faction: Armageddon and the balance of open-world versus story-driven
THQ and Volition brought Red Faction: Armageddon to Comic-Con last weekend, and even though the demo on display was the same one we saw behind closed doors at E3, we threatened to collapse their headquarters with a Nano Forge if they didn't tell us something new about the game. Volition producer Dan Sutton and writer Drew Holmes gave us a little insight on what they're planning to do with the story of Darius Mason, Alec's grandson. Let's get the important stuff out of the way first: The sledgehammer is coming back, so don't worry about that. As for the Ostrich, I didn't get confirmation so much as laughter from the developers, but they said that there would probably be something silly in the game this time around, depending on what the community came up with. "It's up to NeoGAF," joked Holmes. "Someone will photoshop something, and then we'll be stuck." %Gallery-97741%
THQ's Danny Bilson reveals the universe of Red Faction media
THQ's Core Games VP Danny Bilson contributed to a panel with a few Syfy execs this past weekend at Comic-Con, along with Andrew Kreisberg, writer for the upcoming Red Faction: Origins movie. The panel was about "transmedia" in general and Red Faction specifically, with THQ being a prime example of a company trying to tell (and sell) a universe's stories across multiple platforms and media. The way it's all going to work is that Red Faction Guerilla starred Alex Mason, Red Faction: Origins will star his son and daughter Jake and Myra, and then Red Faction Armageddon will star Darius Mason, Alex's grandson. Kriesberg revealed that the movie will feature "three sort of main factions," and that "they're all sort of right. Everyone thinks this is their planet, and that's what makes the drama." Kriesberg shared one line from the movie that he believes wraps up a major theme: "It's hard to win a war, because the winners have to clean up." Bilson also mentioned the upcoming downloadable game, and said that one of the factions from the movie, the White Faction, will have "elements" in the XBLA and PSN title. Bilson said that THQ's got "two more of these" transmedia properties "in the hopper" -- we presume he means Saints Row and de Blob, both previously revealed to be in progress.
Red Faction: Origins movie to debut on SyFy in March 2011
This March -- for the first time ever -- you may have a non-ironic interest in watching a SyFy original movie. That's because the live-action Red Faction movie, now called Red Faction: Origins, will be airing on the network during that month, coinciding with the release of Red Faction: Armageddon. So that's what that other domain registration was about! The two-hour "pilot" movie (meaning it'll be a series if it does well) takes place between the Guerrilla and Armageddon games, focusing on Alec Mason's last surviving son Jake, who fights against a new human army dedicated to destroying the Red Faction. Somehow, Jake's sister has gotten involved with this group. We can assume because it's a SyFy movie that she's also been cursed to turn into a weresnake at night, or that she arrives on a train filled with spiders who have been snacking on nitroglycerin during the journey. Along with the announcement of the movie, THQ sent out a new screenshot of Red Faction: Armageddon. Find it in the gallery below. %Gallery-95783%
Red Faction downloadable game due before Armageddon
THQ is going to deliver some emergency Red Faction to those fans unable to hold out until the March 2011 release of Armageddon. Danny Bilson, THQ's VP of core games, told CVG to expect a downloadable Red Faction game to hit Xbox Live Arcade and PSN in the interim between Guerrilla and Armageddon. "There's going to be a Red Faction Arcade game that ships about three or four months before Armageddon," Bilson said. "What's interesting is that we will sell it to the fans, it will have content you can download that is TV show-related, it will build up to the new game and also we can use it to drive pre-orders, too; we can give codes and aspects of it, we can give the whole thing away." The TV show to which the game will relate is likely Syfy's Red Faction program, produced as part of a larger multi-franchise partnership between the cable network and THQ. Bilson said that the supplementary downloadable game strategy will be in place for other games. "You'll see it on Red Faction, you'll see it on Saint's Row and a couple of others," he said, adding that a Red Faction comic book was also in the works. Bilson also announced plans to reveal plans this December for "the biggest trans-media play anyone has ever done" related to the Saints Row franchise.
Dig beneath the surface of the Red Faction: Armageddon trailer
There was something about the last installment in the Red Faction franchise which seemed to eradicate any fear we may have possessed while traversing the Martian landscape. That thing was, of course, a hammer the size of a teenager. Something tells us that won't be enough to stave off the subterranean terrors we'll encounter in the series' next chapter, Red Faction: Armageddon, which was debuted last night on GameTrailers TV. Click past the jump to see the very first, surprisingly spooky footage of the game. Taking place 50-some years after the events of Guerrilla, players will fill the dust-filthy boots of Darius Mason, grandson of Alec and Samanya, protagonists of the last game. Following a cataclysmic accident on the planet's surface, Martian colonists are forced to live in underground mines. It's a pretty bad scene, but it's made even worse when someone unleashes a swarm of gruesome monsters into the cavernous network of settlements, supplying the game's titular Armageddon. Of course, Darius is equipped with all manner of artillery to stave off the horde, including the Nano Forge, which played a major role in the plot of Guerrilla. The trailer includes a March 2011 release date for the title, though we're certain to see more of it at E3. Stay tuned! [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Next Red Faction to be revealed tomorrow on GameTrailers TV
We won't have to wait for E3 to see the first info about the new Red Faction game. GameTrailers TV will reveal a trailer for the upcoming game tomorrow, at 12:20AM Eastern. Destructoid says that the game is called Red Faction: Armageddon, which fits with a trademark registered by THQ recently. In any case, we'll know ... early tomorrow morning! The episode will also feature new footage of Crysis 2 and Platinum Games' Vanquish, so it's probably worth checking out if you like to see people in futuristic armor shooting things. See the promo after the break. [Via Destructoid]
Next Red Faction to be unveiled 'later this month'
THQ has never been shy about reflecting on the job it did marketing Red Faction: Guerrilla's launch. "I'd give us a 'B' on the launch of Red Faction: Guerrilla," CEO Brian Farrell admitted to investors last July. Today, on a generally upbeat earnings call -- sales are up and quality is definitely up! -- Farrell again questioned the launch of the title, but this time with a new focus, saying, "I think we did a great job on the game, I think we did an average job on demand creation." Demand creation is the new game in town at THQ's Core Games unit, and Farrell thinks the company has got this nut cracked for the next Red Faction title. "I think you'll see that in spades," Farrell said about creating that all-important demand creation for the future Red Faction. "You'll see it in the way we unveil it later this month." But it's not all about building hyp–err, demand creation -- THQ has got the SyFy movie and all those free copies of Guerrilla to help with that -- it's also about improving the quality of the game itself. Danny Bilson already told Joystiq that the next game would be more "narrative" and Farrell reaffirms that goal. "It's got a new storyline; we think that was one of the weaker points [in Guerrilla]," Farrell said. "Red Faction's always been a technological showpiece, and we wanted to add production values in terms of story and environment this year. And when you see the new Red Faction, it's just a much more appealing game universe." When can you smash this more appealing game universe, you ask? Farrell mentioned a fiscal 2011 release window, which is open now and ends in March 2011, for the as-yet-unnamed sequel ... right when Bilson told us to expect it. But first things first, we'll learn more about this new, more narrative Red Faction "later this month." And then we'll tell you. (See, that's how this relationship works.)
Red Faction 'Origins' and 'Armageddon' website domains registered
Internet paperwork bloodhound Superannuation has sniffed out several Red Faction–based domain name registrations by THQ. A series of domains corresponding to would-be titles in "Red Faction Armageddon" and "Red Faction Origins" have been secured by the publisher. These two potential Red Faction projects would appear to correspond with the current plan for the franchise, which sees SyFy producing a "back-door pilot" for TV (Origins, maybe?) and the next installment of the game series planned for March 2011 (why not Armageddon?). Of course, these things are never so neatly tied together, are they? There are numerous possibilities for the two Red Faction titles used in the new domain registrations. Anyway, have you played Guerrilla yet? It's a really fun game, we swear.
Red Faction TV movie being produced by Syfy; ongoing series possible
It looks like THQ and the still awkwardly named Syfy have more than just De Blob in store for their transmedia tryst: Broadcasting & Cable reports that "Syfy has just closed a deal to bring Red Faction to television via a two-hour movie, which will also serve as a back-door pilot." A "back-door pilot," for those of you not in on television industry jargon, is defined by Variety as a "pilot episode filmed as a standalone movie, so it can be broadcast if it is not picked up as a series." So, in other words, Syfy is making a Red Faction movie, ostensibly tied into the new, more "narrative" game expected in early 2011, with the hope of continuing the production as an ongoing series. While discussing his studio's transmedia strategy with Joystiq at GDC in March, THQ's Danny Bilson put to rest any concerns that this project is going the way of the Halo movie. "I'm only doing deals where we have a greenlight, meaning we are on the air; we are being made as a film," Bilson said. "You're not going to read about, 'Oh, this producer is going to do the Red Faction movie,' and you never hear about it again." But that's not the end of this relationship. The aforementioned 2011 Red Faction game "will be produced in conjunction with Syfy Games," adding to the cable channels other ongoing gaming projects, including the Battlestar Galactica MMO and the "Syfy Action MMO" that Trion is working on. Syfy's Alan Seiffert said of the Red Faction deal, "It is the kind of content that fits our genre. It is a great fit for a big Syfy Saturday movie, and if it really works, it is a great back-door pilot." [Via Press the Buttons]
Red Faction: Guerrilla dev post-mortem: to embrace true open-world freedom 'you need to stop caring'
In a lengthy post-mortem on Gamasutra, design director James Hague breaks down how his team at Volition developed Red Faction: Guerrilla's many, many missions while working with an enormous, open world where pretty much everything can be destroyed. Beyond the seemingly minor decisions (order of actions within a mission, for instance) being problematic, the sheer enormity of RFG's terraformed Mars and its fully destructible environment drove the game's developer to deliver on the promise of freedom not just between missions, but during them as well. This, as you might imagine, caused quite a bit of a hitch, resulting in the eventual boiling down of some mission objectives to their most basic elements. "To truly fit into the open world model, missions have to provide the same sense of freedom that the world itself provides. And to make that work takes a change of mindset. It means letting go of being a control freak and instead embracing the chaos that's inherent in open world design," Hague says. For him, game design is often a struggle for how to control the player, and thusly, the player's experience. In the case of RFG, though, he exclaims the team had to "stop caring" about said control. "You can't control what the player experiences every moment. That's not a failure; it's what comes with letting the player do what he wants." Hague goes into far more detail over four pages of individual mission dissection, so if you're a fan of the game like we are, we'd suggest checking out the whole piece -- it may not be as rewarding as destroying a tower and watching it fall on scrambling soldiers, but then what is?
Next Red Faction planned for March 2011, focus on franchise's roots
In an interview with Joystiq during the 2010 Game Developer's Conference, THQ's executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson let a few new details slip about the upcoming sequel to the critical-smash hit Red Faction: Guerrilla. "The new game takes [Red Faction] to a whole new place, it kind of goes back to the old Red Faction because about 80% of it is underground," Bilson said. According to Bilson, the as-yet-properly-named sequel -- which he describes as a "hybrid" between the first two titles in the Red Faction franchise and Guerrilla -- is planned for release in March 2011. (In February, THQ's annual investors conference call vaguely stated a Guerrilla sequel was planned for the company's "fiscal 2011" window.) Bilson was tight-lipped on other details but did confirm the upcoming open-world third-person shooter would be far more "structured," akin to a "narrative" shooter. The sequel will still feature the destructibility Bilson says cost THQ "a fortune" to develop for Guerrilla, but will have a much greater impact on cities built closer together in the tight confines of the new underground world. Although Guerrilla captivated most critics (netting a Metacritic average of 85 across three platforms) the third-person shooter failed to meet THQ's sales expectations. While Bilson said it would have been easy to scrap the characters and setting in the upcoming sequel and shift it into a new intellectual property -- effectively severing its connection to Guerrilla's poor retail showing -- he felt the quality in the previous entry was too great to abandon the Red Faction universe. The strategy now, says Bilson, is to expose gamers to the series in order to prepare them for the future, citing the recent Red Faction: Guerrilla giveaway promotion as an example of giving the title the exposure it "deserved" at launch. "Giving away the stock now, on Red Faction, is getting more people exposed to the IP because we're going bigger on Red Faction next time," Bilson told us. "If the game wasn't so good, we wouldn't be giving it away at all."
THQ CEO: Saints Row and Red Faction at E3, De Blob going multiplatform
In an interview with IGN, THQ CEO (that's a lot of three-letter abbreviations right next to each other) Brian Farrell provided more details about the company's upcoming lineup. For one, we can expect to see the new Saints Row and Red Faction games as soon as E3, as well as other assorted games from THQ's lineup. "I think we're going to blow people away at E3," Farrell said. "You'll be seeing Saints Row 3. You'll be seeing the next Red Faction. You'll be seeing more of Homefront. We've been talking about it, but we'll actually show some of our Warhammer 40k MMO, and I think people are going to go, 'Oh my God. They've got their stuff together.'" And Saints Row 3 will evidently cause some to remark, "This is not your father's THQ." Farrell also suggested that THQ has learned its lesson from the last few years of the Wii market, and won't be trying anything like Deadly Creatures again -- a "fun experience" that "didn't find much of an audience." A few "brand extensions" will be shown on Wii this E3, Farrell said. And speaking of extended brands and the Wii, the executive said that the upcoming SyFy-fueled relaunch of De Blob won't just be a Wii game -- it'll be released across multiple platforms, still developed by Blue Tongue. "Actually, I prefer it on a normal controller," Farrell said.
Darksiders rides into 1.2 million homes, THQ recovering financially
THQ today announced to investors its financial holdings for the year ending December 31, 2009, reporting a net income of $1.4 million and sales of $701.5 million in the final nine months of the year. To put that in some perspective, the net income for the same period last year was a $334.2 loss. No doubt well-reviewed titles like UFC Undisputed 2009 and (personal favorite) Red Faction: Guerrilla helped that financial 180° turn -- a much needed one after a rocky 2008 and a mess of layoffs in 2009. The publisher also announced "first four week" sales of Darksiders have already reached 1.2 million in the US (Ahem, Mr. Greenwald? Did you hear that?). Interestingly, THQ called the game part of its "growing portfolio of owned brands," among Red Faction, de Blob, Drawn to Life, and Saint's Row. And with this afternoon's investor call, it would certainly appear we'll be seeing more from that portfolio in the coming year.
THQ prepping Homefront, new Red Faction for 'fiscal 2011'
During its annual investors conference call, THQ's Brian Farrell dropped details on that Homefront game we've been waiting on, as well as word on a new Red Faction title. Both will arrive during the company's fiscal 2011 window -- to us regular schmucks walking the streets, that's the period between April 2010 and March 31, 2011. As for Homefront, it's really not news: THQ had already said the game will arrive sometime this year or early next. However, this Red Faction business is definitely news. We'll be crossing our fingers for more wacky animal-based weaponry this time around. Oh, and more stuff to blow up. Definitely more of that, please. Both games will be shown during E3 2010 in June.
Best of the Rest: Ben's Picks of 2009
Red Faction: Guerrilla Arriving approximately seven months late to the party, I didn't play RFG until earlier this month when I desperately cobbled together 2009's game releases for a massive pre-GOTY playstravaganza. That marathon came to a long pause while I smashed through the many structures of Mars with my trusty sledgehammer, constantly hearing "Space A$&%*#&" playing along the way in my mind. Sure, RFG was a bit rough around the edges, but what it lacked in mechanical prowess was more than made up for by the sheer amount of childlike joy I experienced while demolishing everything in my path.
Get your ass back to Mars for quintuple XP in Red Faction: Guerrilla
Ah, Total Recall references -- does it get any better? Well, five times the XP for five days in Red Faction: Guerrilla is a start. Any of you Quaids out there who jump online for some jetpack-fueled fun will get quintuple XP from today up until Monday, December 21. And if you've not downloaded the multiplayer DLC pack yet, check out Volition's Twitter feed, @RedFaction. Volition's going to be giving away codes for the DLC to a few lucky followers throughout the event.
Red Faction: Guerrilla assembles DLC for PC retail assault
The PC port of Martian liberation sim Red Faction: Guerrilla will include all downloadable content released thus far. IGN notes that the September 15th release will include Demons of the Badlands single-player campaign, which acts as a prequel to the events in the game, and the multiplayer DLC. The latter will add two exclusive maps for PC and another two that were previously only available as a console pre-order bonus. It's a great deal for $40 -- just make sure you've constructed a system powerful enough to demolish the bad guys. %Gallery-19834% [Via Big Download]
Next Red Faction: Guerrilla DLC to be multiplayer-focused
Okay, so Red Faction: Guerrilla is set to receive three different DLC injections. The first, Demons of the Badlands, drops tomorrow. Old hat, we know, but you may be interested in what Volition had to say about the other two packs during a recent chat with Loading Reality.Volition specifically named "Multiplayer and Wrecking Crew" as the focus of the next two DLC releases. Sadly, the studio would not divulge any other details concerning the upcoming content, like a timetable for release and price, but you can bet we're crossing our fingers for at least some more animal weaponry. [Thanks, Brandon T.]
UK: Win THQ's custom Red Faction Xbox 360
In order to promote the imminent release of the "Demons of the Badlands" DLC for Red Faction Guerrilla, THQ is giving away a sweet, custom painted Xbox 360. The contest itself is pretty simple: Visit the contest page (THQ membership required) and answer an easy question about where the DLC takes place (hint: Mariner Valley). Entries will be accepted until August 31. The only catch is that the contest is only open to residents of the UK, although the entry form, for some reason, still allows users to choose the United States as their location.So, we wish the best of luck to all of our UK readers. The rest of us will just have to stare at the pretty picture.[Via @SAGExSDX]
Red Faction patch out Aug. 6, brings long double XP weekend
Here we are, only a day after Volition detailed the upcoming patch for Red Faction: Guerrilla, and now we have an official release date for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, August 6. It should hit the 360 at around 4am PT, while the PS3 should receive the update in the afternoon (presumably alongside the weekly PSN update).One of the new features that the patch enables is the ability for Volition to allow double XP, and the dev is ready to kick the doors off with an extended double XP weekend. Starting tomorrow, once the patch releases, players can earn double XP until Sunday, August 9, midnight PT. With that much double XP, it'll be ostrichin' time before you know it.
