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Meet a Champions Online environment artist
In this week's edition of Champions Online's "Meet The Team" we have an environment artist who goes by the name of Andrew Jansen. Now Andrew seems like a nice enough guy, but we're not at all opposed to taking down names and finding any party responsible for possible "layer cake tiles" in Champions Online. Oh wait, that's right we nearly forgot that we've already been promised a complete lack of them. So rest easy Andrew, the pitchforks are safely locked away in storage.The work of a environment artist sounds both intriguing and challenging as they have to design for story, fun and gameplay in everything they create. In other words an environment has to fit within the story while being both fun to play in and functional -- oh and lets not forget that it has to look great. If you're curious what kind of mind is helping to create these canonical, entertaining and functional environments we urge you to check out the rest of the interview over at the official site.
The story of Killzone 2, straight from Sony
We're going to have to wait until next year to experience the hotly anticipated Killzone 2. Right now, Joystiq's Chris Grant is getting some time with the title (we're insanely jealous!). While we wait to hear back, we'd like to present you the story, straight from the fine folks at Sony. "Two years after the Helghast assault on Vekta, the ISA is taking the fight to the enemy's home world of Helghan. The ISA goal is direct: capture the Helghast leader, Emperor Visari, and bring the Helghast war machine to a halt. Assuming the role of Sev, a battle-hardened veteran and a member of the special forces unit known as the Legion, players will lead a group of highly trained soldiers on a mission to take out the Helghast threat. For Sev and his squad, the invasion of Helghan is just the beginning. Tasked with securing Pyrrhus, the Capital City, the team quickly discovers that the Helghast are a formidable enemy on their home planet. Not only have they adjusted to the planet's hostile conditions, they have also harnessed a source of power they can now use against the ISA. Sev discovers his squad isn't just fighting enemy forces – their fiercest opponent may be the planet itself." From what we saw at our E3 preview, we know exactly how terrifying the weather in Killzone 2 can be. Massive thunderstorms can come in at whim, thanks to a new technology developed by the Helghast. To say that it will make for some epic battles is quite the understatement. Stay tuned for more. Update: Video walkthrough attached, after the cut. %Gallery-4722%
Player vs. Everything: Age of Conan's 250 hours
It's going to take you 250 hours to get to level 80 in Age of Conan. That's the big news today, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that. On the one hand, that tells us very little about the actual game. Saying you have 250 hours of content means nothing unless that content is fun content. On the other, it does let you know exactly what you're getting into as far as a time commitment goes (on average). It's also important to note that that's pretty close to World of Warcraft's benchmark, too -- most players can get from 1-70 in 6 to 14 days played. I think my first 70 took me about 7 and 1/2 days. What's a good length of time for the leveling game to be, anyway? If you make it too long and drawn out, won't many players quit in frustration before they ever get to the top (EverQuest was notorious for having players that never capped)? Maybe. Let them level too quickly, though, and they'll quit if there's nothing to do at the top. Even if there is something to do when you're capped, for many people, leveling is the game. I'm probably one of those people. I hate structured PvP (like arenas) and while I dabble in raiding, I really have more fun leveling. So is 250 hours long enough to keep you interested? And why even tell us that in the first place? What does Age of Conan's 250 hours mean to you?
JGE writer talks shop in a pair of interviews
In their on-going efforts to win over the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere, the NetDevil team have been out on the prowl, sending out lead writer Keith Baker out to conduct a a pair of interviews to keep Jumpgate Evolution at the top of every gamer's mind. The first interview over at TTH focuses mostly on the Solrain Empire, the premier mercantile power in the JGE universe. Baker explains the choices players have within the faction and the general voice and tone that the team was going for in developing these hardened profiteers. The other interview over at Vault focuses on more general information like the link between Jumpgate Classic and Jumpgate Evolution, and gives an explanation for the context of the larger universe. You can tell that Baker is excited about his work and that excitement is sort of contagious.
The hidden emotional depths of Super Mario Galaxy
Cory Barlog may have sneered at what he deemed to be Super Mario Galaxy's "vapid story," but game researcher and designer Douglas Wilson couldn't feel more differently. Writing for GameSetWatch, Wilson argues that Galaxy is not only the first Mario title to produce an engaging story, but that it addresses human tragedy more expertly than most other games.To illustrate his point, Wilson draws on the story told by Princess Rosalina, whose life story is recounted throughout Galaxy. Although this narrative thread starts life as the kind of standard fare you'd expect from a Mario title, Rosalina's tale quickly becomes tragic, as she recalls how she realized her mother had passed away -- or, as she touchingly puts it, is "sleeping under the tree on the hill." Sad face.As Wilson points out, this surprisingly poignant turn of events creates a pretty weird dichotomy. After all, Galaxy is a game where you fight a giant piranha plant in a diaper.
Putting the story into MMOs
It's hard to be a hero sometimes. You wait in line behind a dozen other adventurers for your chance to hand in your twelve warg ears in return for some silver. You'd been sent to help clear the fields of wargs and even though there were several other heroic warg hunters slicing through the weeds for them, you eventually found yours. The old farmer was pleased, but he had a new job that only you -- and the hundreds of people like you -- could perform. There were more wargs out there! But this time, he would need their feet. As you headed back out into the night to continue warg genocide, you thought -- there has to be more than this. There has to be more to being a hero than hunting dogs and bears, then heading to a new town to look into their ant problem.What you're missing, is story. The game has been designed to make your story the same as every story. A long history of slaughtering trivial mobs, occasionally grouping with others to kill a greater monster who will be prowling the hills an hour after play ginsu with its spleen. In "It's Story Time, Boys and Girls!", Warhammer blogger Syp explores the different ways MMO developers try to add story to their games, some more successful than others. NPCs in City of Heroes will talk about your deeds and exploits as you pass. GM actors in EverQuest once presaged world-changing events with missions ordinary players could affect. Lord of the Rings Online slowly advances the plot of the war with Mordor with each update. Syp also wonders how quests might change if the decisions you made in the game slowly wrote your own unique story, and generated new quests based on it. Some great suggestions about a problem all too common in today's games.
Give Gnomer back to the Gnomes
I've heard this idea many times before, but I don't know that we've ever officially covered it here on the site: there is a fairly large movement in the player base, especially among the shorter folks, to have Blizzard continue the Gnomeregan story line -- and give Gnomer back to the Gnomes. Gnomer is pretty much the most hated of all the instances (well, Uldaman might barely overtake it in some circles), and as happy as the Gnomes are in Ironforge, a lot of the pint-sized ankle-pokers would like to have their city back.Unfortunately, Blizzard has given the idea short shrift (ha!) to say the least -- while there are lots of rumored expansion plans, even beyond Wrath of the Lich King, it's mostly the Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream; nothing about the Leper Gnomes in Gnomer. You'd think they wouldn't be that hard to clear out (lower level groups regularly make short work of them -- ha!), although radiation is tough to fight off. Even the best Gnomish scientists seem to hold the belief they'll be able return to Gnomer, so it must be possible, right?But to make a long story short (ha! OK I'll stop), retaking Gnomeregan just isn't on Blizzard's priority list. The city might work great as a portal hub, or even a new setting for a BG or Arena, but as it is right now, Gnomeregan is staying in the hands of the Lepers and the Troggs.
Bioware devs debate whether Wii is part of gaming
CEO Ray Muzyka and President Greg Zeschuk of Bioware, a company founded on narrative-centric RPGs, can't seem to decide if the Wii is a game (as opposed to, from what we gather, a toy). In an interview with GameDaily, Zeschuk said, "If gaming is defined by story, then generally Wii may not be," though he immediately expands on that, "The game [4 to 5 people together are] playing is actually very different than the rest of us. What they're doing as a company is like a different flavor."Providing a counterpoint, Muzyaka noted that the Wii experience is "more toy-like" but also said, "there's also a narrative between the players outside the game and kind of fulfills the same things games do. Games are 'toys' in the sense that they're fun." Warren Spector had made a similar designation in an Escapist piece last year, categorizing games like Tetris and Madden akin as "retold" narratives. The above is a rather bare-bones highlight of their discussion, so check out the full interview for more.
Children of the AFS: useless fluff or big opportunity?
The Tabula Rasa crew has posted a new bit of fiction in their new and improved Story section, located under Game Intel on the front page. The story, which is frustratingly brief for the lore fans among us, focuses on one of the more underserved of constituencies within the Tabula Rasa universe -- the children of the AFS. Or perhaps to be more accurate, it focuses on the soldier put in charge of keeping the children of the AFS in line. Again, the story is a little brief, but it touches on another one of the soft spots in Tabula Rasa's increasingly harried armor -- the lack of lore.Amidst the criticisms levied at the game for everything from customization to endgame to PvP balance and so on, is a small group of Tabula Rasa fans that have wondered off-hand on several occasions... where is the lore? When the Bane forced the scraps of humanity through that portal from Earth, surely some civilians, some merchants, some politicians remained? The picture of humanity shown while playing Tabula Rasa is strictly military -- there are no large civilian centers (not counting the Cormans, which, as a curious sort of hippie commune, are a special case) that could flesh out the world painted by Richard Garriott and crew. Perhaps this story about children presents an opportunity?
Does anybody pay attention to World Defense?
theflamecrow on LJ had an interesting little occurrence: he was in Darkshore when he saw a flash in the World Defense channel that Darkshore was being attacked. The only problem? He's Horde.Now, most people may think that Horde doesn't have a base in Darkshore that can do under attack, but in fact, they do-- it's the Dancing Troll Village. So apparently some enterprising Alliance had found it and started killing. But here's the bigger question I got from crow's story: does anyone really pay attention to World Defense?I know I don't. But then again, I play on a PvE server, so odds are that anyone attacking a lowbie level like that is just a level 70 on a rampage. But even on PvP servers, do blaring Defense channels really mean that anyone cares? People will protect their guildies, and of course they'll join the fight if they smell blood (or at least someone they can beat in a fight). But do the Local and World Defense channels really point the way to a good PvP clash the way the developers surely intended? Or do they just mean chat spam, and that there'll be trouble if you try to speak to NPCs in that area?
Simplified WoW lore
The WoW community is growing ever larger, and for lots of people the entire Warcraft story is a puzzling maze of overlapping tales. I know if I were a new player and someone told me, "Oh yeah, you can go play this other stategy game to get some of the story... or you could read some books!" I might balk at the time commitment required just to understand the background story for this new game.Dawnbow has a solution though. This is the cliffs-notes version of WoW Lore. It won't keep you on the edge of your seat with spine-tingling suspense, but it'll give you a rough idea of what's going on behind the scenes of the game, without you having to spend extra time and money on other things.A few responders to her original post on the forums say that there may be a few errors here or there in her summary, but don't worry too much about that. Lore fans often disagree on details -- sometimes they're both right, sometimes both wrong, and sometimes Blizzard just hasn't been consistent. Either way, if you're looking for a quick catch up on the essentials of the WoW story, spend a few minutes with some simplified WoW lore, and then check out WoW Insider's own Know Your Lore column for some the juiciest character portraits you'll ever read about a game story.
Behind the Curtain: More Plot Please
So, I've been playing Bioshock pretty much non-stop for the past few days, and it's got me thinking. Not only did it get me thinking that I'm super clever for figuring out the twist about ten minutes into the game, it also got me thinking about story and plot and the importance they play in games. The story in Bioshock is handled masterfully – it's handed out to you in a careful and controlled manner, feeding you it piece by piece with just enough to keep you hooked, but not so much that you're getting hit with an info dump every half an hour. I'd like to see more story in my MMOs. Certainly, an MMO needs to have a good story set up around it, something to give the world some life, and get you interested from the word go. Or it may not, maybe you just want out-and-out PvP with no RP noobs or lore geeks to bother you, in which case I feel a little sad for you and I ask you kindly to move along and find another column to read.
Wii Warm Up: A good yarn
Cory Barlog's recent remarks on Super Mario Galaxy's "vapid story" riled quite a few of our readers, with many arguing that Mario games simply don't need much of a narrative hook to be hella fun.That argument certainly has some weight, but we don't want to open that particular debate again today. Instead, we'd like to know how important a good story is to you when it comes to choosing games. Are you more a fan of epic tales (Final Fantasy), do you prefer something a little more subtle (Ico), or couldn't you care less about having a story to wade through? Finally, if you do appreciate a strong narrative like the Beatrix Potter fan above, which Wii games have kept you glued?
DS Daily: Story
Some games really depend on story, like the Ace Attorney series or any number of text-based adventures. Sure, they may have other elements as well, but it's really the story that pulls you along (or doesn't, if that's not your thing). But how do you feel about stories in games in general? Are you the type who skates through story screens as quickly as possible, or do you watch and read everything closely, even if it's not necessarily important to the game?
As the Worlds Turn: Neverending Stories
Imagine, if you will, the following: In a dimly lit boardroom, a collection of men and women, disheveled and sleep depraved, stare blankly at a room filled with wads and scraps of paper. A broad shouldered man sits alone at the head of the table, the only indication he is there is the low red glow of his cigar. Finally someone speaks. "Ok, how about this? There is this ancient evil that lives ... um ... in a castle and ... ah ... there is a good king who lives in another castle and ... he needs heroes to help defeat this big, bad evil king ... dude." A thick silence falls on the room. Through a puff of gray smoke, "I love it. Let's pump a couple million into this baby. Let's make sure we set up the billing structure and get me some in-game advertising! Let's roll, people!" I confess. That might not be entirely accurate but what role does the story play in our lovely MMO games? It serves as the backdrop for all the contextual details of the game but beyond the introduction movie, what importance or what prominence does the story play in MMOs? We're going to look a few of the more popular MMO games out there and how they deliver the backstory. We'll start with the obvious.
News of MMO "falls out" of Jason Anderson's mouth
Rumors of a Fallout MMO have been floating around for quite a while now, but in this interview over at Gamebanshee, Jason D. Anderson (of Troika fame) basically confirms that Interplay is working on an MMO-- though not necessarily one based on Fallout.Anderson says (whatever he's working on) that his enthusaism for making games has returned. And he says that while MMOs are definitely fun and have really brought the social and character advancement aspects of gameplay to the forefront, there are two things he'd really like to see advanced in MMOs: storyline and character development. Oh us too, Jason, us too. He's ready to break some molds, too-- he says competing with the monster that is WoW is not half as interesting for him as making "an awesome MMO."Whether it is a Fallout game or not, it definitely sounds like Anderson has some good ideas about what to do with his MMO and how to advance the genre a bit. Unfortunately, I don't expect we'll see what he's doing for a while, but it should be interesting to see what Anderson, an old CRPG veteran, can dream up for the MMO genre [Via Curse]
SGW's Chris Klug explains his storytelling philosophy
Chris Klug is Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's Creative Director. He sets the vision for what kind of artistic and narrative experience players of Stargate Worlds will have. It's comforting for would-be SGW players, then, that Klug seems well educated in the basics of storytelling known to novelists and screenwriters.Klug describes his storytelling philosophy in an article at RPG Vault. He talks about driving the story and characterization forward with each moment of game-play, and evoking a wide variety of emotions. You'd find many of the techniques and concepts he describes in a screenwriting textbook at USC. The folks at Cheyenne have told us before that SGW will stand out for its approach to storytelling, but this is the first evidence we have that they are on the right track.Oh, and the article features two new SGW-related images.
Lore and storytelling in the MMO genre
KillTenRats has a good commentary up on lore and its role in MMO games. Story in videogames is a tough thing to get right, and it's even tougher in a world where you don't just have one hero-- you have hundreds or thousands of them. (Sidenote: while it's not an MMO, Portal-- my vote for Game of the Year this year-- deals excellently with story, and you should read this long but insightful debate between N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo about it). How do you describe a changing narrative in a place where the world itself is designed to be persistent?The common answer is world events, but those are still so complicated that even their little brothers, instanced events, are still in the stages of infancy. We may be able to clear out a castle in an instance, but can we destroy one? And the very fact that it's instanced means that we can leave, walk back inside the door, and nothing has changed. We chalk it all up to coding right now that the prisoner we just rescued a few minutes ago still remains in his cell, and we simply sigh, resigned to the fact that we're not really changing the world, just leaving it reset for the next group of players.Still, there have to be some ideas floating around that could work to bring around a great story in a persistent world.
All the World's a Stage: It's not about saving the world
All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.All those people who say "Roleplaying is dead" simply misunderstand what RP in WoW is all about. It's not at all about stepping into your favorite fantasy novel and acting out an epic story in which you are the great hero, sacrificing everything to save Azeroth from the legions of evil. For that sort of storytelling, there are pen-and-paper role playing games, which allow for a great deal more flexibility than any computer system can. While the majority of fantasy literature uses this "save the world" motif, it doesn't work at all for roleplaying in WoW because things happen in the game that couldn't possibly happen in a story. But that's okay, because when we roleplay in WoW, our focus should not be so grand and epic in scope. Instead it should be more personal and down-to-earth, about our own characters, their hopes and failings, and their relationships with others. For all the game's outward appearances of epic battles and the fight against evil, WoW roleplaying is really all about character development, relationships, and the expression of who you are. Think less of the latest Oscar-award-winning fantasy epic, and more of your favorite sitcoms or drama series. Your character is a savior of the world and a regular nobody -- both at the same time. All of us do exciting, heroic things in the game, but, while Blizzard has put a lot of story elements in there, none of it is actual storytelling. For a roleplayer, most PvE is just background to the storytelling, something your characters do offstage -- kind of like food, paperwork, bathroom breaks, and sleep in the movies or novels you enjoy. Of course any event in life can be an important moment for your character, but in roleplaying, you have to let all the repetitive hero stuff fade into the background while your characters interact with one another.
Building the Bane
Over at GameZone, there's a lengthy article about the origins of the main villains of the whole Tabula Rasa saga: The Bane. It's also got some beautiful shots from Destination Games of a Thrax soldier and the Neph, and goes into a bit of detail of the Bane hierarchy -- standard story fluff, you'd think, but intriguing.The Thrax are quite well personalized as a race, actually -- in that they're immediately recognizeable as repulsive, and that you want to shoot them. It also makes a break from tradition in that they're the first foe you'll encounter in TR, and that they're not stupid; instead of the usual fighting of rats / bats / giant spiders / kobolds to introduce you to a standard MMO, dropping assorted body parts that you'll immediately sell for two shillings. Not that I'm a cynic, and not that other MMOs don't have their own memorable opponents -- be they Charr, Nazgûl, or other players.Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to kill some Trolls.
