Company of Heroes - Legacy Edition


To developer Relic, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine represented a good first attempt at third-person action on console.


Eurogamer's Space Marine review awarded 6/10.


"Was it our best work?" mulled producer Andy Lang when quizzed by Eurogamer. "It was our best console work."


"I'm pretty humble; I don't look at [criticism] and get all upset. I thought most of the reviews were fairly on the mark with what they had to say; the character design does get a bit repetitive and certain parts of it, just how the game plays - we didn't have time to really polish that stuff to where we wanted to get to. There wasn't anything that was oh-my-god shocking in the game.


"We're not super surprised by [the scores]," he added. "Of course we'd always like to have higher scores, but with our feature-set and coming out late in the console cycle - it's really hard to have that feature-rich game. We did our best to deliver that blockbuster experience. And the scores landed where they landed."


Andy Land revealed how Relic - renowned for PC RTS games - would persistently ask itself, "Are we crazy trying to bring this game to consoles this late in the cycle?" What's so special about this late in the cycle? "Because it's so competitive," said Lang, implying other high-profile games on second, third iterations.


"It was a new experience for many of us on the team," he recalled, "but we did bring in a lot of new talent that have worked on these games before to flesh it out. And Relic's pedigree of pushing for quality that we've done in RTS titles - we really tried to bring that level of polish to a third-person game.

"With regards to the strategy genre, we're on our fifth, sixth iterations; with this genre we're just starting out."

Andy Lang, producer, Space Marine


"With regards to the strategy genre, we're on our fifth, sixth iterations; with this genre we're just starting out."


Lang thinks it would have been "really cool" to have co-op at Space Marine launch, a month ago. That feature will soon be added via the Exterminatus DLC, due 25th October.


"If I look at when I play a Space Marine," he added, "I look at adding more puzzles, more variety to the gameplay experience, so the player has to think a little harder when they're entering an encounter when they're entering a space.


"Challenge the player a little more," he said. "Just more refinement - more polish in that area is something that I would really have loved to gotten in."

Space Marine entered the UK all-formats chart in second place, and now lingers in 11th. US sales for Space Marine are expected on Thursday.


"We had realistic goals for the title, of course, being the first title in a franchise," the Relic/THQ PR interjected, refusing sales numbers, explaining that they were still being processed.


Direct enquiries about a sequel were denied. But referrals to Space Marine as (above) "the first title in a franchise" and (above even further) "with this genre we're just starting out", were two examples (of a few) hints at the future.


In July, Relic said discussions about Space Marine 2 were "literally, just starting". Marketing manager James McDermott teased "some of the more popular fiction within the 40K universe" as a likely source base. Space Hulk? Horus Heresy?


Andy Lang told us that Relic, as a whole, housed around 170 staff across three teams. All enquiries about projects other than Space Marine 1 were blocked, but to assume a Company of Heroes 2/Dawn of War 3/Space Marine 2 split doesn't require too great a leap of faith.

Dawn of War 3 hasn't been formerly announced but clearly is happening. Company of Heroes 2 is also heavily rumoured to be in development.


Either one of those games, or both, were expected to be announced at Gamescom. THQ had promised a "big" announcement at the German games show but it didn't happen; THQ was barely present at all.


THQ has never revealed why. Perhaps it was because, days before, THQ announced 200 lay-offs.


The Relic/THQ PR, however, told Eurogamer it was because some projects weren't ready to show yet.


"That one was just a case of sometimes with development cycles what you think you'll have ready to show isn't, and plans change, so we just changed our plans on that one and we look forward to making announcements in the future," he said.


"But at this moment in time there's no time-frame we can put on it."

Video:

Red Faction: Armageddon Trailer


THQ has pulled the plug on its Red Faction franchise following poor sales of RF: Armageddon.


Speaking at an investor call today, CEO Brian Farrell confirmed that "we do not intend to carry forward with that franchise in any meaningful way."


He added that the development team at Volition has been moved onto Guillermo del Toro's inSane survival horror project.


The series began back in 2001 as an FPS on PC and PlayStation 2, with a formal sequel following on a year later. Red Faction: Guerrilla switched to a third person perspective in 2009, picking up a sturdy 7/10 from Eurogamer.


Red Faction: Armageddon, released last month, matched that score but, as revealed earlier today, failed to do the business at retail.

Eurogamer


In an interview with Eurogamer World of Warcraft lead systems designer Greg Street discussed the development process behind Blizzard's next-gen MMO, codenamed Project Titan.


"We've had some key members go over to that team to work," he explained.


"When we interview new people, there's a chance they'll come under our team, and there's a chance they'll go onto that team. We meet with those guys quite regularly to say, 'Hey, here's an opportunity to do something different. Do we want to do it differently to how WOW did it, or are we happy with the way it worked out?'"


"We get to bounce ideas off each other that way," he added.


Asked if the WOW team was ever tempted to bring a Titan feature forward for an upcoming WOW expansion, Street highlighted one such recent occasion.


"The other day a designer was apologising, saying, 'Are you going to be mad if we steal that idea?'"


"Game designers steal ideas all the time. We build on what other games do. It's hard to look at many features in WOW and say, 'Blizzard were so brilliant for coming up with that in a vacuum.' We're building on what great game designers have done since they started making games."


Eurogamer attempted to nonchalantly ask just what that stolen Titan feature might be, but Blizzard sadly declined to comment further.


Little is known about Project Titan.


But we know it is already playable. "We're very confident in that product. It's an awesome one. We're playing it already," Blizzard COO Paul Sams said in March.


"It is a total ball to play. We think that the reach of that product is greater than anything that we've done before. We're very excited about that. I believe that it's the type of game that will have a very long life, much like World of Warcraft has."


Sams added: "The thing that we hope will happen is that it will not stop World of Warcraft but we believe will eclipse it."

Titan carries a rumoured release date of late 2013, according to a leaked internal slate.

Video:

Eurogamer


We know about Titan, we know about two more StarCraft II games, we know about two more World of Warcraft expansions, we even know about a Diablo III expansion - so what is this "Unannounced Game Title" Blizzard is hiring for?


The "Software Engineer, Tools" will be a part of Blizzard's "newest game team". "This is a key role on a new and exciting project within the company," the job description declares.

The "Unannounced Game Title" has a section of its own on the Blizzard jobs board. Titan, the "Next-Gen MMO", is listed separately, as are World of Warcarft, StarCraft II and Diablo III.


Could this "Unannounced Game Title" be a completely new IP?


An alleged internal Blizzard release schedule leaked last November, detailing all releases up 2015. We don't know whether its genuine, so take with a pinch of rock salt.

Eurogamer


Titan may be but a whisper on the lips of Blizzard - but the MMO to "eclipse" World of Warcraft is already playable.


"We're very confident in that product. It's an awesome one. We're playing it already," revealed Paul Sams, Blizzard COO, to Gamasutra.


"It is a total ball to play. We think that the reach of that product is greater than anything that we've done before. We're very excited about that. I believe that it's the type of game that will have a very long life, much like World of Warcraft has."


Sams added: "The thing that we hope will happen is that it will not stop World of Warcraft but we believe will eclipse it."


Titan carries a rumoured release date of late 2013, according to a leaked internal slate. But of course MMOs are subject to the wild winds of change - much more so than any other genre of game.


What else do we know about Titan? That it's not World of Warcraft 2, but "something completely new and fresh". And that's about it.


World of StarCraft? One fan got so excited that he started making World of StarCraft himself using the StarCraft II modding tools. Activision's lawyers shut him down, but only to change the name. Blizzard owns the name World of StarCraft already, you see - a pragmatic purchase or a revealing one?

Video: Is this fan-made StarCraft MMO a glimpse of the future?

Eurogamer


Blizzard's mysterious Titan MMO won't be a sequel to World of Warcraft, CEO Mike Morhaime has revealed.


Speaking at the annual DICE summit in Las Vegas – as reported by Ars Technica - Morhaime explained that the new title, rumoured to be launching in 2013, will instead cover bold new ground.


"Without giving away any details, we have some of our most experienced MMO developers, people who spent years working on the World of WarCraft team, working on this project," he said.


"We're really trying to leverage all the lessons we learned through the years. Some of which we were able to address in World of Warcraft and others that maybe because of the design decisions we've made, you just can't address.


"So we're kind of taking a step back with all that knowledge to make something that's completely new and fresh. We're not trying to make a WOW sequel."


In related news, Activision-Blizzard CFO Thomas Tippl yesterday confirmed that there will be at least two releases from the developer between now and the end of 2012 – though didn't confirm what those would be.

...

Search news
Archive
2024
May   Apr   Mar   Feb   Jan  
Archives By Year
2024   2023   2022   2021   2020  
2019   2018   2017   2016   2015  
2014   2013   2012   2011   2010  
2009   2008   2007   2006   2005  
2004   2003   2002