Mechs are complex creatures. Their intricacy facilitates this sweet see-sawing between being an engineer and being a pilot—something that really only happens elsewhere in high-fidelity racing games. Fail in the cockpit, and you can retreat to the garage to scrub everything off the drawing board and restart from scratch.

The worry with MechWarrior Online was that this nuance would evaporate because of its business model, or from being in the hands of a developer whose closest experience to making MechWarrior was contributing to a poorly-received Transformers game.

Nope. After seeing the game at GDC, I’m reassured that the minutiae we associate with mechs might finally be paired with the modern technology it deserves.

A cool example (literally, hurr hurr) of this was learning that planet climates will globally affect heat. “You might sacrifice some armor for heat sinks if you’re on a desert planet,” Bryan Ekman, Creative Director at Piranha, told me. “On an ice world, you could run fewer heat sinks, but more lasers. It’s all part of our ‘role warfare’ pillar: players will learn to take different mechs and different configurations into different levels and different scenarios.”

Thermal vision (itself a separate system that you’d install) would also interact with this. If I’m trying to spot a “hot” enemy with a thermal vision mode, their signature will be harder to spot on a desert planet than on an arctic one due to the ambient heat.

Bodies of water interlace with these mechanics, too. Dipping your mechs’ legs into a river would dissipate heat, but only if you’d actually installed heat sinks in your mech’s legs. That’s exactly the sort of fidelity I’m looking for—design that connects what you do in the garage with moment-to-moment tactics, and rewards something like an improvised, tactical skinny dip.



Piranha is intent on preserving mechs’ physicality as lumbering bipedal bodies, too, and that includes allowing them to fall ungracefully when physics would dictate.

“These mechs take a lot of skill to pilot,” says Russ Bullock, President at Piranha. “In certain situations—maybe if you’re getting rammed by an enemy mech, or someone with jump jets is landing on your head, there are situations where those mechs are going to fall to the ground and you’ll have to pick yourself back up. All those things will damage your mech.”

Knockdowns can also be caused by high-impact weapons. Take an autocannon to the chest, my mech will flinch backward from the impact. If my mech is still reeling from that shot and gets punched by another autocannon, that extra impact could topple me. But I wouldn’t fall if I got shot in the front, and then the back of my mech. Those design details absolutely matter: modeling knockdown in this way would make shot timing and placement affect something other than where damage is dealt.

I didn’t get an in-game look at MWO’s persistent metagame, but Piranha mentioned that the timeline of the game will mirror the canonical timeline of the BattleTech universe, and hinted that that’ll be linked to the roll-out of new weapons, tech, and big events. “Technologies will be introduced into the world as they happen in the calendar. Obviously if you look at our calendar , March 8, 3049—we’re less than a year away from a Clan invasion. So...that will happen, as it happens .”

In terms of the in-cockpit experience, I was glad to see free-look in there, but even happier to see separate crosshairs that independently correspond to where torso-mounted weapons and arm-mounted weapons are pointed. In other words, if I turn to aim at an enemy up on a ridge at my 10 o’clock, I probably wouldn’t rotate my entire body to face them—I’d just aim my arms, and maybe only have access to a few lasers rather than my full loadout. TrackIR support is also confirmed, thank goodness.

So, I’m pretty pleased: nothing I saw outright worried me. Then again, I didn’t get any look at mech customization itself (the interface of which needs to be sexy, well-organized, and built with a mouse and keyboard in mind). Piranha also made a few mentions of information warfare as a primary part of the game’s design, but didn’t show anything to back up how they said it’d influence mech detection. Melee won't be implemented at launch (meaning it's unlikely we'll see an Axman), but may be in the future.


 
But overall, everything shown to me walked and talked like a MechWarrior game. The lumbering locomotion of movement and delay of throttle responsiveness felt familiar. The cockpit camera rattled when we got tickled by a cloud of LRM-20s. CryEngine 3 seems like a great choice—mechs and surfaces lacked the gloss I associate with Unreal 3. Connecting a medium laser with a Jenner’s rear armor as it fled down a trail made that spot of metal glow molten with heat. MechWarrior is in the hands of people that revere it and get that it's a very specific style and pace of combat that has a place in modern gaming.

MechWarrior Online will release later this year. Hey, look: more screenshots.

As you might guess, designing an entirely new mode for any game is not easy. Doing so for a playerbase who's only ever known one gametype is even more of an undertaking. League of Legends' lead producer Travis George gave a heartfelt talk at a GDC post-mortem panel yesterday, where he delved into the complex processes that produced LoL's biggest update since launch. Magma Chamber, Project Shiny, the Crystal Scar, and everything in between were illuminated, and in the process, so were many of Riot Games' core philosophies and design strategies. But Dominion's capture-point gameplay was also one of the toughest hurdles that Riot's faced yet, and the path to making it was hardly perfect.

George emphasized the Riot Games mission statement right off the bat: "be the most player-focused game company in the world." With a staggeringly fast growth in both the game's community and popularity, Riot recognized early on that it would be in their best interest to please the fans who were clamoring for a new map. Quickly glossing over Twisted Treeline (which Riot doesn't seem particularly happy with), George brought up the map which PC Gamer teased over a year ago: Magma Chamber. Summoner's Rift had already perfected the back-and-forth balance of "push gameplay," where minions mindlessly march towards the enemy and only champions can turn the tides. " a map that cuts out the laning phase," George said; the solution was the "meaty" new map of Magma Chamber. But despite the difference in layout, Magma Chamber was still a three-lane, push gameplay experience: "At it's core, Magma Chamber was still classic League of Legends," George said— "fundamentally, they were not that different." Riot wanted to deliver the maximum value for players, and that meant devising an entirely different mode.

"We wanted to create a whole new experience for our players," George said. "We love the MOBA genre, and we think it's in its infancy. There's so much room for awesome, fun gameplay in this space, and instead of spending all this effort to make a very similar experience, why don't we spend a little more effort to this space?" Magma Chamber was set aside, and Project Odin (which would later become Dominion) was birthed, backed a new team which was manned by "unconventional problem solvers" and "collaborative, but challenging thinkers."



But the production process for Dominion was littered with obstacles. With a schedule that prioritizes a new champion release every two weeks, Riot had to develop Dominion without disrupting the work cycle that was already in place. The multitude of teams working of LoL had to be prepped for a radically different development pipeline, and all the while, the live servers still had to be maintained. On top of all this, tweaks needed to be made on the programming side of things. "We actually had to build tools for Dominion, while we were building Dominion," George said. In developing modified AI for the minions, so that they would properly assault enemy capture points, the team discovered that the existing code didn't even allow minions to properly walk backwards. Cue the Michael Jackson .gif mocking the minions' new moonwalking capabilities.

The core mechanics of Dominion also went through a massive amount of design iterations. Dominion, as it exists now, involves capturing five points around the map by channeling into a gem that designates your control over that point. "We thought that it would be really cool if you could blow up capture points with a bomb," George recalled. In a process that mirrored Counter-Strike, champions could plant a bomb at a point, then defend it until it successfully detonated. But George put it simply when he explained why this didn't work: "it's fun to fight stuff with champions and use your abilities. When you're carry a bomb around, it's not very fun." There was also the thought of having Baron Nashor, SR's resident big boss, planted squarely in the middle of the map. Sadly, this stationary monster didn't make much sense when the objective was capturing points that were nowhere near him.

The iterations didn't stop there: "At one point on the Dominion map, we thought it would be awesomely excellent to have a bunch of wandering monsters," George said. These ended up being cumbersome—breaking off from your teammates to fight one would get you yelled at and/or killed, and seeing the one with the buff you wanted across the map was more annoying than enticing. This system was eventually changed to the existing Quest system, which does a good job of directing players towards points that need capturing. Designing the wandering monsters' AI also acted as the seed that would eventually grow to be the entire Co-Op vs. AI mode.



George then explained the biggest hardship that the team faced during Dominion's development: its connection with Project Shiny. As PCG readers will remember, Project Shiny was a separate project that was built to overhaul LoL's graphics, improving them texture-and-model-wise to look better on faster rigs. As George puts it, " an opportunity to sharpen LoL's graphical fidelity." In a decision that George ultimately regrets, the teams who were working on Project Shiny and Dominion were combined mid-development. The hope was that their combined efforts would synergize, and that the end result would be all the more impressive. But George recalls that it created a sort of production "Frankenstein's Monster"; where the Dominion team had rapid iterations and unknown variables, the Project Shiny team was working mainly on SR and demanded a finalized map of the Crystal Scar. The differences in process created tension between the teams, and at one point, Dominion was done while Shiny (which George described as an "albatross") was totally stalled.

Something had to be done. George seemed to blame himself for the mismatch and goal discrepancies between teams, so he took it upon himself to make a hard call: separate Dominion and Project Shiny, which had been tightly linked for months, into two detached entities. "All the code, all the processes, all the art pipeline, they were all tied together," George said. "Through the decision that I made by not looking at the objectives and values of each of the teams, I cost the teams man-months worth of work to do this. And it was painful." The entire tech team had to spend weeks pulling apart lines of code to rip Dominion off of Project Shiny. "That was really painful for me. It was a morale hit to the team, and a huge downer for the whole project—but ultimately, we had to do that, and I had to admit that mistake ," George said. It was clear that these decisions weren't made lightly.



But all's well that ends well. Dominion's launch was a bit of a happy surprise, where a weeks-long release schedule was reduced to a span of three days. Due to the 20-minute length of Dominion games versus SR's ~40 minutes, loadtests revealed that the servers would be slammed if twice as many games were being created—"Starting a game is an expensive process," George explained. But with a live beta test, the Platforms and Operations teams at Riot found that the measures they'd taken to smooth out the launch were performing better than expected, and Dominion was fully launched three days later, around the end of September 2011. All in all, Dominion's project length was 12 months total, with nine months of development, and the team grew from seven members to a whopping 40.

Hearing George talk, you got the sense that Riot takes great pride in their flagship creation, and when something goes wrong, they take it to heart. But in my opinion, Dominion was a huge success—it gave me a game mode that I could play during a lunch break, instead of committing 40 minutes and the concentration required for early laning. While fielding questions from the enraptured audience, George made a sports analogy that I can get behind: "We think of : LoL isn't a content grinder of going through a bunch of maps; it's 'create a really deep, replayable experience on one field.' If Summoner's Rift is basketball, and the gameplay is 'who do you put on the court, what items do you build, what's the team composition of who you're playing against,' we didn't want to go and make basketball on a different field—we wanted to make game like soccer." Though I can appreciate the skills of basketball pros, sometimes I'd just rather play a round of soccer.

Lord of the Rings Online players got very, very excited when the Riders of Rohan expansion was announced. Update 6: The Great River Region is the stepping stone to that anticipated expansion and offers players a taste of the vastness soon to follow. I took a tour of The Great River Region with Producer Aaron “Rowan” Campbell and Director of Communications Adam Mersky. Through hills, forests, Trolls and Easterlings, we travelled across this vast region to see what it had to offer before its launch next Monday, March 12th.

Our tour began with the starting point for player's adventures in The Great River Region, Thinglad. A little bit of Mirkwood, and a little bit of Rohan, this area features one of the most impressive in-game sights that I’ve seen in LOTRO so far: a massive statue of two figures commemorating an important moment in Rohan’s history. In the spirit of keeping this spoiler-free, I’ll let players find out the significance of this statue during the course of their travels through this region, but I will say that the missing hand of one of the statues will be a key driver for the players' story.



As we scampered out of Limlight Gorge, barely holding ourselves together as we escaped that menaces of that region, Rowan took a minute to show off the new instance finder tool that's coming in the new update. The temporary group-finder solution introduced several patches ago has been rightly bemoaned by players and will be completely replaced by this more streamlined, elegant solution.

It will allow players to choose from the multitude of content available, including random content, specific instances, and skirmishes. The catch is that the less random their choice is, the less of a bonus they will receive. This seems to strike a good balance of letting players choose their content, but also provide incentives for helping fill holes in the groups waiting for a specific role. These bonuses will be a boost to player morale and power as well as currency gained (which will be variable). To me, the best part of this change is that hobbits and dwarves be no longer forced to leave their instancing and skirmishing adventures to the will of the random number generator. You can find an official Dev Diary on the new Instance Finder here.



Continuing on our tour, we travelled to Rushgore, where the rushes—tall, reed plants—swayed above us, hiding both enemy and friend in their shadows. In this marshy environment, we met our first Easterling: a member of the local tribes who've descended from the Easterlings who attacked Gondor 500 years ago. Their history is dark and filled with sordid actions--you may struggle to refrain yourself from punching them in the faces as you uncover their tale.



One of the interesting new pieces of technology in Riders of Rohan is a tool that allows Turbine to change the appearance (weapons/armor/facial features) of each of the Easterlings without having to create different multiple enemy “creatures." This new tech gives each of the Easterlings randomized features, which keeps the enemies looking different, and hopefully takes away the typical monotony that arises as you face your 50th identical enemy.

Another big highlight of the tour was our visit to the Ent Wives’ Garden. This section of the Brown Lands once held the beautiful gardens tended by the Ent Wives while the Ents wandered near and far. As we know from the books and movies though, after returning from one such journey, the Ents found the garden empty, and the Ent Wives were lost.



The Brown lands have now been taken over by trolls, and players will be able to explore this region, and discover some clues as to the mystery of the Ent Wives.

We made a few more stops along the way, including Stangard, the new zone hub, which exudes the spirit of Rohan through its architecture and inhabitants. The Wailing Hills overlooked the zone, rolling under the hooves of our mounts as we travelled between the rocky outcroppings. The Gondorian ruins that doted the landscape as we explored Parth Celebrant reminded me of the landscapes of Eregion. Finally, as our tour came to a close, I basked in the light of the sun as it slowly set over the edge of Fangorn Forest, the promise of adventure and danger hanging heavy in the air. If you're looking for me Monday, you'll have to come in-game to find me—I'm ready to explore this vast new wilderness.

The American eSports fan faces a dilemma tonight. Do you brew coffee and stay up until the Intel Extreme Masters finals start at 3 AM Eastern (9 AM Central European Time), or do you go to bed early and wake up in time to watch the games? Or do you do none of the above and catch the replay? The day starts with Counter-Strike, ESC v. Na`Vi, then moves on to StarCraft 2 and PuMa (Terran) v. MC (Protoss) at 6:15 AM Eastern. Finally, it's the League of Legends final between M5 and Dignitas, and even that, if the last few days have been any indication, will have a far, far larger audience than either StarCraft or Counter-Strike. If you need to be caught-up on what you've missed at the IEM, you can check out the video archives here.

As dilemmas go, choosing how to enjoy the IEM finals is not a bad one to have. Especially when you compare it to what the Evil Geniuses team is dealing with right now. One of their new contractors, StarCraft caster Jake "Orb" Sklarew, was caught using a racial slur in StarCraft 2 matches. EG CEO Alex Garfield quickly dimissed Orb and released a lengthy statement explaining where he stands with regard to racist behavior in the gaming community. Shortly thereafter, Orb made his own apology to the StarCraft community. Look for us to follow-up on this story soon.

But back to games. Last weekend, shooter fans could tune into the ESEA LAN tournament, where the Counter-Strike: Source championship went to the Dynamic team, and the CS 1.6 title went to Back2Back Gaming, the first non-Evil Geniuses team to win the finals in five seasons, now that EG has stopped competing in Counter-Strike.

But perhaps some of the best competition at the ESEA was the final between Classic Mixup and defending champ Quantic Legacy. Despite Quantic holding a match advantage from an extended series (as they had defeated Mixup in their first meeting, and that win counted in the final), Mixup took the championship by winning two consecutive best of three matches. You can see the start above, and the entire match should be available on eXtv's YouTube account.



Replays from the MLG Winter Arena are now available online. As I've said before, they are well worth watching.

Korean Zerg powerhouse DongRaeGu has been on a tear this last week. He kicked it off last Saturday by winning the GSL final and then helped help out his MVP team into the Global StarCraft 2 Team League.

The IGN Pro League is at SXSW this weekend. The main attractions are tomorrow, with a LoL all-star match at 4 Eastern and a one-on-one StarCraft 2 match between Stephano and White-Ra at 9 Eastern.

As always, this is not meant to be a comprehensive eSports news and events roundup. That way lies madness. Please feel free to suggest other events and videos in the comments.

BioWare released a ton of information about their upcoming plans for The Old Republic at this week's Guild Summit. I tweeted a lot of the announcements as they came out, BioWare livestreamed the panels to everyone, and some of the hardcore fansites captured every tiny detail in thousands and thousands of words.

But for those of you that didn't watch the livestream or don't want to dig through piles of tiny changes to find the big ones that really matter, I’m going to tell you the five big take-aways from the Guild Summit that might change your opinion of the game.

1. The Legacy system will blow your doors off
BioWare has been pimping the Legacy system since launch, promising in vague terms that it would make leveling better, promote alts, and give us cool stuff to do. Based on the cold, hard facts that they told us down in Austin, I think it actually will!

A brief rundown of how the system works: whenever you hit major milestones with your characters (complete an act in your main storyline, hit max level, reach a high Valor rank in PvP, accumulate a ton of Dark Side points, or max out companion affection) you'll unlock something awesome for every character you ever make on that server. Hit 50 on your Zabrak Sith Warrior? Every one of your characters now has a super-powered Force Choke ability (not usable in WarZones or raids) and can cast the Sith Warrior's group buff, and you can make a Zabrak of any class type, among other things.

The coolest upgrades I heard mentioned were a full set of Unarmed fighting skills for fisticuffs brawling for hitting high ranks in PvP, and unlocking upgrades on your ship for training dummies, vendors, mail, and the Galactic Trade Network. But even if you hate leveling alts, you'll be able to purchase all of these upgrades with credits--so players that like to focus on a single character won't be left out.

All of that is coming in patch 1.2, due out in early April, but the biggest game-changer is lined up for patch 1.3. That patch will allow you to use the legacy system to purchase permanent XP boosts for each of your characters that emphasizes a single area of gameplay. If you want to roll a new Sniper character and only PvP with her, you'll be able to buy a massive XP boost for PvP content and be able to level super quickly that way. The big thing here is that doing this will let you skip the redundant planet quests that you've done before. The developers said that with these boosts, you'll have no problem just doing your class quests and PvP or Flashpoints to level up at a normal rate.



2. BioWare knows it made mistakes
The developers weren't shy of admitting areas of the game that they dropped the ball. It was refreshing to hear their candor about problems in the game, rather than pretending they didn't exist. Here are some of the big problems they acknowledged.

Operations are buggy, and are not as difficult as they’d hoped.
Open World PvP, especially Ilum, is completely broken.
Worlds need to be more interactive.
Guild features in-game are “bare bones.”
While they didn't say that they disliked the UI, they listed a ton of changes coming to the UI in patch 1.2 and said that was “only 5% of what we want to do.”


 
3. The devs have concrete plans to solve, or at least improve, them
Not every problem has an easy solution, but here's the devs plans to fix these big issues.

Bug-fixing is currently the highest priority for the Operation team. In future Operations (including the new one coming in patch 1.2), Nightmare mode will be made significantly more challenging, designed to tax even the most hardcore. On the flipside, Normal Mode is becoming Story Mode and will be even easier. The idea is that everyone will be able to see the content in Story Mode (right now only 38% of level-50 characters have stepped foot into an Operation), Hard Mode will be the main mode for organized guilds, and only the most elite players will beat Nightmare.
The devs are "going back to the drawing board" on Ilum, because they believe it needs a complete re-work to live up to their goals for open-world PvP. In the meantime, ranked PvP for WarZones will give PvPers a place to focus their energy to get the recognition and rewards they deserve.
The game currently scales the amount of unclickable NPCs that populate your game world based on your system specs. The devs want to build off of this tech to make main hubs and key locations a lot more populated for everyone that can render it.
See point #5 below for guild features.
In patch 1.2, the UI is completely customizable: every element on the screen can be dragged, scaled, tweaked, and altered individually. These settings can be saved into templates, and a few built-in templates are available for the lazy, including one styled after WoW's that's cheekily named "Retro."


 


4. PvP is kind of a big deal
I don't remember one person telling me that they were going to buy The Old Republic for the PvP. Story and Star Wars were the two major hype points, but despite that, PvP has become a major pillar of the game's community. Over 50% of the entire playerbase plays WarZones daily. The developers think that's partially because it's so easy to queue and enter WarZones (one click on your minimap and you're in). They've expanded the size of the PvP team and are putting a lot of effort into building out that part of the game to keep that enthusiasm up.

I already mentioned the ranked PvP systems for WarZones, which will use an ELO-style ranking system to pit people of similar skill-levels together. On top of that, 1.2 is bringing a new WarZone, reworks the Medals rewards system to stop AFKers from benefitting and reward for strategic objectives more than straight killing. Teams will be able to queue as groups of 8, a new teir of PvP gear is being added, along with Expertise crystals that players can socket into armor and weapons. In the future, BioWare wants to also add bracketed tournaments that would happen frequently.

5. Guilds get some love, but most features will come later
Finally, guild banks arrive in patch 1.2. There will be 7 tabs available, the first being very cheap and the 7th being "very hard" to get, even for large guilds. The usual detailed controls for money and tab security will be there, including the option of requiring authenticators on accounts that have full bank access. The patch'll also bring general UI improvements for managing the guild list, thank goodness.

The bulk of guild improvements are slated for later patches though. Plans included are creating guild events inside an in-game calendar, putting guild emblems on your armor, a guild advertising/recruitment tool, and taxation of guild members for the guild bank. And, of course, way off in the distant, distant, distant future are guild capital ships. The devs said that "designs exist now" for these shared ships, but that implementation is "a long ways off."

As reported on Kotaku and RPS, Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski has been talking up PC development at E3.

The Gears of War developer reckons PC should be the first port of call for upcoming indies, pointing out that it's a less restrictive platform than console and mobile. “Xbox Live and PSN, skip both of them because you’re at Sony or Microsoft’s will as to what’s on the dashboard.” he said. “iOS, maybe but you have to have Apple’s approval. There’s way to much piracy on Android. No-one has a Windows phone.

“Kickstart’s wonderful, go Tim Schafer,” he continued, referring to the upcoming adventure game from Double Fine, which is entirely Kickstarter-funded.

"I would go with the PC."

Cliffy signed off with: “Do it because you love it, but make sure you get paid.”

Bleszinski has also tweeted enthusiastically about the independent games community at GDC: “I'm astonished at the amount of energy around the indy games scene at GDC. It's amazeballs. We're entering into a very special time.”

Not all of Valve's discarded ideas are great, the binned competitive multiplayer mode for Portal 2 is one such example, but some of them are. The video above is from a Valve talk at GDC in which they discussed many of the ideas that never made it into the full game. This scene was originally Portal 2's opening.

There were many more great ideas left on the drawing board. In fact, the whole game was set to pan out very differently. Eurogamer sat in on the conference, and describe out Wheatley was originally supposed to stay dead when Glados crushes him near the beginning. Rather than being a persistent companion, he was merely the first in a series of personality spheres you'd meet as you travelled through Aperture's labs. Other spheres included a paranoid AI and one that Valve's Eric Wolpaw calls "The Morgan Freeman sphere."

Players were originally supposed to find the Morgan Freeman sphere sat on a lonely stand in the middle of an empty room. "He'd been sitting on that little pedestal for a few centuries, and he was just incredibly, incredibly wise" said Wolpaw. "But only about the 20 by 20 space that he was in."

"As soon as you dragged him 22 feet out of the room, his mind was blown and he was pretty much useless. Although as the game progressed, he eventually got his feet under him and started delivering some homespun wisdom that all related back to this 20 by 20 space." Valve discarded the extra orbs when they found that players didn't bond to them as well as Wheatley, the first sphere went on to become an integral part of Portal 2's plot.

Valve were also planning to have several endings scattered throughout the campaign. "We had these parts throughout the game where Chell would die and that would be the end and we'd play a song, and if you wanted to you could just quit there." Wolpaw told the audience. "We had one that was like two minutes into the game, and if you died there, there was a song that was just about reviewing those first two minutes."

They also had a few other ideas. The next bit contains spoilers for the end of Portal 2, in case you haven't played it yet.

Initially, there was a scene part way through the game in which you'd catch a glimpse of the moon. To trigger an early death you could portal up there to "asphyxiate while listening to a sad song about the moon." Valve eventually dropped the multiple endings because they felt as though they didn't have enough good ideas, but the moon went on to become Portal 2's memorable finale. According to Wolpaw, it was the "perfect mix of being totally awesome and completely stupid." It's hard to disagree.

As reported on Game Informer, Ubisoft have made dramatic changes to the Rainbow 6: Patriots development team. Lead designer, David Sears, has been replaced by Jean-Sebastien Decant, who was previously lead on Driver: San Francisco. Ubisoft Montreal have moved David on to another "major project for a major brand."

"Another opportunity arose that was a really good fit, and I am more than delighted to contribute to that," Sears said.

Narrative director Richard Rouse III, lead designer Philippe Therien, and animation director Brent George have also been removed from Ubisoft’s game. The restructuring hints that the series is going in a different direction, but Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat says that’s not the case: "We're definitely going on with Rainbow, evolving the vision that came from David's initial input," he said.

The proof of concept trailer we shared last year showed the series opting for a story-driven focus. Sears introduced the footage, explaining that the threat of a leak provided opportunity to “start a communication” with gamers.

Ubisoft released another trailer in December. It didn’t feature any gameplay footage, but it also contained a bit of story, albeit one which featured explosions and death.

We'll have more on Rainbow 6 Patriots soon. It's due for release in 2013, and is currently available to pre-order.

Remember the big flashy CGI trailer that Bioware released a few weeks ago? Remember how it starred the WRONG Shepard? Worry no more, the correct version has arrived. It's similar in almost every way, except the generic stubbly bloke who was in it has been replaced by the red-haired female Shepard that fans voted for.

This seems like a good time to point out that Mass Effect 3 is out on March 9 in the UK and Europe. Wait. That's TODAY. What on earth am I still doing here? Let me distract you with these shiny postcards of Mass Effect 3's prettiest planets while I make my escape. So long, friends. I'll see you in SPACE.

It sounds as though Star Wars: The Old Republic is doing quite a good job of keeping players interested. In a conference call reported by CVG, EA's CEO John Riccitiello mentioned that almost 1.7 million people are currently subscribed to the high-budget MMO, suggesting that TOR has dodged the one month slump that can happen when the subscription charge hits players for the first time.

It helps that Bioware have been so vocal about the updates they're planning. The Legacy patch is set to hit in April, bringing with it a new flashpoint, warzone and operation, expanding the legacy system, improving character textures, adding armour colour customisation and more.

In the long term, it'll be interesting to see whether Bioware plan to expand class storylines. The fully voiced narratives, full of cut scenes and moral decisions, are one of TOR's most unique features, but are time consuming and expensive to produce. They're one of the reasons that Bioware ended up recruiting hundreds and hundreds of staff to put TOR together. Will we see paid-for story expansions arriving in the future, will more story sections be added in far future patches, or will the rest of TOR's story be told through flashpoints and operations alone?