Articles

Introduction

I had the great privilege
of attending the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo last week in downtown
Los Angeles. The gaming world’s biggest promotional show was
a bit more restrained than in the old days, but it was spectacular
nevertheless.

There weren’t a
ton of adventure games on display, but there were two really important
ones. There was lots of other cool stuff, too!

Let’s get to the
big news right away:

Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter

Release
Date: October 2010   PC, 360

It’s
always a pleasure to see Jane, even more so when she has a new game
to demo!

I was lucky enough to sit
down with the Doyenne of Adventure.

Happily, it looks like
our long wait for Gray Matter is near an
end. The game looks good enough to eat.

I got to see the opening
cinematic, which is done in a very appealing, graphic novel style.
The in-game rendered environments are gorgeous and greatly detailed.

The game begins as a rather
questionable young woman named Sam. She’s an American girl who,
under false pretenses, stumbles into a job at a mysterious estate
outside of Oxford, England. Her employer is David, a mysterious, masked
scientist who’s conducting rather unusual experiments on the
local college students.

The game is intensely
story-driven, as only a Jane Jensen game can be. It’s told across
eight chapters, and in each chapter you play as either Sam or David.
There are traditional inventory-based puzzles to solve no matter which
character you’re laying, but there’s more: Each of the
two lead characters has an unusual type of puzzle challenges.

With Sam, it’s magic
tricks. Sam is a trained magician, and some of the obstacles the game’s
story throws in front of her can be solved by choosing the correct
magic trick. Each of these tricks requires props (purchased at the
convenient novelty store in town) and requires a recipe, or formula.
Putting the trick together in the right way, using the right props,
in the right situation is the key to Sam’s success.

David’s specific
challenges relate to memory reconstruction through sensory stimuli.
David is haunted by the memory of his dead wife, and it’s up
to you to help him put the memory pieces back together.There
are also puzzles which require interaction with the other characters
in the game, as well as a huge multi-part riddle that’s a bit
like following the clues on a treasure map.

The story is strange and
intriguing. I asked Jane what her goal was for this game, and she
told me that she wanted the player to be constantly motivated by all
of the unknowns. As in the Gabriel Knight
games, it sounds like we’ll be compelled to tease out the various
strands of the mystery. Jane also wanted the game to create a potent
mood . . . which I can happily report it does, in spades.

An
additional feature that I really liked was the Chapter Progress screen.
When you bring it up, it shows you the overall percentage of progress
you’ve made on thechapter you’re in, as well as the percentages
of each of the chapter’s major tasks. Interesting in itself,
it’s also a good road map to help you remember what you need
to be working on to move the story forward.

I can’t wait to get
my mitts on the game when it ships this October!

Dreamcatcher

Ah, Dreamcatcher,
home of a tidal wave of adventure games, right? Well, this year, not
so much. In fact, the Canadian company didn’t have a single
adventure title to show at E3. However, they have made a couple of
recent acquisitions, including a very promising German game, and they
promised to share with us more details on that when they are available.

However, Dreamcatcher is
now owned by Jowood, who was there showing the drool-worthy:

Arcania: Gothic
4

Release: Q3 2010.
  360, PC, PS3

Yep, Gothic
4. For anyone who’s played any of the first three
Gothic games, that’s good news. And the game looks
very worthy of the franchise.

For
the first time, however, you won’t be playing as the Unnamed
Hero of the first three games. In fact, that guy is this game’s
antagonist! Your character starts out (but I’m confident does
not remain) a lowly shepherd.

As in the earlier games,
the character system is wide open. You are free to develop whatever
talents and skills that you wish (in a somewhat streamlined system).
Also returning is the concept of the huge, open game world and NPCs
with lives of their own.

Oh, and one more thing.
Diego is back!

Bethesda’s Burgeoning Blueprints

My first appointment was
at the ever-busy Bethesda Softworks. They have an
impressive lineup of games this year with an unusual emphasis on third-party
developers. But I guess if you’re taking your development outside,
you might as well be hiring teams as talented as Obsidian
Entertainment, id Software and inXile.

Fallout: New Vegas

Release: October.
360, PS3, PC

When
they were looking for a studio to develop their big ticket 2010 title
Fallout: New Vegas, Bethesda hired the talented
folks at Obsidian Entertainment. Obsidian was founded by team members
from Black Isle Studios (Fallout, Fallout
2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind
Dale, Icewind Dale II). In
recent years, they’ve been the go-to team for some major sequels,
creating Knights of the Old Republic II
and Neverwinter Nights 2 for Bioware, Fallout:
New Vegas for Bethesda, and the recently-announced Dungeon
Siege III for Square Enix).

To cut to the chase, if
you liked Fallout 3, you’ll like New
Vegas. It’s set a few years later in the same
post-apocalyptic world of the first several games. The much-beloved
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. character stat system returns (for you noobs, that’s
Strength, Perception, Endurance , Charisma, Intelligence, Agility,
and Luck). The Obsidian team is adding new Perks and returning Traits,
which were in the first two games, but absent in last year’s
Fallout 3.

The gameplay will be quite
flexible. If you feel like playing it like a shooter, you can, or
if you want to be more tactical and use the VATs system from Fallout
3) you can. (VATs is a game feature that lets you freeze
the action and zero in on a particular body part of your foe.)

One welcome thing that
I noticed was that New Vegas has a much
more generous and vivid color palette than Fallout 3 did. This is
a good thing, because as detailed and vivid as the visuals were in
that game, I got a little overwhelmed by all the, well, brown.

Rage

Release: TBA.
 PC, 360, PS3, Mac

id
software’s Rage, despite
its unimaginative title, looks quite promising. It’s a post-meteorite
apocalyptic setting (as opposed to Bethesda’s Fallout:
New Vegas’s post-nuclear apocalyptic setting .
. . thanks to Bethesda’s Pete Hines for clearing this up for
me).

It’s
a game that looks like, well, Fallout 3
without the hardcore RPG elements. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
What I mean is, it’s a story-driven action-adventure game with
lots of combat and blood and vehicles and mutants and yeah, it looked
really fun to me. The developers are emphasizing story, story, story.

In the demo I watched
it was also pointed out that there was a great effort to create variety
in the game. There are fewer enemies and NPCs than in other games
like this, but they are more distinct, and feature first-class voice
work. The gameplay will also include lots of crafting.

From what I could see
it looks like Rage could be one of those
games (like the first Far Cry) that makes
you feel like you are starring in your own kickass action movie.

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

Release: TBA.
360, PS3, PC

Another talented third-party
developer, another very promising game.

Hunted
is being developed by inXile, which is a studio run
by the original Interplay founder Brian Fargo.

It’s
a co-op fantasy action game. It’s designed to play the entire
game with another person. You and your gaming pal control a tanky
male character and a range-combat female character. The gist of the
gameplay is that the two teammates’ strengths complement each
other.

Here’s an example:
E’lara (the hot chick with the bow) sends a frost arrow into
an enemy. Caddoc (stud with an axe) then gives the frozen bad guy
a big whack, thereby shattering him into many tiny pieces.

I had a chance to play
the game for a few minutes and I really enjoyed it. The fantasy environments
are rich and compelling, and include light environmental puzzles to
break up the combat. An additional feature I liked: You’re able
to switch roles with your partner in certain places in the game.

I was disappointed that
there was no way to play the game with a friend who’s in the
same room on the same screen (you have to play together on line).
Still, Hunted looks like good fun to me.

Brink

Release: 1Q 2011.
360, PS3, 360

Not really my thing, but
this multiplayer shooter from Splash Damage combines
team- and class-based gameplay with the trendy parkour (free walking)
concept. I played through a couple of levels and it seems to be the
kind of thing that you’ll like if you like this sort of thing,
as they say.

Savoring Southpeak

Two Worlds II

Release Date:
September 21, 2010. PC, 360, PS3, Mac

Remember
Southpeak Interactive? They brought us two adventure games in the
late 1990s which used technology which had much promise for games.
Remember Temujin
(1997) and Dark
Side of the Moon (1998)? Both games had problems,
but they also hinted at greatness to come. That greatness was supposed
to have been on display in their 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and
I remember how heartbroken I was when that game was cancelled.

However, with the shortened
name “Southpeak,” the company is very much alive and they
were showing a solid new RPG at E3.

It’s the sequel
to their 2007 game Two Worlds. Called Two
Worlds II (so many dull titles this
year!), it features an open world and a great look.

The game will include some
interesting features dealing with crafting new items and harvesting
key materials from existing one. It’ll also include an interesting
“village” multiplayer mode.

The reviews on the first
game were mediocre, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this
one is a big improvement.

RIFT

Release Date:
TBA 2011. PC

World of Warcraft
changed everything. Before Blizzard’s juggernaut was released
in November of 2004, MMORPGs (that’s Massively Multiplayer Online
Roleplaying Games) had a pretty bad reputation. Ugly graphics, punishing
death penalties and tedious grinding were the norm.

When it first announced
the game, Blizzard very arrogantly announced, “We’re going
to fix the MMORPG genre.” I remember thinking, if anyone can,
it’s Blizzard.

And I was right. They
did.

Because of World
of Warcraft’s success, and its example, there’s
a much better blueprint for MMO success. That means that even new
games that blatantly rip Blizzard off can end up making really good
games. Two examples: Lord of the Rings Online
and Age of Conan (made by Funcom, the Viking
geniuses behind The
Longest Journey).

Rift:
The Planes of Telara from Trion Worlds, may indeed be
a WoW clone, but from what I saw at E3,
it looks to be a pretty darned good one.

The fantasy world presented
by the game is gorgeous, alluring and detailed. The races aren’t
simply the fantasy standards of orcs, elves and gnomes. One race example
that looks interesting is the Defiants, a technology-based race.

Trion Worlds wanted to
offer the players more choice in customizing their characters, and
to accomplish that they have come up with an intriguing character
development system. The player starts with one of the four standard
archetypes: Warrior, Mage, Healer, or Rogue. As the character gains
levels, talent trees open up (which look pretty much exactly what
they look like in WoW). But here’s
where it gets interesting. Using a mechanic called “souls”
will allow the players, as they reach different experience levels,
to add additional talent trees beyond the traditional three. The result
can be magic weilding tanks, sneaky healers . . . whatever the player
would like to create.

Another appealing idea
is that dungeon instances will have different levels depending on
what level your character is.

Going for a dynamic overworld
mechanic that will appeal to casual and hardcore players alike, Rift
will feature many “real time” ongoing events in the game
world that the player can get involved with casually, reaping small
rewards, or with a larger time investment of time, reaping larger
rewards.

When I call Rift
a WoW clone, I’m not kidding. There’s
a map that looks VERY much like Shadowmoon Valley and it’s even
called, uh, Shadowlands. But that doesn’t really bother me.
It’s always a good policy to emulate the very best.

I hope to get into the
Rift beta in the next few months. If I
do, I’ll keep you posted on this very promising MMO.

LucasArts

My level of affection
for the behemoth that is LucasArts ebbs and flows with the season,
but this year there’s a lot to celebrate at the House That George
Built.

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge

Release: July
7. Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, PC, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

There’s
adventure game bliss to be had this summer with the release of this
retooled version of one of the greatest adventure titles ever made.
Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge,
is back with all its hilarious jokes and monkey-wrench-brain-damage-causing
puzzles. But this time, it’s got more cool new features than
you could stuff into a dead man’s chest.

Well, what the heck is
this game? Let’s be clear: It’s not a reimagining, or
a retelling, or a sequel. It’s the original game . . . . only
better. To help with the more chewy puzzles, there’s a built-in
hint system. The game also allows you to use the original “click
on the appropriate verb” system of the original game or a new
radial menu system that gives you various choices as you explore the
game’s beautiful screens.

First and foremost are
the visuals. Fear not, this is not the slightly awkward 3D look of
the fourth
Monkey Island game. The remake has 2D
art so lush and luscious you’ll want to fall into the picture.

For the voicework LucasArt
enlisted many of the voice talents from the third and fourth games,
including the ever-popular Dominic Armato as Guybrush Threepwood.
The game also includes a brand-new musical score.

But
wait, there’s more! In the style of a DVD movie, there’s
a commentary audio track featuring game legends Ron Gilbert, Tim Shafer
and Dave Gussman.

There’s also a set
of unlockable art assets.

If you feel like revisiting
the original game, or comparing the visuals between the new version
and the old, you can do so with a simple toggle. You can also toggle
the commentary track on or off at any time, with either version of
the game.

All in all, this appears
to be a deluxe trip down memory lane that will be very worth taking.

Star
Wars: The Old Republic

Release Date:
TBA   PC

LucasArts, Bioware and
Electronic Arts have joined Forces (pun intended) in a stunningly
ambitious attempt to dethrone Blizzard and World of Warcraft
from ruling the MMORPG roost.

Briefly, this is a massively-multiplayer
online roleplaying game set a few years after Bioware’s two
Knights of the Old Republic games. It’s
essentially the Star Wars universe, a few
thousand years before the movies. Much has been said and written and
reported about this game, so I’ll try to stick to the stuff
I saw at E3.

The big reveal at the
show was that every player will command her own starship.
How cool is that?

Also revealed are Player-vs.
Player “Warzones” which sound like a nod to WoW’s
battlegrounds. Not a bad idea, that.

We got to watch a couple
of real-time battles showcasing the Alliance classes. There’s
the Trooper (the tank), Smuggler
(basically a ranged rogue who uses cover), the Jedi
(specializes in picking off smaller enemies, or “adds”)
and the Consular (heals).

I
got to spend a few minutes playing as a smuggler. I did a series of
combat quests which gave me a chance to play with the cover-based
combat, which was fast, furious, and exciting.

The biggest difference
with The Old Republic, at least for a World
of Warcraft veteran like me, is the voicework. Remember,
this is the first fully-voiced MMORPG. That means that every
word of dialog in the game is performed by Bioware-quality actors.
This decision was financially insane (it required more than 10 times
the vocal content of Knights of the Old Republic)
but is going to pay off in a big way.

First of all, the voicework
gives a much more cinematic feel to the gameplay experience. Also,
I found it really made me slow down and listen (rather than just speed
through a chunk of on-screen text, like I am used to doing). This
made the handful of missions I completed feel more like I was starring
in a cool action movie. This is a good thing.

The voice work is going
to go a long way toward helping Bioware fulfill their vision of The
Old Republic being a more story-driven MMORPG than any
game that has come before it.

I had the opportunity
to chat briefly with James Ohlen (Lead Designer) and Richard Govel
(Executive Producer). One comparison they made between their game
and other, non-fully-voiced MMOs was the difference between talkies
and silent movies.

By the way, those of you
who are impatient gamers, don’t worry, you’ll be able
to spacebar-through the dialog if you don’t want to listen to
it.

I asked Ohlen and Govel
how they were dealing with what I consider to be the most vexing problem
in an MMO: the perpetual present. I was referring to the fact that
it’s difficult to have events which actually change the world
in an MMO, because of the way players interact with the world. This
is a big way in which MMORPGs fall short of the intense experience
of a single-player MMO.

Ohlen
gave me an interesting answer, which was that they recognized that
this was a difficult problem to solve, and their way around it was
to make sure that the player in their game would end up focusing on
the development of his individual storyline. Not a bad answer, I thought,
and I look forward to seeing how this plays out when the game launches.

I was also very happy
to hear that it’s a strong priority of the team to make sure
the game runs well on low-end computer systems. This strategy
is vital for anyone wanting to capture a large audience.

There are several big
game subjects LucasArts isn’t talking about yet. The two big
ones for me are aggro management (making sure the big monsters are
paying attention to the tanks and not to the more squishy classes)
and out-of-game player community development. I’ll be very curious
to learn more about these components over the next months.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Release Date:
October 26   360, PC, PS3

LucasArts’ Star
Wars: The Force Unleashed was a 2008 action game about
a secret protégé of Darth Vader. The game got very high
marks for its storyline but was dinged by critics for its clunky controls.
Despite the mediocre reviews, it was the fastest selling Star
Wars game ever.

The sequel, Star
Wars: The Force Unleashed II looks to build on the first
game’ s strength and bolster its weaknesses. They’ve put
a lot of emphasis in tightening up the controls.

Like the first game, the
sequel takes place between movies 3 and 4. It continues the story
of Starkiller, the ex-protégé of Vader, after the dark
lord betrays him. Starkiller has dizzying force powers, and the game
uses not one, not two, but three physics engines (Havok, DMM and Euphoria)
to render his amazing exploits. This time around he’s a dual
light saber wielder.

LucasArts
seems on the same page as id Software in that the
sequel features fewer, but more distinct, enemy types. There’s
also more environmental variety than the first game, with the action
broken up with some light puzzle solving.

Starkiller has some fun
new powers, including a set of mind-control techniques which can make
enemies attack each other or even commit suicide.

It goes without saying,
though I’ll say it anyway, that the game’s visuals look
absolutely incredible.

Hardware

Nintendo 3DS

Easily the most hyped
piece of hardware at the show was Nintendo’s much-ballyhooed
3D handheld gaming device. I stood in line for over an hour to get
a glimpse of the prototypes.

The new DS has screens
the same size as the standard DS (as opposed to the larger screens
of the supersized DSi LL). The top screen is the 3D one, and bottom
one is the traditional touch screen.

The good news is, the 3D
images look remarkably good, and don’t require that you
wear any stupid glasses. The bad news is, the little device is
very fussy with both the angle you hold it and the distance from your
eyes. These are not small issues for a handheld gaming device, since
it’s going to make your hands and arms tired much faster than
earlier models.

I
personally think 3D is the devil’s work, and that it’s
being foisted on us by Hollywood, electronics companies and now game
developers. I don’t think the public is clamoring for 3D. I
think it’s a gimmick. I never find myself thinking,
if only this game [movie, hot fudge sundae] was in 3D . . . It just
doesn’t happen.

That being said, I think
3D is here to stay, so we might as well make our peace with it.

The problems with the
3DS go beyond simply how uncomfortable it’s going to be to hold.
I guess developing a 3D screen that’s also a touch screen is
a trick that even the smartest Japanese engineers have not quite figured
out how to do yet. And since the two big gimmicks of the machine –
3D and touch screen – are on two different screens, it’s
going to create a vexing problem for game developers. Let me give
you an example.

I got to play with NintenDogs
and Cats 3D. Cute idea, right? Okay, so on the top is my adorable
little puppy, quivering with delight, staring up at me in glorious
3D. It would be cool to be able to pet his little virtual head, wouldn’t
it? Well, you can’t, really, since the sexy 3D screen isn’t
touch. So how do you pet the dog? Look down on the lower screen, the
touch screen. There’s a silhouette of your fuzzy little
darling. You pull out the stylus and pet the silhouette,
and Spot reacts on the top screen as if you’ve just patted his
head.

It’s
awkward and unconvincing, and I think this core problem will be a
real challenge for game designers to overcome.

On the other hand, there’s
not even a release date set for the machine (sometime next year, probably)
so they’ve got plenty of time to work on these issues. It’ll
be interesting to see how this product develops as it gets closer
to launch.

Speaking of Nintendo
. . .

One of my favorite moments
while I was at the show happened late in the afternoon on the third
day. I was resting at an out-of-the way table behind a forest of temporary
meeting rooms. I was alone, and it was a big table. Here comes a gaggle
of important-looking people in suits. They ask if they can share the
table; I graciously comply.

Turns out they are high-level
Nintendo America execs having an impromptu meeting! I carefully cultivated
an expression of bored, distracted nonchalance, so they’d forget
I was there.

What did I overhear? Nothing
too racy, but I am happy to report that hardware sales for the DS
are up 22%!

A Gaming Laptop
to Die For

By
far the toy that most made my credit card want to jump out of its
wallet was the Alienware M11, a tiny titan of a gaming laptop.

The first remarkable thing
about the M11 is its size. Yeah, 11 inches. Sounds like too little
screen to game on, right? Think again. You wouldn’t believe
how gorgeous and smooth the graphics are on this baby. It packs a
lot of power under its miniature hood as well. The base model ships
with a 1.3GHz Pentium SU4100, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT335M, 2GB of memory,
and 160GB HDD. If you feel like spending a bit more coin, you can
customize the little beast within an inch of its life. For example,
switch in a 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 for $100. With a base price of
around $800, this little machine is a remarkable value. Why don’t
you buy me one, right now?

Odds
and Ends

Favorite Old Friend

I was delighted to run
into Megan Gaiser, the President and CEO of Her Interactive, the studio
behind all of those terrific Nancy Drew
games. Megan is her usual dynamic self, and is busy cooking up all
kinds of cool schemes, but they weren’t really ready for public
consumption yet, and if I talk about any of them she’ll have
me killed. I’m sure as the plans develop she’ll share
with us what they’re working on over there in Seattle.

Favorite
Image To Copy And Send To A Video-Game-Hating Lawmaker

The poster for the new
Mortal Kombat game, which gleefully depicts
one fighter ripping the head off another with his bare hands.

Best Promotional
Image

Disney’s upcoming
Epic Mickey is a tricky game to sell. It
stars Mickey Mouse, but it’s edgier and scarier than audiences
might expect from the big-eared mascot. I mean, Warren Spector (System
Shock, Thief, Ultima
Underworld, Deus Ex) is the
director of the project!

So
how to sell the game? How to use imagery to give gamers an idea of
what to expect? Disney always has lots of money to spend, and they
spent it well solving this particular problem.

The image: A silhouette
of the unmistakable Mickey Ears . . . but down at the bottom, they
are kind of . . . dripping . . . and the interior of the silhouette
is filled with a variety of images suggesting the darker-than-usual
content of the game. I’m not describing it very well, but trust
me, it does a beautiful job of communicating the tone of this ambitious
hybrid.

Biggest Disappointment

No more star-studded panel
discussions. Boo.

Conclusion

I’m crossing my
fingers that at next year’s show we’ll be seeing shiny
new 3D adventures on the Nintendo 3DS.

I’m also hoping
that, spurred by the successes of their reboot of the Monkey
Island franchise, LucasArts will be emboldened to commission
a new, original adventure. (Or a Full
Throttle sequel, finally!)