Living in Fictional Universes: DayZ

E3 or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, was back in June. What stole the show then was information regarding the release of Microsoft's and Sony's newest consoles, the Xbox One and the Playstation 4, respectively. Because of the notoriously bad presentation of the Xbox One, these "next gen" consoles stole the show... but what about that games they showed there? Let's take some time to go over a few of the games that really caught my eye. These are the games I'm most looking forward to for the next generation of consoles.

The Order: 1886

This game caught my eye because it takes place in a Victorian Era England and features knights fighting Demons. There are so many ways that this is cool. First, the Victorian Era has a type of character and ambiance that is very appealing to a lot of people. It's even spawned it's own separate subculture, but notably it's a very gothic setting that appeals to a lot of people. There already exists other fictional universes that feature both gothic themes and supernatural themes quite heavily. In this case, the main characters appear to be normal humans, but with a twist. If you watch the trailer and listen, one of the men is called "Galahad." So this story isn't just about humans vs demons, it's a King Arthur story. Could be pretty awesome. The game is being developed by Ready at Dawn. It will be released on the Playstion 4.

Dying Light

From the brilliant minds that brought us Dead Island, Techland has revealed that Dying Light is their next big project. They showed the above video at E3 and the reception seems to have been pretty decent. This game is being described as a mixture of Dead Island and Mirror's Edge. For some people, these two references mean nothing, so let me explain: Dead Island is a first-person action-adventure game where the goal is to get off an island invested by different kinds of zombies. You can customize weapons along the way, use firearms, and level-up a character. It gets pretty great when you can swing a huge electric hammer at a zombie's head. Mirror's Edge is a first-person action-adventure game that features Parkour as the main mode of travel. It's set in a dystopian future where you play a courier for the resistance movement. Since you don't really have any guns in the game, it's important to evade capture and bullets. I admit that I'm a sucker for zombie games, I've owned quite a few in the time that they've been popular. Indeed, I'm not even tired of them yet, they just seem to be getting better. Dying Light will be released on both consoles.

Warframe

Warframe looks like it could be something quite different than we've seen recently. Based on the trailer, it looks like it could be start of a great new franchise. The studio in charge of this one isn't one I've heard of, Digital Extremes. However, the founder of this company was one of the guys who gave us the Unreal series, so I'm not going to judge early. From what I can tell, it's a far-future action game that features at least 2 different factions. One is highly militarized while the other appears to be some ancient technological species with far superior weapons and armaments. I don't know if you've gathered, but I love sci-fi. This will be released for the Playstation 4.

Star Wars: Battlefront

Battlefront was a franchise of Star Wars games deeply loved by many, myself included. I remember fondly rushing up the Jedi Temple doing my best to execute order 66. Or, my personal favorite, destroying as many droids as possible with my clone trooper trying to hold the line during the battle of Kashyyyk. It has been 10 years since a new one of these games has been released thanks, in part, to developers closing and the rights to the game shifting hands. Finally, EA has announced that they have DICE working on the next installment of this series. DICE is responsible for bringing us Battlefield 1942, so I'm fairly sure this game is in capable hands. Battlefront is a first-person shooter similar to the Battlefield or the Call of Duty franchises but set in the Star Wars universe. Really looking forward to hearing more about this one! It will probably be released on all major systems.

Titanfall

I'm really excited about this game. Probably the most excited about all of them. This is a new franchise being developed by a company called Respawn Entertainment. This company was founded by the two guys who brought us the original Call of Duty from the company Infinity Ward. For those of you unfamiliar, this was the company that made the good call of duties up until Modern Warfare 2. Titanfall is going to be a mech-based game that reminds me a lot of how I imagine the Battletech series should have been. I liked the Mechwarrior games, but this is a new take on all that. You can enter and exit mechs at will. Particularly pleasing to me is the idea that even infantry can be deadly, and the battlefield isn't dominated by just mechs. The game play looks phenomenal, and the level of action outpaces most of their competitors. As a debut game, this certainly has my attention. It will be released on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

I skipped a bunch of pretty good games that were revealed at E3. Honorable mention games are: Arma 3, Batman: Arkham Origins, DayZ Standalone, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Dead Rising 3, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

-Jack

Travelling to Seattle was something that I was quite excited about. I’ve always wanted to stay in a hotel where I could see the mountains and, lo and behold, my wish was granted. What I didn’t expect was that my hotel room was on the 36th floor and that it looked over downtown Seattle right towards the Space Needle…

When I saw this, I realized this trip was a good idea.

PAX, or Penny Arcade Expo, is kind of a big deal. The first thing I’d like to mention is that there is a huge difference between hearing there will be 60,000 attendees and knowing there will be 60,000 attendees. The first day in Seattle, my friend Corey and I had no idea where we were going. To put it simply, there were crowds of people everywhere. There was hardly a place to sit down, and if you did find one it was still warm from the previous person who vacated that spot.

I walked in and saw this first thing

The first thing that we wanted to do is witness the Penny Arcade Q&A that happens first thing in the main theatre in downtown Seattle. Corey and I wandered around in the main convention center until we found the queue room… that’s right, there is a room at PAX dedicated solely to lining up for things (I said 60,000 people right?).

So many nerds…

Well it turned out that we weren’t even in the correct place. This line was solely for those people going to see the exhibition hall. What I mean to say is, these were the people waiting in line to play the video games that were showcased in the very next room. Thanks to the guys in line next to us wearing the DayZ outfits (sweet Ghillie suit, bro!), we were able to figure out where we were actually supposed to go.

We walked the 10 minutes to the correct line, and this one was outside a theatre about a block away. While waiting here, there was a PAX Lady-Enforcer wandering around handing out pipe-cleaners. Most of us did not avail ourselves of these crafty little guys, but some of us decided it was better to play with them than stand around. Some of us created some pretty funny stuff, like the guy who made the six inch penis (such girth!). Others created some pretty interesting pieces, like the guy who made a 3-dimensional stick figure wearing a top hat (tipped at a precisely determined angle for jauntiness) and a cane. I was able to supply this stick figure with a small sword to adorn his person. This was when I came up with my idea to make pipe-cleaner trinkets to hand out to people that I got along with, that did something cool, or had really awesome costumes.

I met a bunch of people that first day, like the nice couple that sat next to us for the Keynote speaker (Ted Price of Insomniac Games) and the Q&A (Penny Arcade's own Mike and Jerry). Corey and I also stuck around for the Rooster Teeth panel, which was a lot of fun.

Ted Price, Q&A, and RT in that order

After seeing the things that we wanted to as far as panels were concerned (at least on this first day), we decided to check out the exhibition hall. We saw a bunch of really cool exhibits in the hall. While the Firefall one definitely took the cake, there were a few more that really drew my attention. In particular, I had a lot of fun at the Planetside 2 booth, the Firaxis booths, and the Flying Frog Productions booth.

Left side: Planetside 2. Right side: The Drifter from Last Night on Earth (Flying Frog)

What’s interesting to me is that I should be so drawn to the Firefall booth. It’s interesting because I really have no interest in MMO games specifically. In fact, there was only ever one of them that I played for a significant amount of time: Star Wars Galaxies. That’s just because I’m a massive Star Wars nerd, but also because the game offered something other than just combat. While the game of Firefall doesn’t really attract me, the mythos does. I mean, who doesn’t like looking a huge dude in powered armor?

Yes, that’s Hawk from American Gladiators with professional cosplayer Crystal Graziano

What surprised me about PAX, from a personal perspective, is the thing I found to be the most rewarding: my interactions with the developers. Corey and I went to the X-Com: Enemy Unknown panel to hear them talk about many of the game design choices they wanted put into their game and ultimately had to take out because it wasn’t workable or it wasn’t fun. Through watching this panel, I found that I had many more questions that really made me feel enthusiastic about the game. In fact, I was able to go to the Firaxis booth and spend time talking to Pete Murray, their marketing person. It was such an awesome feeling being able to get actual face time with a member of the company who understood and shared my concerns for the game. One of the most pressing questions I had about this game: will it be mod-able? The answer surprised me. I actually expected to be spoon fed some pre-fabricated answer. What he told me was this: “While the game won’t support mods at the initial release, this is something that the team would really like to have in the game.” Now my interest was piqued… but my concern: will the game be too easy? I come from a time when video games were hard. Yes, it is my opinion that most games these days aren’t all that difficult.

Take the original 1994 X-Com, for example: this game required you to take desperate measures just to complete a mission on the hardest difficulty setting. You had to make very tough calls like “do I sacrifice this base to the aliens?” or “which soldier do I use to draw the enemy’s fire?” In a game like the original X-Com, you can’t help but be attached to your soldiers. Each soldier has things they were good at and things they were bad at. They were given names and specific functions on my team based on their strengths. After time, I found myself creating back-stories for each of my soldiers all in my head. I was super stoked to see that they kept this in the game for the new release, but would the game be difficult enough? What I wanted to know was if there was a way to get into the game’s files and adjust the numbers to artificially make the game more difficult. Can we get more aliens? More explosions? More frequent alien attacks? He told me that there isn’t really any need to edit the values ourselves. Their most difficult game setting, aptly named “impossible,” was designed to not be beaten. In fact, Mr. Murray made the claim that this difficulty setting could not be beaten without save-scumming. The design team feels so strongly about save-scumming that they threw in an “iron man mode” which prevents this from happening. To be honest with everyone, this interview got me so excited about this game, that I actually went out and preordered it along with Borderlands 2 (the last time I pre-ordered a game was for Dead Rising 2 in 2010). Firaxis, for giving me what amounts to fan lip-service, you have ensured another customer. Thanks so much for talking to me, Pete Murray.

What I ended up learning about myself by the end of PAX2012 was that my interests no longer include playing video games as one of the top items. As I’ve gotten older, I have begun to appreciate board games more and more. I’m not trying to say that I don’t love video games, I’m only saying that my interests have shifted away from playing them. In fact, what I realized was that I love talking about video games even more than playing them.

It was such a wonderful time for me being able to talk to the guys from Firaxis and 2K, as well as have a conversation about Star Wars: Galaxies and Planetside 2 with Donna Prior of SOE. These people really were very kind to me, and I’m happy to say I’m a fan of their companies and their products, when before I was quite cynical. At the end of the day, I like talking about video games and nerd culture so much, that I’ve designed a blog to talk about it.

Feel free to send me a message so that we can discuss stuff! Tell me your concerns and fears, your loves and your hates!

Oh, and have some more pictures from PAX2012!