During PlayStation's E3 2018 press briefing, Remedy wowed attendees and viewers with the first trailer of its upcoming game, Control. The trailer was exciting but left more questions than answers. Thankfully, I met with Remedy to see the game in action and learn more about the company's mysterious new world.
Remedy has always been known for narrative-driven experiences, but creative director Sam Lake says the team wants to expand beyond what the studio is known for. “Coming out of Quantum Break, I was concepting this with Mikael Kasurinen, who is our game director,” he says. “We wanted to, first and foremost, create a deep and mysterious world – a many-layered world that players would be drawn back to even when they have played for a long time to explore, find secrets, and piece things together.”
In Control, you play as Jesse Faden, a person who had a traumatic encounter with the unexplainable as a child. The encounter changed her and left her with questions about what she is and what is possible in the world. In search of answers, she travels to the Oldest House, a massive Manhattan skyscraper where the secretive governmental organization in charge of investigating unexplainable things, the Federal Bureau of Control, resides. However, just as she arrives, a mysterious, supernatural force known as The Hiss attack the Oldest House, possessing the employees of the Bureau and killing the Director.
Not realizing what it is, Jesse picks up the Director’s gun. However, the gun is an Object of Power with the ability to morph and shift its powers. In picking up this weapon, Jesse becomes the new Director, placing a target on her back for the possessed Bureau employees. As Jesse turns a corner, a man holding a gun creepily walks toward her. He slowly looks at her and readies his gun. Jesse realizes what’s about to happen and pulls a portion of the floor up to block the gunfire. Turns out the gun isn’t the only powerful part of the main character. She then blasts the debris at the assailant, stunning him. Using her powers, she grabs a computer monitor from across the room and smashes it into him, knocking him down.
“The thing that we wanted from really early on was to make a really challenging experience.”
Exploring the Oldest House is easier said than done. In addition to the myriad enemies trying their luck at taking down Jesse, you also must deal with shifting walls and rooms. Remedy relies heavily on elements of new weird, a subgenre of science fiction revolving around a normal world being changed by a foreign object that is often unexplainable by human science, as well as dream logic. The building behaves unpredictably, but you can sometimes trigger these shifts by performing abstract rituals that require you to think outside the box.
“It’s a Place of Power on its own… this weird, shifting, strange place that’s vastly bigger on the inside than the outside would lead you to believe,” Lake says. “If you know the rules, if the conditions are right, if you know the right rituals, you can keep on traveling – essentially forever – deeper into this building. And step by step, also, leaving our known reality behind.”
Quantum Break placed a heavy emphasis on story, but Lake says this time around, the studio is more focused on the gameplay. Lake and Kasurinen also wanted to deliver a less linear experience where players would want to dive back in time and again to learn more about the world, complete challenges, and discover new things.
This is evident as Jesse comes to a big, long room with multiple doors. Each door leads to different area, giving the Oldest House sandbox elements. As Jesse continues down the path, she comes to a chasm with seemingly no way across. The demoer says that to pass this gap, she must unlock the Levitate ability. Thankfully, Jesse already has this ability, so there’s no need to backtrack to find it. Jesse effortlessly glides across and continues down the path.
As you play, you encounter multiple side-missions. The optional quest I see is a guy who’s stuck staring at a refrigerator. He tells Jesse he’s been stuck staring for days without rest or food and he’s hoping she can relieve him of his duties. I’m not sure what that would entail, but there’s no time for that. Jesse leaves the poor soul behind and continues along her way.
As the demo nears its end, Jesse encounters Rooney, the head of security. Unfortunately, the Hiss have gotten to him as well, and he is much more powerful than any other enemy she’s encountered at this point in the demo. Rooney possesses similar skills as Jesse, but he seems faster and has more projectiles. After shooting him and smashing him with several pieces of debris, Rooney gives one last-ditch effort, but Jesse expertly dodges it and delivers the killing blow.
Jesse leaves the room and enters a bright, white room. She walks toward a massive upside-down black triangle – The Astral Plane. The demo ends after the impressive boss battle, and I’m left wondering what will await her in the Astral Plane.
Control feels like the ultimate realization of what Remedy has attempted in past games. “I would like to think that with each project, we learn what works and what didn’t work that well,” Lake says. “We always want to bring in new elements and try out new things. Here, I think we’ve done a bit more of that than times in the past. But also, I feel there will be a lot of things that the fans will see the evolution of and where certain things have come from.”
The more open structure, the powers Jesse wields, and the abstract shifting building lead to a complex title to wrap your head around. Control looks to keep players on their toes more than other Remedy games.
“The thing that we wanted from really early on was to make a really challenging experience,” Lake says. “We are dealing with weird concepts, but also from the gameplay side and storytelling side, if you have a linear game, what you end up doing is you are holding the player’s hand and leading them through the experience. ‘Look now, here is the next thing. And you go straight down the hall, and then you see the next thing.’ We decided very early on that this is hands off. We are not helping. We want this to be more player-driven, and the player goes in and pursues the things they are interested in. We are serving fewer things on the platter for you, and leaving you more to piece together for yourself, and try out and experiment, and discover, and learn. We do believe that this will make it more engaging and more rewarding.”
I can’t wait to see what else Control has in store when it launches in 2019.
Despite the overabundance of zombie games on the market, the original Dying Light stood out from the undead horde thanks to its first-person parkour mechanics, gritty melee combat, and dynamic day/night cycle (you really didn’t want to get caught outside after the sun went down). For the sequel, Techland is not only improving upon these pillars, but also introducing a wealth of narrative choices that will shape the very city you find yourself in. Here are five big takeaways from our hands-off demo.
Improved Parkour The ability to climb, jump, and slide your way through the city of Harran gave players a fighting chance in the original Dying Light, and Techland is literally doubling down on mobility for the sequel – players have twice the number of parkour abilities at their disposal compared to the first game. During our demo, we saw the player slide under railings, hop across the tops of lamp posts, swing around corners on a rope, and slide down a banner Errol Flynn-style by slicing through it with a knife. Dying Light 2 also introduces parkour attacks and parkour puzzles. Parkour attacks allow players to take down enemies while navigating the environment – examples during our demo included kicking a bandit while vaulting over a waist-high gate, and knocking another enemy off of a building while swinging from an overhead bar. Parkour puzzles, on the other hand, take a bit more planning. Players will encounter certain areas that require them to string together a combination of moves before their stamina bar depletes. In our demo, the player was tasked with navigating the inside of a water tank; each successive leap and climbing action took off another chunk of his stamina bar, until he reached a platform he could stand and rest on. Other sections were more timing-focused, requiring him to combo wall-runs into jumps and monkey-bar swings to reach the top. The fluidity and variety of Dying Light 2’s traversal reminded me less of the first game and more of Mirror’s Edge – albeit with more zombies.
More Complex Combat Dying Light 2 takes place 15 years after the infection, in the last city humanity has left. As such, humans are as big of a threat as the undead – most of the enemies the player encountered during our demo were club-wielding bandits. All in all, the melee combat seemed even more complex and deliberate than the previous game, with enemies changing stances during encounters, requiring the player to block, dodge, and time their attacks when they see an opening. You can also use environmental objects to your advantage – the player in our demo finished off one particularly adept enemy by picking up a bucket and hurling it at his head, before giving him the aforementioned parkour swing-kick down to the pavement below. Taking on even just two bandits at a time seemed challenging, so if you get on the wrong side of an entire gang of enemies, you may want to put your parkour moves to good use.
Deadlier Undead While our demo mostly focused on human enemies, the undead are also getting an overhaul. Techland says that in the original Dying Light, nighttime was scary, but not complex. As such, the developer is revamping the infected to feature both independent and group A.I., which will result in more complex behavior from our undead counterparts. Players can expect to run into bigger hordes of slow-moving zombies on the streets during the night, as well as faster and more agile zombies on the rooftops. During the day, the infected will congregate in nests inside darkened buildings. We got a peek at one of these nests during our demo, when the player ducked into an old, abandoned department store. Over a dozen enemies stood eerily among a collection of mannequins, grunting and sniffing as the player tried (in vain) to sneak around them. While stealth is an option, Techland says that most of these nests will contain valuable loot if you clear them out – and manage to stay alive during the process.Your Choices Matter Dying Light 2’s biggest change is how you affect the city itself. Each choice you make during missions will shift the balance of control between the game's various factions, which in turn affects the state of the city (scroll between the above images for a visual example of how the city might change). In the demo we watched, the player had the choice to relinquish control of the water tower he scaled to either an organized force called the Peacekeepers, or a pair of less-than-reputable entrepreneurs. If you side with the Peacekeepers (and then wait a few in-game weeks), the city transforms into a cleaner and more secure environment. Squads of Peacekeepers will attack any zombies they find shambling in the streets during the day, and help clear out zombie nests. New shortcuts such as ziplines and pulleys also become available, and the water tower you handed over to the Peacekeepers provides fresh water to the entire population via fountains throughout the city. However, there are downsides to aiding the Peacekeepers as well – the faction isn’t particularly big on democracy, and holds public executions to discourage or dispatch of anyone who breaks their rules. If you side with the water-stealing bandits, on the other hand, the citizens remain free to do as they please – but they also don’t have the added security that the Peacekeepers provide. The city looks more rundown and dangerous in this scenario, and you’ll run into destitute survivors begging for water, as the criminals you handed the tower over to charge a premium price for a drink. On the bright (and somewhat cynical) side, however, your “business partners” will supply you with a share of the revenue from their endeavor. How do you live with yourself?! Techland is taking these player-driven choices seriously; the developer has hired on famed game designer Chris Avellone as the Dying Light 2’s narrative designer, and hired members of The Witcher 3’s writing staff to help craft compelling choices. The decisions you make will also open up entirely different areas in the city. For instance, if you sided with the bandits, a massive black market called La Puerta will open in the city, with new NPCs that you can interact with, adding another layer of replayability to the game.
The Game Is BIG Techland is no stranger to creating big games; not only did the original Dying Light take place over two sprawling open-world maps, The Following DLC introduced a third map that was twice as large as the two previous locations combined. Dying Light 2 ups the ante yet again – Techland says the new city you’ll be exploring is four times the size of all the previous maps put together. While bigger doesn’t inherently mean better, our demo already showed the player having way teraction and influence over the environment than the previous game. Add to that the increased parkour abilities, deeper combat, and the return of four-player co-op, and Dying Light 2 may just keep fans busy until the actual zombie apocalypse.
Avalanche Studios has been delighting E3 ongoers all week with an action-packed demo of Just Cause 4, and if you’re looking for a traditional preview of what they showed, Javy . However, he’s not the only one who saw the tools of destruction that Rico Rodriguez is packing this time around. Jeff Cork and Jeff Marchiafava also sat in on the demo, with a laser focus on the kind of stupid fun in-game pranksters can look forward to. Rather than keep their ruminations to themselves, they decided to memorialize their thoughts about Just Cause 4 in a text conversation, which you can conveniently view below. You’re welcome!
Jeff Cork: Hello, Jeff Marchiafava! Remember when we saw the Just Cause 4 demo together? What was the biggest surprise for you? Personally, I wasn’t expecting to learn that the tornadoes that were highlighted in the reveal trailer are being controlled by various factions in the game through some kind of weird array of high-powered fans. And no, I am not making that up. The tornadoes in the game are, indeed, being controlled through some kind of weird array of high-powered fans.
Jeff M: Conspiracy theorists rejoice – the government really is controlling the weather! I think the biggest surprise for me was that apparently Avalanche can read my mind and decided to tailor-make Just Cause 4 into exactly what I want from the series – a big dumb playground for me to mess with NPCs in ridiculous ways.
Jeff C: Sure, you could shoot them with your guns, but that’s amateur-hour stuff. During the demo, we got to see all kinds of wacky nonsense. I think they know their audience perfectly; rather than focus on the various socioeconomic conditions that have led to the downfall of this region, we got to see a lengthy masterclass about how physics can be fun. Rico’s repertoire has been enhanced with an upgraded grappler, allowing for even more mayhem. We all had fun using boosters to rocket people, cars, and other things away, but Just Cause 4 puts it on a completely different level. We saw it in action as the demoer methodically shot booster after booster at a crane and cargo container and stuck them together with a tether. Moments later, the contraption sprung to life, whirling around like an out-of-control wrecking ball and ruining everything within its radius.
Jeff M: Yeah, I was delightfully surprised to see that you can customize a bunch of characteristics for how your grappler functions, seemingly for the express purpose of causing goofy shenanigans. Some of the options don’t even make sense in any logical circumstance – why would you ever need a tether that continually contracts and expands between to objects? That only makes sense when you’re trying to do something stupid, and I love that they give players the option. Should we talk about the damn balloons now?
Jeff C: Rico can fire off balloons now, which inflate and – you’re not going to believe this – lift whatever they’re attached to into the air. “Whatever” probably includes what you’re thinking about already. You want to pretend you’re a cutrate Snake and whisk people away with your phony Fulton? They won’t be added to your roster, but your victims will float away. Close enough? You can also put them on the corners of the top of a storage container and create a floating mobile platform – one that, when combined with boosters, can fly you around until it probably slams into a mountain or spirals out of control. You can also equip a mod that lets the balloons follow you around, so you can have a conga line of red barrels above you. Why? I don’t know. Maybe drop them and they’ll explode on your enemies? Asking “Why?” seems fairly fruitless, as you said.
Jeff M: Yeah, unlike the Fulton, there really isn’t a point to it beyond “more physics-based fun,” and that’s good enough for me! I’m really looking forward to diving into the grappler customization and seeing what hilarious combinations you can come up with. The biggest news, however, might be that Avalanche even figured out a way to make the weather fun! Apparently the entire island has simulated wind patterns, which make getting around with Rico’s windsuit a little easier – though I doubt it will stop me from smashing into the sides of mountains. Avalanche said Just Cause 4 simulated a number of weather conditions as well, but the one they were showing off was the aforementioned tornadoes.
Jeff C: They seem to spin real good. During the demo, we saw one tear through an enemy outpost, where it tore up nearly everything in its path – including the red chaos objects, which ordinarily reward Rico with points for destroying them. Guess what? You still get credit for blowing up those generators, gas tanks, and towers, even if the tornado is technically doing all the work for you. He’s not lazy, he’s enterprising! Those chaos objects have a little more utility this time around, beyond blowing up nicely when shot at. For instance, you can put balloons on a gas tank, blow out the back of it, and watch as the resulting jet flame propels the tank away like a missile toward some enemy fighters. And then, of course, it explodes because it’s still Just Cause.
Jeff M: It is indeed more Just Cause, which is exactly what I wanted from the series in the first place. The new island seems massive and varied, the destruction physics have been kicked up a notch, and everything is gorgeous. I think the real fun is going to be experimenting – Rico has a new box of toys, and I look forward to playing with them!
Jeff C: Boom.
Dead or Alive 6 was announced last week, the first full sequel in the series since Dead or Alive 5 released in 2012, and Dead or Alive 4 in 2006 before that. The series does not treat full sequels lightly and tends to try and interpret the wishes of its community through their own development lens with new features and characters and overall focuses with each new game. With Dead or Alive 6, Team Ninja and KOEI Tecmo are trying to fit the 22-year-old series into a more modern mold while not leaving what fans like about the series behind.
The new big addition to Dead or Alive 6 is the Fatal Rush button. Much like a lot of other modern fighting games, Dead or Alive 6 adds an auto-combo button, but places it as its own separate skill. Gone is the Power Blow from the previous game, with the button replaced by a combo that does fairly significant damage to the enemy. If the meter is full, a Fatal Rush culminates in a move similar to what a Critical Blow in Dead or Alive 5 ended with.
Unlike with most auto-combo functions in fighting games, DOA focuses heavily on reversal mechanics, making Fatal Rushes difficult to use against someone who knows where attacks will be coming from. As a method to make their game friendlier for casual players, the Fatal Rush seems to put a hard ceiling on how far a new player can go with it until eventually it becomes useless for competitive play. Combo variety has always been required to make DOA competitive, so making a combo that plays out the same way the entire time feels like the game has almost solely dedicated a button to training wheels that will eventually become vestigial.
Far teresting is the Fatal Reversal, which used the Fatal button and a direction to essentially dance around an enemy attack and appear behind them, with them completely stunned. With the ninjas, this obviously manifests itself as disappearing and reappearing behind them, but every character has their own unique flourish and animation to make it looks flashy and visually interesting.
The game as a whole is making a concerted effort to display a more modern version of cool. Of particular note are the UI and presentation in the demo, which are leagues ahead of the previous game, with special mention being given to the game's gorgeous character select screen. It gives the game more personality than the stark black and white industrial mid-2000s look of DOA5.
The demo had an option for the story mode, which was greyed out for our build. Game director Yohei Shimbori told us that they plan to include the story in a similar manner to Dead or Alive 5, but cautions that they will be tweaking the structure “because the story of the last game was hard to understand.” The previous game’s story mode jumped around to different times to hide a plot twist that was not made particularly obvious in the story.
During Dead or Alive 5’s development, Team Ninja was reactive to community concerns and worked to fix them before the game’s release. Whether or not the community will find long term issues with the new Fatal action system, it might be something Team Ninja needs to take a closer look at before Dead or Alive 6 launches in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
After the admirable Souls clone Lords Of The Fallen, Deck 13 tried its hand at a sci-fi action game called The Surge. The had some great narrative concepts that never realized their potential as well as a fun combat system centered around dismemberment that was brought down by receptive enemy types and a lackluster environment.
With The Surge 2, Deck 13 seems to have embraced all of these criticisms and worked hard to address them in the sequel. The result, from what we’ve seen from a demo presentation, is a promising action-adventure game that presents an intriguing world filled with secrets and hectic combat encounters.
Gone is the forgettable protagonist (seriously, what’s that dude’s name?) from the first game. With The Surge 2, you’ll have a character creator to make you own protagonist, customizing their gender and looks. The weapon types from the original game have been doubled, expanding from 5 to 10, with the new additions functioning a lot like the trick weapons in Bloodborne. That’s not the only thing that Deck 13 seems to be borrowing from From’s beloved Souls offshoot.
The enemies in the first Surge were essentially mindless, robotic zombies or massive machines that gave a challenging fight but weren’t exactly memorable. In The Surge 2, we watched as our heroine squared off against human mercenaries, all decked out in advanced armor capable of cloaking, that moved and acted much like the hunters from Bloodborne.
These duels were frantic, with our demoer having to adapt and dodge whenever one of the mercs cloaked and disappeared out of a sight, the only clue to which direction they were going being a tree limb or patch of long grass moving before the foe struck. Killing these enemies allows you to gain access to their tech depending on which limb finisher you cut off. During the first encounter, the demoer finished off the first opponent by tearing through his arm with an axe. The reward? A floating pistol that they could summon at any point to attack someone. The pistol doesn’t do much damage but is a nifty gadget capable of luring foes into traps or stunning them. Other armor attachments will give you different abilities, making combat not only visually striking (with finishers rending heads or tearing foes in half) but also constantly offering enticing rewards.
The environments are also a big step up from the original game, with the samey factory setting being replaced by the futuristic, quarantined city of Jericho. During the demo we watched the main character investigate a totally synthetic park created for the rich to enjoy. Massive guardians disguised as statutes hide, waiting for “undesirables.” The best part of the demo came when our heroine squared up against one of these guardians in a mini-boss fight that had the boss using a shield. After some crafty dodge work and a few shots from the pistol, the guardian’s shield went down and our demoer made an exciting, risky play, slashing and slamming into the boss and bringing it down. A flashy explosion marked the end of our demo.
The Surge was a promising title marred by a number of issues, all of which the Surge 2 seems to be rectifying. We’re excited to see what else this sequel has to offer when it releases on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2019.
Mavericks is the next game to compete in the very competitive Battle Royale genre. It is talking a big game, and in some cases, even calling out what will likely be its direct competitor, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
The developer, Automaton Games, is made up of folks who have worked on games like Killzone, APB, and Wipeout among a few other impressive titles. It started out its presentation detailing some of the things it hopes will set Mavericks apart from the competition. It promised different weather effects in the environments, like snow and rain, and said it has the technical capabilities to go as high as 400 players in a match. Automaton Games also wants, long-term, to have 1,000 players broken into a collection of five-person teams. The area of play for the battle royale mode will take place on a 10 x 10 km area (as opposed to PUBG’s 6 x 6 km area), and that will only be a portion of its planned larger 16 x 16 km playable area. Basically, Automaton Games is making an MMO shooter that will have missions taking place in this large area and battle royale will just be one mode present in the larger game.
Players will impact the map as they play. One of the small examples Automaton Games offered was when you change bandages out to heal, your old bandages will be discarded on the ground. This way, other players will know someone has been there, and they’re injured. Bullet shell casings will also litter the ground, along with footprints, blood trails, and used med kits. You will also see animals in the world minding their own business.
The environment is also be destructible, with the ability to fire through thin walls, blow down doors with grenades, or even shoot the locks off of doors. You can also quietly pick those locks, too.
An area called The Capital will act as a safe hub where players will be able to collect quests, buy things in shops, or engage in player to player interaction. Automaton Games has a whole story premise for the world in place occurring after a World War III. People compete in the battle royale for a kind of limited immortality, but we didn’t get more details than that.
Automaton Games talked a big game with its long-term plans for Mavericks, and it is undeniably ambitious. It’s more MMO (or maybe Destiny would be the better comparison) than you might think, considering much of the talk surrounding the game has been related to its battle royale mode. After the presentation, we did get a chance to go hands-on with a very early version of the game.
Its built using CryEngine, so it looks sharp. The trailer released during the PC Gamer Show (seen above) uses the game’s engine, but all the animation and choreography is custom. It started raining during our demo, which looked cool, and I used a bandage and saw that I did leave behind a bandage on the ground. The destructibility was also in place, and I was able to shoot through the walls inside a random house, and shoot up into the ceiling to expose the attic. In theory, if someone is hiding upstairs and you can hear them, you will be able to shoot them from below. It had its hiccups in this early build of the game, and there was no option to go prone, but on its shooter merits (there wasn’t much opportunity to explore the larger open world) it felt pretty good.
Mavericks will enter closed beta in August <(a href="https://mavericks.gg/closed-beta">you can sign up for it here), and you can sign up for it now. In late 2018 the battle royale mode will be available, and next year Automaton Games is hoping to integrate its plans for the persistent open world, ongoing player-driven narrative, as well as player choices that will affect the larger world.
I admire Mavericks: Proving Grounds’ ambition. Automaton Games wants to make a massive shared shooter world where people can experience an ongoing narrative and level up their character while participating in battle royale. The promised tech is impressive, but it’s impossible to say if it will be able to deliver. It’s a game I will definitely be watching to see if it is able to live up to its potential.
[Editor's note: I previously listed the developer as Improbable, but the developer is actually Automaton Games. Improbable is developing the game's SpatialOS platform, the tech that makes it all work.]
As part of Microsoft’s massive E3 conference, Phil Spencer introduced a fighting game from Bandai Namco as a way of communicating Microsoft’s commitment to Japanese games. The trailer showed Dragon Ball’s Goku and Freeza, the titular character of Naruto, and Luffy from One Piece all fighting each other in realistic modern environments. Bandai Namco introduced the world to Jump Force, a 3D fighting game celebrating manga magazine Shonen Jump’s 50th anniversary.
The story of the game is that our world – that is to say, the real world – is colliding with the world, or worlds, of various Jump series. Unlike previous Jump crossover games, Jump Force is intended to have a story mode explaining why the various heroes and villains are clashing, though Bandai Namco would not tell us the reason quite yet. They only hinted that it would involve the machinations of Light and the Shinigami Ryuk, who were seen observing the fights from the top of a building at the end of the reveal trailer.
The fights take place, at least from what we were shown, in real-world locations. At E3, the only two levels shown were New York City and the Matterhorn, rendered with fairly realistic graphics. There weren’t any citizens fleeing from Naruto’s Kyuubi super or Freeza’s finger lasers, which is good, because that might have been a bit too much to take in.
The actual gameplay of Jump Force is not dissimilar to 3D fighting games already associated with the respective series. Mashing buttons will often get you exactly what you want to happen, usually a disappearing act as you dart across the arena and use your opponent as a volleyball. Holding a shoulder button and combining it with attacks gets you special moves like Goku’s Kamehameha, Luffy’s Gum Gum Pistol, or Naruto’s Rasengan. In that respect, the ease of execution is very similar to Smash Bros. more than, say, Dragon Ball Budokai or Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm.
The combat at the moment, however, is a little slow and unvaried. Characters all move at about the same speed and seem to have a lot of the same combos, making them feel extremely similar outside of their special moves. Mobility doesn’t seem that different between One Piece’s Zorro and Dragon Ball’s Goku, giving the possibly intentional impression that the game is designed to simply be picked up and played for anyone with any favorite character.
Bandai Namco wouldn’t give up the roster for the game, but hinted that there more than a few surprise characters that fans wouldn’t think of. While fighting ability and popularity are important factors, being able to please fans of more niche series is also a major goal for the development team.
Jump Force is scheduled to release in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
A new action RPG from developer Spiders puts diplomacy front and center – when you’re not being mauled by massive creatures, that is. GreedFall’s art style is inspired by 17th century Europe, albeit with a heavy dose of magic. The game takes place on an island called Teer Fradee. The island has recently been colonized by survivors from the Old World, which was devastated by a deadly plague. That puts land in Teer Fradee at a premium, and it's up to you to navigate the tense relationships between several competing factions. Players step into the leather boots of a representative for the Congregation of Merchants, and can fully customize your character by selecting your gender, looks, and clothing. The demo we saw tasked the protagonist with aiding Sior, the daughter of a tribal clan who needs help defending their home from an invading army. Spiders says that the choices and dialogue branches you select will have a major impact on the story, as well as your standing with the various factions. In our demo, the player chooses to help Sior, and sets out to follow her back to the tribe.
The wilderness in GreedFall is full of strange and deadly creatures, including big wolf-bear hybrids that ambush our travelers during the journey. The ensuing combat looks like a weightier take on the hack-and-slash genre; enemies (and presumably the player) can be hit with a variety of status modifiers, such as “stunned,” “off balance,” “knocked down,” and “poisoned.” Dodging is also possible, but on the whole combat is slower and heavier than the typical action game. After dispatching the creatures, the duo return to the tribe’s land which is already at war with the invading army. Our protagonist and Sior jump into the melee. An interconnected skill tree allows you to build out your character and combat focus as you see fit, whether you want to be a sword-based warrior, or specialize in magic, traps, or firearms.
The protagonist in our demo favors a large two-handed sword that’s able to cut down multiple enemies at once. However, they are too late; most of the tribe has already been slaughtered, including Sior’s mother, the queen. After the battle, the elder surviving tribeswoman reacts hostilely towards the main character, but he manages to talk her down – he assisted Sior after all, and fought alongside them. Players can have up to two NPCs accompany them during the game, and who you choose will also affect your standing with the various factions. These companions come in handy at the end of the demo, when the player encounters a massive horned creature that requires a prolonged series of strikes, dodges, and magic attacks to take down. So far the interplay between the factions sounds like the most intriguing aspect of GreedFall; Spiders says that players can approach situations with a wide variety of tactics beyond combat, including diplomacy and deception. We’ll have to wait until next year to see how it all comes together, but we’re interested to learn more of GreedFall’s unique world and ambitious RPG elements.
The Tomb Raider reboot has been about building up Lara Croft from a determined but inexperienced explorer to the hero we know today. During our E3 demo of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we got to play her as a full-on predator, culminating in a chilling scene that shows her confronting – and dismissing – any remaining fears or lingering insecurities.
Unlike , which featured a gunfight that didn’t end until either Lara or her Trinity adversaries were dead, today’s demo was more flexible. It’s set in a Peruvian jungle, with multiple routes and paths to explore. Lara moves through a dirt trail, as a radio crackles to live with a warning that “Croft is heading to your location.” She climbs a tree, and sees a trio of enemies below her. Jumping down and taking them out with her knife would be a dangerously stupid thing to attempt, so I draw my bow and fire a new fear arrow into the neck of the closest goon.
The projectile hits its mark with a satisfying “Thwack!” and the victim looks around. He begins firing wildly at his comrades, clearly under its spell, taking them both out. A few seconds later, his panic turns to distress as he finally succumbs to the poison and hits the ground dead. It’s reminiscent of the berserk darts and similar toxins from the Assassin’s Creed games, but that familiarity doesn’t make the effects any less enjoyable. Ahead, I use the same tactic to eliminate a cluster of four enemies. The fear arrows are a limited resource, and they’re also not effective on armored enemies, so I take advantage while I can.
Lara is agile as ever, and climbing trees and getting the drop on enemies remains a solid approach. When a Trinity soldier gets too close to me on a patrol, I use a stealth kill that has Lara fire a rope arrow at him, drop from the tree, and string him up. I’m doing so well that I start to get a little cocky; I try to deactivate a generator while a guard is coming back, and he notices me – even though I stopped by a puddle a bit earlier and covered myself in mud.
The fighters are aggressive and relentless. I try to juke their attacks, but it’s hard to avoid bullets with fancy footwork alone. I do manage to scramble away and backtrack to a vine-covered wall, where I can hide in its greenery. It’s enough to fool the guards into thinking I’m gone for good. That was a mistake. I find a gas can in an elevated spot, and throw it on the ground near several guards. They react the same way they do when I chuck bottles at them: firing blindly at the sound. It’s a fatal error, as their shots detonate the container and the explosion clears out the stragglers.
Lara radios for her friend Jonah, and hears an unfamiliar voice. Jonah’s dead, the voice taunts, and his body can be found in the refinery. “I’m coming for you,” she replies.
Lara moves past a gate, and the jungle gives way to a dustrial setting. Steel drums and vehicles are scattered along the path, which leads to the refinery. She’s midway across a bridge when a spotlight blasts on face, mounted on a helicopter. Stealth is no longer an option. An army of Trinity thugs open fire, and an extended platforming sequence begins. We’ve all seen the basic elements here before – collapsing catwalks, rails that bend and swing when grabbed, and death-defying leaps – but the graphical fidelity and effects from the now-flaming refinery keep it exciting.
The demo ends with Lara falling into the water, and her body is limp as it sinks. A montage of audio memories plays; people from her past and Lara herself doubt her resolve. But she refuses to give in. Her eyes open, and she slowly rises from the water, standing tall as walls of flame flicker behind her. A wounded guard is on the dock, and Lara methodically bears down on him, knife ready. It’s a powerful moment, and the screen cuts to black before we see how it ends. I can only imagine it’s not going to be good for him, for Trinity, and possibly for Lara herself.
Look for Shadow of the Tomb Raider on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on Sept. 14.
Activision announced today that "United Front", the third DLC Expansion Pack for Call of Duty: WWII, is now available on PlayStation 4, and will be coming to Xbox One and PC next month.
Call of Duty's United Front DLC includes three new Multiplayer maps: Market Garden, Monte Cassino, and... Learn more on XBOX ONE HQ!
