Xbox One was finally revealed last night to a generally negative reaction from the core gaming crowd, thanks to Microsoft's emphasis on TV over games. We can only go by the reaction on Twitter, Facebook and various forums but hell, we were disappointed too.

But that wasn't the case across mainstream media, where the games aspect isn't perhaps quite as important and there was a general enthusiasm for the multimedia aspects of Xbox One. Here's what they had to say…

THE SUN

The news that really got gamers salivating was the exclusive gaming deals they announced. Downloadable content for the new Call of Duty game, Ghosts, is available exclusively first on the Xbox, as is FIFA 14's Ultimate Team feature.

Fans were treated to some spectacular footage from both flagship titles, as well as some glorious footage of Forza Motorsport 5 — one of a number of titles that will be available as soon as the console is out.

TIME

Microsoft’s answer: a set-top console that looked less than ever like a stylized game console and more like a traditional, almost mundane piece of orthogonal, black, glossy hi-fistereo equipment. The new console was joined by a revamped Kinect camera — included with each Xbox One — and a refined, slightly more angular version of the Xbox 360 gamepad (making it look a hair more like a batarang).

“For the first time, you and your TV are going to have a relationship,” quipped Mattrick, a statement that sounds awkward at first blush — we’ve had a relationship with our TV sets for decades — until you realized he was hyping Microsoft’s considerable ramping-up of the Xbox brand as a media-platform first, and a games console second

FOX NEWS

For years - and I mean years - consumer electronics and computer companies have been struggling to replace the panoply of boxes hanging off American televisions. Game consoles, DVD players, cable boxes, DVRs - it's a mess.

So it was no surprise that Microsoft announced today a new Xbox it hopes will become the all-in-one device in your living room. What remains to be seen is if it's already too late to become the entertainment hub in the home, and perhaps more important, whether it can save the flagging fortunes of the console gaming market.

FORBES

In such a short amount of time, there were a lot of different aspects of the system they tried to cram in before the hour was up. They talked about new EA Sports titles and fantasy sports integration. Then they pivoted to a Forza tech demo and a confusing live-action/animated teaser trailer for a game called Quantum Break.

Then they went back to TV and sports, offering yet another proclamation about fantasy football integration with the NFL, and then Stephen Spielberg showed up to announce he was supervising a live action Halo TV series on Xbox Live.

Then of course, they closed out the presentation by giving Activision 15 minutes to showcase Call of Duty: Ghosts, which should be noted is a previously announced, non-exclusive title for the Xbox.

It gave us a glimpse into the graphical capabilities of the Xbox One, but mostly it was a commentary on what passes for innovation in the series these days, as designers bragged about how fish now dart out of your way during underwater sequences. Also, get this, you can now customize your character in multiplayer! Big moves, and certainly worth devoting 25% of the presentation to singular non-exclusive title.

THE MIRROR

The new Xbox offers much to excite serious gamers, including 15 new gaming titles and a slew of almost inevitable hardware upgrades, but Microsoft have also opened up the new Xbox to appeal to more mainstream entertainment fans.

The key here is the new live TV link-up, including an HDMI out and in, which means that you’ll be able to control all types of TV through your console, with Zeebox-esque trending EPGs as standard.

CNN MONEY

From a hardware standpoint, while everything is more powerful, little is radically different from the Xbox 360. Similar to Sony's PlayStation 4, the Xbox One has a custom-built 8-core CPU, with 8 gigabytes of RAM, a 500 gigabyte hard drive, USB 3.0, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and a Blu-ray drive. The controller has received some cosmetic changes to its exterior, adding a more precise joystick.

The once removable battery is now fully integrated, but at its core, it offers the same game-playing experience it always has.  The console itself is more angular and practical looking than either of its two predecessors. Flat and rectangular like a cable box, you could almost call the design reserved. But it is by no means unattractive, and will probably sit tucked away in a cabinet anyways.

USA TODAY

It's been a dream for Microsoft since 2001: create an entertainment device that dominates the living room. Although they moved one step closer in this conquest with the Xbox 360, it appears the Xbox One might put them over the top.

The company revealed several nifty features for its Xbox One during an event at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Users will be able to navigate and watch live TV, make video phone calls with Skype, flip between apps quickly using the clever Snap feature and even turn the device on with only your voice.

REUTERS

Microsoft Corp unveiled the "Xbox One" on Tuesday, its first new gaming console in eight years, and its strongest push so far to dominate consumers' living rooms with an array of exclusive media content. The Xbox One took four years to develop and will be the launchpad for a "Halo" live-action video series produced by Steven Spielberg.

CNBC

The biggest additions are Xbox One's inclusion of live TV as well as Skype. The technology allows users to easily switch between each of the entertainment options — live TV, games, music, movies, and Internet Explorer. Instead of having to switch inputs, users can instantly switch with a quick oral request to the voice sensor.

And unlike other consoles, two windows can be open at once so users can play games and have music on at the same time. ESPN showcased the ability to watch live basketball on TV and to look up player stats at the same time

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Microsoft unveiled a reinvented Xbox videogame console Tuesday, demonstrating an advanced motion and voice-control system and new television functions as it tries to thrust the machine back into the spotlight amid changing consumer habits.

The Redmond, Washington, software giant said its new device, dubbed Xbox One, was designed to take advantage of new technologies to offer customers ways to play games while responding to trends such as the popularity of smartphones and tablets.

Microsoft also integrated technology from its Skype video chatting subsidiary into Xbox One, allowing customers to interact with friends using a more refined version of the Kinect motion and speech sensor.

This will be updated as more information comes through following the Xbox One reveal.

• The tech specs - 8 Core CPU, 8 GB System Memory, 5 billion transistors, 802.11n Wireless with Wi-Fi Direct, HDMI In/Out and USB 3.0
• Xbox One will have 500 GB of hard drive storage

• Xbox One will use a slot-loading Blu-Ray drive
• Xbox One will be 'four times quieter' than Xbox 360 (Engadget)

• Xbox One won't be compatible with backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games or Xbox Live Arcade games but your Xbox Live gamertag and gamerscore will carry over (Engadget)
• You can record your gameplay and edit it in the console itself. Achievements will change to be 'more dynamic' and you can search for a match while watching TV
• Xbox One requires an internet connection and has to be online once every 24 hours (Kotaku)

• All games have mandatory installs to the HDD and second-hand users will have to pay a free to unlock the ability to install the game themselves (Wired)

• Every Xbox One comes with Kinect 2.0 and will be used to switch between games, TV, movies and web browsing. It will also be the unit used for Skype
• The new Kinect captures RGB colour video at 30 frames per second and has a wide-angle 1080p HD depth camera. It can work in a completely dark room
• Kinect 2.0 can detect your heartbeat, rotations in your wrist or shoulder and the new Xbox controller
• Xbox One will NOT function without Kinect 2.0 connected
• 1080p and 4K are both supported in terms of video, while Xbox One supports 7.1 Surround Sound
• Besides the aesthetic tweaks, the big addition to the new pad is the 'impulse triggers', which are small rumble motors built into the left and right triggers. The pad has a micro USB port at the top and an 'accessories port' in the usual headset port position

For the first information on the actual game itself, make sure you read Call Of Duty: Ghosts First Details - Story, Visuals, Multiplayer

Do you see Call of Duty: Ghosts as a reboot?

We didn’t set out for it to be a reboot  as much as something that was just new for Infinity Ward. We didn’t set out thinking we were going to redefine anything. We said that we wanted to do a take on what we’ve done in the past and come at it from a different direction. So from that perspective it’s new and a lot of the new tech features are new.

But we didn’t set out to revolutionise anything, or release anything significantly different. It’s a tough line between giving the fans what they expect and buying a Call Of Duty game because I know what it is and I love it and giving them something that’s new on top of that. It’s always a balance between if we don’t give them enough of what they expect they say ‘well this isn’t Call Of Duty, i bought Call Of Duty’. And if we don’t give them enough new they complain and say ‘you didn’t give us anything new.’ That’s a serious conversation that goes on at Infinity Ward of trying to find that balance.

Does next-gen offer new avenues for you to expand?

The next-gen really allows us to expand what I would say is the immersion level. For the most part we’ve never felt hindered from a gameplay perspective by tech. We never felt that ‘we can only do this if we had a little more horsepower in the CPUs.’ We’ve never really felt that way in general.

What we have felt is that this isn’t as immersive as we hoped it would be because we don’t have the horsepower to add certain effects and things on top of the gameplay, things we’d wanted to do. So really that’s what this is all about, allowing us to bring in a new level of fidelity that just brings the believability and immersion to a new level so that the gameplay experiences that we continue to craft new in this project really step up to a higher level.

Is Ghosts part of the Modern Warfare 3 canon?

Nope, we’re doing something different.

How do you go about creating a new iconic Call Of Duty protagonist?

First of all you’ve got to look at what made Soap and Price so significant. Just doing cool stuff, right? To be really close to someone, usually takes time and attention – it takes pure screen time – and that was what we were able to give people with Price and Soap. They developed relationships with them because they were able to spend a lot of time with them. If you ask someone ‘who really is Price or Soap?’  they wouldn’t really be able to say anything as we haven’t given out a lot of information.

But that’s really the second tenet of what makes that character interesting and to create value or interest there is the intimacy of this is who I am, these are the choices I make, this is why I make these choices and these are the struggles I’m dealing with. It’s really taking a step back and thinking ‘ok, if these characters need to be significant and believable to the player how can we do that?’

It’s about opening up, giving the player an insight into their weaknesses and their strengths. Obviously because it’s Call Of Duty and it’s about over-the-top action, seeing them do cool things is a necessity, but we’re also trying to push a little bit more about who they are as characters.

Are you scaling back the spectacle in Ghosts compared to Modern Warfare 3?

I think that’s a good generalisation. It’s a little bit pulled back in terms of the scale of everything that was going on. I would say that the stakes are still high it really is America that is in the balance, so it’s not a trivial thing – it’s not like we’re losing a city. But at the same time it’s not a world scale battle that’s being fought. That’s not what the story is about. It’s smaller and more intimate. So it’s a bit of a balance.

Are you aiming for photorealistic visuals this time around?

I wouldn’t say that photorealism is something that we strive to replicate as much as artistic believability. I like to use the example of a Pixar film: they’re so beautiful but you wouldn’t say they’re realistic. But they’re believable, you feel grounded in that world and the characters feel grounded in that world. They push it past real - they don’t go for that hyper-realistic look, they say ‘what is realistic?’ and ‘how can I make the world more beautiful?’ they push the colours where you wouldn’t normally see them in nature but they’re appealing to the eye.

That’s the look we’re going for, something that is not...the goal is not pure photorealism, the goal is believability. And within that realm of believability is the freedom to push things in certain ways that may not be realistic. And that’s where I think the artistic ability comes in and they’re able to say that ‘you know it’s not realistic, but it looks like it could be and its beautiful at the same time.’ That’s what the tech really brings us is the ability with our artists to say ‘you know this may not be real but its believable and I believe that this world exists and it’s a beautiful world.’

Would you want to do a photorealistic Call Of Duty title? Is there a point it becomes gratuitous and inappropriate?

That’s a really good question. I think time will tell. I don’t think I can take that leap and assume which way the company wants to go in that regard. But certain things make sense: a solid object that’s made of wood or metal – that makes sense. That makes sense to push that in a realistic direction. But then you have things like environments and the way you light things, the way you effects filter through, the way the post production or post processing on the screen, the ways those affect it.

I think there’s more freedom to go around. Does that open up a can of worms in the future? I think it does. You deal with the issue of the uncanny valley, if you get so realistic but don’t get it enough it looks crazy. Those are things that we’re going to have to deal with because inevitably we’re going in that direction. Whether we’ll aim for that specifically i can’t say but it’s something that we’re going to have to be careful of I think.

You've added dogs as part of Ghosts. What can you tell us about the gameplay involving dogs?

We can’t talk too much about exactly what the dog gameplay is going to be like but we did build the dog specifically as a friendly squad mate. So along with that comes a new AI movement set of getting him to move in a way that’s believable and realistic. That includes things like making him act like a dog. Dogs don’t go to a position and stay there like a solider does – which was how we were initially working with him. And then it seemed off and then we realised that dogs don’t do that. Dogs go to a position and they sniff around, get bored, go over there, sniff around, they get bored then they come back to  you, look and say ‘what are we going to do next?’

Once we started to grasp that understanding of ‘oh yeah, dogs aren’t people’ then he really started to take on a life of his own. He does have a couple of functions in the game that are gameplay related, but we can’t really get into those right now. Multiple characters in Ghosts – dog attached to one character in the game? Not necessarily.

In multiplayer, you've gone for dynamic maps. Why?

I think it’s just the inevitable pursuit of what’s different and new. Looking at the interactivity of environmental maps, you start to think ‘what if we could do something different here in this level, that’s appropriate for this level but not for maybe any over MP map? This map is very different. This is something we can do here that isn’t appropriate for any other MP map.’ It spitballed the idea of coming up with some very specific scenes.

One of the levels has an earthquake that’s constantly going on and off through the level that starts to effect things in different ways. But that’s only that one MP map. So it was really an idea of how can we push things further and this was a really creative way of exploring that.

Tell us about the next-gen version of Ghosts versus the current gen.

We never really felt that hardware has ever limited us as far as gameplay goes. We very rarely felt that ‘if only we have more horsepower we can do this cool gameplay thing’ so a lot of what Mark has alluded to on the stage was that a lot of the core horsepower went to graphical tech that will improve the immersion into those gameplay experiences.

One of the benefits that brings is that whether you purchase the game on next-gen hardware or a PC or a current gen hardware console you’re going to get the same gameplay experience. We’re not going to let any player feel left out because they don’t have the new shiny console – they don’t have a sub gameplay experience to those guys. We really set out that whatever system you got it on you’re still going to get the triple-a experience as everyone else. Sure, you’re going to have your bells and whistles turned off and the immersion level isn’t going to quite be there but it’s still going to be the same core gameplay experience that makes you say ‘wow’.

Call Of Duty: Ghosts is coming.

We know it will have a new engine (at last!) and that multiplayer will feature traps. But based on the Call Of Duty multiplayer outings so far, what actually needs to change?

Until Activision comes forward with details on multiplayer, we can look to previous games to see what worked and what didn't - specifically Black Ops 2, as that was the most recent. Even though that was by Treyarch and Ghosts will be by Infinity Ward, there is some obvious overlap.

This isn’t going to be about the balance and how quick-scoping is overpowered, killstreaks need to be toned down or whatever else. Rather, it’ll be about the actual multiplayer design and why Call of Duty can feel like such an infuriating multiplayer game to play, where success feels as random or lucky as it does influenced by skill.

And everything begins with that problem of lag and how Call Of Duty deals with it. This video is a fairly comprehensive overview of what happens in online Call Of Duty.



Solution: More feedback for the player, either with visual or audio cues.

When did you start planning Krieg?

I started thinking about Krieg… let’s see. I started thinking about him when the game was in cert and I had some of my other designers finishing Gaige and I was keeping track of how she was keeping together. I was thinking of other things we could be trying with character classes.

It wasn’t Krieg yet but I was started to think of other ideas that eventually came into him when we were in cert but we were so bogged down with all the campaign DLCs that we didn’t really have the horsepower in terms of animation, audio, we just didn’t have enough resources in terms of personnel to really start full development on him.

But over the holidays I was tinkering and figuring out the skill tree and working it out on paper. And then we really started full development on him in January.

Was the plan to always have him in?

No. No no. Four was always what our goal was for the main game and then when the coders came to us, probably about half or three-quarters through development, they said hey there’s an option in the future to add new classes to the game and we’ll be able to port that. That was really exciting. We started thinking about Gaige at that time. That was also when we started thinking about pre-order stuff and that kind of thing. So that was when we started thinking about more than four.

We didn’t start thinking past that officially until we got a sense of ‘does anyone even want more?’ We needed to see what the response to Gaige was before we decided to do something else. But everyone really enjoyed her and was excited about the new kinds of things that she brought to the table, So we knew okay, cool, people are into this and that’s when we decided it was a good time to start thinking about another one.

So was it just the reception to Gaige that make you push ahead with Krieg? I imagine it takes a bit more than you coming to work and saying ‘hey guys, let’s make Krieg!’

[laughs] Strangely, it didn’t take that much more. It was an idea that had been percolating around and when we were in cert, I started thinking about the pros and cons, skills and things like that. Then I was like you know, who would this person actually be? Players like that ‘be the villain’ promise as well. That was when I thought, what if he was a psycho? That would have a good feel, he’s the guy on the box and stuff like that. And that’s connected well with the kind of design things I wanted to do as well.

It wasn’t a very hard sell, once I had connected those two dots and started talking to the partners and some of the other designers as well. Hey, what if the next one was a psycho bandit? Everyone was pretty excited right off the bat. So it wasn’t a hard sell, thankfully.

Krieg plays quite differently to the other characters. When you have a game that was made without a character like him in mind, how hard is it to insert him into the game and keep it balanced?

I’ve done this question a couple of times and it’s not as hard as you would think. It’s not trivial but we just have to make sure his trees are working and provide him with a power level that’s roughly equivalent to the other players. If we hit that goal, then the rest of the game kind of takes care of itself.

If a dude was hard for the other classes, he should be similarly challenging for Krieg. What’s interesting is where his weaknesses are and where his strengths are. There are certain enemies that other classes might have trouble with that he has an easy time with and certain enemies and bosses that are really tough for Krieg just because of the way his character works that are way easier for another class.

For example, Krieg’s action skill isn’t super strong against the bunker. You have to throw your axe at the bunker where as Axton’s turret is going to be equally effective against the bunker, regardless. So it’s kind of cool during focus tests to learn what parts of the game are more or less challenging for this character than the other characters.

I always think that’s really strong in design. I don’t think you ever want a character to be great at everything. There needs to be something that provides players with ‘oh man, last time I played this was really easy, because the other class I used was well suited to it’ but now it’s a different experience.

That’s part of the fun of a new character.

When you were making Krieg and you looked back at Borderlands 2 and how players played the game, were there any surprising trends that informed Krieg’s design?

Watching people play, some players have no fear and no regard for maintaining their health. The Fight For Your Life mechanic can be used as a crutch by these players They’ll go oh whatever, and I’ll go down and probably get back up and keep going.

I noticed this play pattern that some people had so that did influence Krieg in that it could be a strategy. So people who play this way will love the character and people who don’t play like that, I wonder if through the way his skills are, if I could get people to play that way, because that suits Krieg really well.

I want to put players in the shoes of what it feels like to be a psycho, where they just come right at you. I want players to be in those shoes and see what it feels what it’s like to be one of those psychos.

That playstyle I noticed that some players had inspired some of his abilities. The Mania tree in particular is very much that kind of ‘oh well, I’m going for it and I went down, but so what I’ll blow you up and I’ll just keep doing it!’ Really keeping that high aggression play style.

Did you expect players to use the Fight For Your Life mechanic as a crutch?

Not in the way… they were using it strategically, on purpose, almost, which was unexpected. It was always supposed to be that you get one more chance so you don’t instant fail conditions, but these players were using it as a strategic element. They wanted to get in, do as much damage as they can, do as many things as they can and second wind will make sure they can survive. So that was unexpected and did inspire some of Krieg’s play mechanics.

Seeing as Krieg’s was born out of Gaige’s reception, are there further plans depending on how Krieg is received?

Yeah, probably, you know? I think if he has a great reception and people are really enjoying it and are interested in more characters, we certainly would be listening. We wouldn’t dismiss it.If the opportunity is there, I’d expect we’d try and take it.

It’s unusual to be talking about a game and fresh DLC at this point in a game’s life. Has Borderlands 2’s longevity surprised you?

No, not really, because the first game’s DLC… we had a sense of what to expect from people maintaining interest because of the success of the DLCs from the first game. What’s really cool this time around is we have a lot more information about how people are playing Borderlands 2 than we ever did on Borderlands 1.

Through the Shift system and things like that, we have a lot of polymetry about how long they’re playing, how long the average session is, these kinds of things. We have a sense of how many players are playing, how long they’re playing, how many are online, it all feeds into the data. We know Borderlands was a game that some people played for a long, long, long time.

Now we have a better sense of how many that is, so that informed us that we can do DLCs for much longer than some other titles can, because our fanbase works in that way. They’re still playing the game and so they’ll be excited for and looking for new content whenever we’re able to provide it.

I’ve seen it come up on Twitter a lot that when content is released that isn’t covered in Season Pass, there’s a lot of griping. Is there frustration from you guys that when build upon initial plans, that it isn’t recognised by those fans?

Yeah, it’s certainly a little frustrating. I think we made a pretty clear agreement with players when they bought the Season Pass about what that was. It was four campaign DLCs – there was no mention of character DLCs or anything like that. Krieg was something, like I said, that we hadn’t even thought about when that was offered.

So yeah, it gets a little frustrating. But on the other hand, we’ve added so much value to that Season Pass from the original agreement – the latest level cap increase, they just got it as part of the Season Pass – and those are all decisions that were made after the Season Pass. It wasn’t like we said ‘and later on, we’re going to add this to the Season Pass and that to the Season Pass!’

It’s just been opportunities of hey, we want to reward people who are on our team and in for the long haul with as much addition content as we could. The characters are a huge investment to build so those are their own thing.

Based on the information that’s out there, what do you expect from next-gen console gaming?

That’s a great question and I think everyone in the industry who isn’t currently making a next-gen game is asking the same question. We have some hardware in the office but we’re just starting to look at it because we’ve been finishing up all these DLCs and everything else, so we haven’t had a ton of time to really dive into that.

So I think we’re, Gearbox at least, is in a position at least where we’re starting to feel out the hardware and we’re excited to see what our other friends in the industry is going to be making so we can get some knowledge of okay, they’re focusing on these features, and not those features and get a little bit of the lay of the land.

But I’m really excited to see what everyone comes up with. We’ll be learning more from Microsoft soon, so it’s an exciting time, for sure.

The thing about Borderlands 2 characters is that they're all… well. They're a bit small, aren't they?

Zer0 is a slim assassin. Gaige, Maya and Axton are normal sizes. Salvador might be the beefy one of the group but he's vertically challenged. There are no characters who are big, brutal, in-your-face archetypes.

And this is where we pull out the surprising and triumphant 'until now!' fanfare line, because Krieg is big, brutal and in-your-face.

Krieg's Buzz Axe

Krieg's skill is Buzz Axe, when he puts his weapons away and pulls out a giant axe. At this point, you have melee swipes and an axe throw attack. It initially seems a little underwhelming compared to the skills of other characters - it doesn't have the instant feedback and effectiveness of Axton's turret, for example - but it's actually what's happening underneath the surface that's interesting and how he uses that skill in tandem with the skills he can unlock.

His skill trees can be set up in various different ways that encourage different playing styles. The Bloodlust tree is the most straightforward, as you accumulate stacks with kills - you can boost grenade damage, weapon swap speeds and so on. You can also attach a dynamite to your axe. It's a fairly vanilla shoot-things-from-distance play-style, mixed up with the odd Buzz Axe rampage.

Mania is where things get interesting, as your damage output ramps up when your shields are down and your health lowers. You can increase your melee damage with the added chance that you might actually attack yourself (your screen will go blurry as Krieg recovers from smashing himself in the face). The final skill turns you into a Badass Psycho Mutant, which is every bit as fun and empowering as you'd imagine it might be, if you've fought one of those things yourself.

Mania also lets you replace Fight For Your Life with Light The Fuse, where Krieg can move at normal speed and throws dynamite instead of firing weapons. Giving up is replaced with Krieg lighting dynamite and holding it above his head. You're still revived should you score a kill but it's still an unusual twist on the familiar Borderlands 2 mechanic.

The Hellborn tree is also unusual in that it's almost entirely based around fire. More specifically, based around you being on fire. You can imagine the risk-reward involve here, with stacks balanced against the fact that you're on fire, but the best is saved for his final skill in this tree. Krieg automatically fires out homing balls of… well, fire when he's attacked, which makes him an even deadlier character for the opposition to come up against.

Krieg's Group Role

Krieg is a classic risk-reward character, his insane damage output balanced by how vulnerable he becomes to reach that state.

His role within the group seems to be as a wrecking ball character but this also suggests brainless, one-dimensional tactics that definitely isn't the case. Perhaps more so than the other character classes, you have to keep a close eye on his stacks and when his active skills runout. If they wear off while you're in amongst an enemy camp, then you'll be in trouble.

His playstyle is different enough to warrant that Borderlands 2 fans will want to play as him and it'll be fun to see how Krieg slots into groups and how they support him. Because his damage increases as he becomes more vulnerable, then a healing Siren player might actually go against his best interests - a Borderlands first.

Conversely, Gaige, Axton and Krieg teaming up should be able to do insane amounts of damage - you could have an elemental robot, two Sabre turrets and Badass Psycho Mutant tearing up bosses at the same time.

For that promise alone, we think Borderlands 2 fans will have a lot of fun with Krieg…

Also read: Our interview with Borderland 2's Creative Director on Krieg

The Sims is a series that just goes from strength to strength. Though The Sims 3 failed to capture the minds and hearts of its gamers quite like the original or The Sims 2, it was none the less a wholly absorbing game.

So now with The Sims 4 announced – and due in 2014 – we got to thinking exactly what EA and The Sims Studio needs to do to make The Sims 4 the ultimate life simulation.

And while there are a number of other suggestions – whether it’s to do with realism or fun – these are what we think The Sims 4 needs to have.

Different Cities And Building Types

The whole world doesn’t live in a detached two-storey house, and while The Sims’ heritage as the ‘doll house simulator’ probably caters for that specific type of building, it’s about time we saw more variety in the worlds.

For a starter, terrace blocks would be nice. Houses that are built directly next to one another are common throughout the world – especially in the UK – and it’ll just help make these towns and cities feel a little more realistic if they’re not all segregated into their own little patch of land.

Or basements. Or hotels. Or apartments. Or flats. All these things need to happen because the world isn’t anywhere near as neat as The Sims would suggest, especially in cities where everyone and their gran is crammed in together.

And while we’re on the topic of cities, there’s something to learn from SimCity here. No, we’re not saying always-on internet connection. That would be silly. No, what we need is multiple playable cities.

Now we need our Sims to feel like part of an actual world. Previously Sims always felt mechanical, and that needs to be resolved. Give each Sim a sense of place, a sense of identity within a world.

Whether it’s one of our own creation or from a selection of pre-created ones is up for debate, but our Sims should be capable of the same actions as ourselves – and few people these days are restricted to their absolute immediate locations.

Aging Off

Please. The Sims as a franchise was built as a means of expressing ourselves, and some of us simply have to control every aspect of the game. Some of us don’t like our Sims’ grandparents dying of old age while their not being played.

Realistic, perhaps, Death does come for us all, in the end. But this is a game and the lack of an aging off function in The Sims 3 was a bit of a pain.

Mostly because the beauty of The Sims is becoming attached to these digital characters and if we’re rushed through their lives it’s hard to really become involved with them.

If we can’t turn aging off then at least create more believable lifespans. Having a Sim born and die in the space of a couple of play sessions is a little unfair – it’s hardly enough time to get anything done.

And yes, we’re aware of the ironic metaphor for our own lives.

Implementing gradual age milestones, for example, would be a huge boon. Babies to toddlers to pre-teen to teen to young adult to adult to mature adult to old person to decrepit person; there’s a variety of age-milestones in our lives and the Sims should represent that.

Different traits could be associated with that too, but that leads us on to our next point.

Sims That Grow

A Sim born with particular traits will retain those traits. That’s not normal. Sims need to grow as characters as they grow in size too.

An arrogant and selfish Sim in youth might learn the error of their ways later in their life as their friends abandon them and no one pays them any attention. Or a shy, quiet Sim might finally come out their shell as they grow in confidence.

That’s grade-A Hollywood romcom bullshit right there, and it needs to happen in The Sims 4.

Memories should play an important part of this too. Making Sims believable means making them people that can learn from mistakes, or hang onto old memories that make them happy.

Most importantly, we need Sims AI that proves they are people, actual thinking people. Not a bunch of mechanical parts that more than often go a little bit haywire.

Much More Detail

Fidelity in visuals is one thing, but detail is a whole other. We’ve got to a point now where The Sims can be as detailed as we want it to be – and with the cartoony caricature art style (that’s a good thing) of The Sims 4, it’d be nice to have a more adjustable level of detail over the world.

Whether that’s as grand scale as terraforming the region we want to build on (unlikely), or simply enabling us to adapt the terrain of our plots of land with a little more finesse. Again, basements please.

But there should be a little more improvements to the Build Mode of the game, whether that’s the inclusion of split level floors, removal of the ‘grid’ based construction – it’s just far too restrictive these days – or elements like porch detailing, short steps (rather than a mandatory set to fill a grid) and the like.

Even more than that, we’d like to be able to specifically place elements how we like. The Sims 3 let us have items on an angle, but not nearly as specific as we would’ve liked.

Angled sofas so all Sims can watch the TV comfortably, for example, would be nice. Or the ability to place vases and such at a specific part of a table rather than directly in the centre. Again, get rid of the grid.

Having such limited control of decoration just shouldn't happen now. We should be free to design our Sims' homes with as much flexibility as we like.

Perhaps this is dreaming big, but it could easily be possible these days. So do it, please, EA. You could even have an 'Easy' mode, if you don't want to destroy the game's notrious accessibility.

Back To Businesses

Career paths have always been the interesting part of a Sims’ life, and as long as there’s plenty of variety in this particular aspect of The Sims 4 most of us will be happy.

But with The Sims 2 expansion pack Open For Business a whole new avenue was opened with our Sims’ careers. Suddenly the crafts that our Sims enjoyed making (and even selling) could be turned into careers.

That’s a brilliant idea that really needs to work its way into The Sims 4 base game. More flexibility and freedom over how our Sims make money is always going to be enjoyed.

More than that, these businesses could become hubs for your regions. Your Sim might live in a small town making – say – garden gnomes, but commute every day to another city to sell them at their very own Garden Gnome Emporium.

Then other Sims, deciding they needed a garden gnome for their front yard, could travel to the store and be sold said gnome by the garden gnome expert. It adds to that continuity and, as we’ve said many times in this article, helps build the realism of our Sims’ worlds.

For a less-specific example, however, a particularly hard-working and talented salesmen could start a small business in a town and after putting the graft into it eventually build an empire exporting his products around the player’s Sims universe and into other Sims’ homes. 

Think about it. That’d be awesome.

Tone Down The Relationships

We get that relationships are a huge part of anyone’s life, and the Sims should represent that. But man are they fickle.

Decline a party invite because you have important work to do and suddenly your friend is not happy. Perhaps it will even affect your friendship in the long run.

Now we don’t know about you, but our friends tend to be a little more forgiving when it comes to things like that. Adult lives don’t always allow for friend time.

So yeah, it’s a balance between realism and fun here, obviously. Having to make that choice is important in each Sims personality, but for our friendships to rely so heavily on agreeing all the time? That’s not right.

Oh, and while we’re on the matter. Why does every happily married man or woman suddenly become an adulterer at the slightest flutter of an eye?

Sure, it happens, but every so often we’d like a Sim to stay faithful to their beloved. We’re not hopeless romantics, we just don’t want to be so picky about the people our Sims befriend for fear of them jumping behind the nearest bush for a quick spot of Woo Hoo.

We've seen GTA 5 in action and since making a video discussing what we saw, there have been plenty of questions probing us further about the game.

So here's a round-up of what we've been asked so far and our answers - if you have anything you'd like to know, just ask us below and we'll answer as best we can!

Is the camera close to the character like LA Noire or pulled back a bit like GTA 4 and Red Dead?

It seemed like the default camera in the other GTA titles to me.

How does the mini map in and out of the car look like? (Maybe some artist here can draw it out!)

Didn't really notice this, to be honest. I'd assume it's like the other GTAs, though, there's little reason to change it.

How's the physics engine?

Couldn't really say based on what I've seen, but it seemed in line with what we've seen in recent GTA games.

Do you think that aside from missions/side missions etc, can you just live life in LA?

To some extent, I suppose. The presence of businesses and customisable elements sounds like enough to keep you going when it comes to open world elements.

What would you rate the game right now based on what you've seen out of 10?

Could not possibly say, didn't play the game. It was a mightily impressive demo, though.

IS IT BETTER THAN GTA4

Couldn't say right now, but the world looks like it has even more potential for fun. It's just so big!

When do they release the gameplay demo to the public?

They almost certainly won't. If you look at past Rockstar releases, they tend to do gameplay series videos as opposed to releasing a demo outright.

Was there more than one city like can andreas? Or is it just Los Santos?

Just Los Santos, but that includes its gigantic surrounding areas, too.

Can you go under water without scuba gear but be under for less time? Tell me

Not sure about this as we only saw Trevor with his scuba suit on, but I can't imagine it would be easy to explore the ocean without it.

Hey I just wanted to ask how different does the gameplay look form the trailers?

Looked about the same to me. Very impressive in action, visually it won't let you down.

Hey guys has the wanted system changed much? Are the police realistic, will they use such things as police dogs?

Not sure about police dogs. They still have the star system, though.

I just want to know this: Does the 3 protaganist gameplay work? Or is it frustrating and unimmersive?

Haven't played the game, so couldn't say. However, there's a lot of potential in the three character gameplay, it doesn't seem forced from what we've seen and if you pick a favourite, the game can accommodate your choice with the stat system. It looked very immersive to me, though - the instantaneous switch is so impressive. It won't drag you out of the game experience, and it has the potential to make you think differently about the way you play GTA.

Sup, how is the health system in GTA V?

Good question. Don't know about that, actually. None of the characters died in the demo we saw.

Was it the XBOX or PS3 version they showed?

It was running on a PS3, but I wouldn't draw any conclusions about the best version from that. When they first demoed GTA IV to me, that was running on a 360.

Will Michaels mission just be bank heists? Sure it sounds fun but it might get old after a while...

I doubt it. Heists are part of the game but it seems like there's a lot of other stuff going on.

NowGamer can you tell us about the driving physics based on what you've seen? Is it more realistic than ever and is it more similar to GTA IV? A lot of people have been wondering about this.

Without getting hands-on, I couldn't possibly say. Driving a boat looks very different thanks to the water physics, though.

Was the weather demonstrated in the demo? If so, what happened, anything special?

It was just sunny during the demo, and in typical Rockstar fashion, it looked lovely when the sun set :)

How Many Buildings Are Fully Accessible?

No idea, the demo was all set outdoors.

When You Enter A Building Is The Gameplay Continuous, Or Does The Game Have To Load?

There was nothing in the demo to suggest either way.

Are Roofs And Tops Of Smaller Building Easily Accessible ?

Nothing in the demo really addresses this.

Can You Scale/Climb Objects And Buidlings ?

Don't know.

Finally, Was There Any Talk Of A Full-On Zombie DLC - Like Undead Nightmare - With A Storyline And Missions ?

Way too early to discuss DLC. It's still too early to talk about multiplayer!

Nowgamer, is it possible that when you're driving a car can you crash it into interior places, and my other question is, how realistic are the car collisions?

We didn't see it in the demo, so I doubt it. Haven't seen enough of the collisions to really comment on it, but GTA IV was pretty damn good in that regard.

Is switching thru the characters smooth ?

Really smooth. As mentioned in the video, it doesn't take very long at all. Technically it looked amazing.

From the gameplay youve seen witnessed... does the map look massive and are the graphics stunning?

Map seemed huge. There's a lot of world out there to explore. Graphically, on both a technical and artistic level, GTA V really is stunning based on what I've seen.

Are any of the pedestrians or cops look the same?

Couldn't really say based on what I saw.

Is there ragdoll effects e.g. GTA 4 when you ran people over, when the cillvilians went falling everywhere is that returning to GTA 5.

Euphoria physics return, so I'd expect so.

When you fly a plane is it realistic, e.g. when you turn do the flaps work as well

Didn't see a plane flying, so couldn't say.

Is there first person?

Seemed to be first-person in vehicles for when Franklin rammed the truck, couldn't say for on-foot bits.

Is it 5 times the size of Red Dead?

Rockstar's clarified this before - the land area is 3.5 times as big as Red Dead and 5x when you count the ocean. It's bigger than San Andreas, Liberty City and Red Dead combined.

I have a few question here I go. Is there going to be a gas system?

Not sure.

When you run red lights will the cops ask you to pull over?

Not sure.

Kidnapping/Hostages?

Not sure.

Will there be bigger guns slower motion/running?

Largest selection of weapons ever, apparently. Michael's special ability is a variation on bullet time.

Will everything be handed to you like a armored truck or will you have to get it yourself?

You have to organise things prior to a heist to make it happen.

Is the police realistic like ask to pull over only shot until hostile?

Wasn't in the demo so can't answer.

IS THE SOUNDTRACK AWSOME

Original score seems pretty awesome :)

Broadly speaking, failure comes in two varieties. There’s deserved failure. There’s undeserved failure. Deserved failure applies to those products/people/ideas that are poorly designed, badly thought through and sometimes, downright idiotic. Think Disney’s John Carter, Robert Kilroy-Silk and McDonald’s attempt at pizza and you’re thinking deserved failures.

Undeserved failures are the things worthy of recognition and success, but for whatever reason, have gone unnoticed and/or untouched. Half of John Carpenter’s movies fall into this category, as does the work of musician Rodriquez and games such as The Last Express and Blur.

Every time an undeserved failure comes into the world, those enlightened few that have found and embraced the joys it has to offer can’t help but be overcome by a sense of grand injustice. Here is something that has so much to give, why are people ignoring it? In the world of videogames, there is no greater example of an undeserved failure than Sony’s PS Vita; a handheld capable of bringing pleasure to many, only so few have given it a chance.

Marketing Mayhem, Confused Consumer

When was the last time you saw somebody using a Vita on the bus, on the train, in a coffee shop or at the park? When was the last time you spoke to somebody about the Vita and what games you/they were looking forward to? When was the last time a Vita game appeared anywhere near the top end of the videogame software chart?

The fact is that the Vita has a small install base, tiny when compared to that of Nintendo’s numerous handhelds. Pick any of Nintendo’s still-supported handhelds, and the numbers dwarf those of the Vita. If gamers don’t start supporting the Vita now, it will soon die a premature death; developers do not enjoy taking risks on producing games for consoles with low install bases.

Sony’s handling of the console has not helped matters. Poor marketing about what the console offers and what its focus is has put off a hardcore audience unconvinced by the benefits of gyroscopic motion, touch screen inputs and front and rear cameras. On the other hand, the casual crowd are put off by the perceived hardcore nature of the games and their complexity.

Everyone is put off by the pricing which, coupled with the fact that high-street retailers are unwilling to stock and sell a console intent on removing retailers themselves from the equation by way of its own digital store, can make the Vita a difficult investment.

Bad Marketing Does Not A Bad Console Make

Bad marketing, however, does not affect what the console actually delivers. What it delivers is an experience for the serious gamer that is second to none among today’s handhelds. Its game catalogue is diverse and stacked with quality, the console itself allows for gameplay ideas and execution that can’t be found anywhere else and its ability to link with the PS3 allows for genuinely welcome and long-needed connectivity between our in-house and on-the-move gaming lives.

Yes, Sony have made things hard for themselves with the naive manner in which they’ve tried to get the console into our hands. However, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give the kid a chance just because the parents have made mistakes.

At the end of the day, consoles should be judged by the quality of their games. The reason we buy a console is to play, every other feature is just a potential added bonus. Undoubtedly, the Vita’s lineup is aimed towards the serious gamer, the digital junkie, the hardcore, the ones that know their Hadokens from their Shoryukens, their materia from their mana. If you don’t instinctively know that crates should always be smashed or that the Princess is usually in another castle then the Vita isn’t for you.

A La Carte Menu For Hardcore Gamers

Just a quick look at the games designed specifically for the Vita should be more than enough to get you excited. Soul Sacrifice offers a dizzying level of player choice when it comes to battling monsters, so much choice that it becomes one of those rare games worth playing over and again just to see how things can be done differently, better and more efficiently. Gravity Rush is similarly engaging, an action RPG whose mechanics centre around the ability to warp the rules of physics.

Elsewhere, Vita editions of established franchises prove that home console games can and do work on a handheld. WipEout 2048 is easily the equal of the PS3’s WipEout HD, the Vita’s beautiful screen capable of capturing and enhancing the visual flair that the franchise has become synonymous with. LittleBigPlanet on the Vita, on the other hand, is arguably the finest of all LittleBigPlanet games - the Vita’s touch capabilities making level creation more instinctual and less fiddly than it could ever possibly be with a DualShock pad. Dead or Alive 5 Plus and Rayman Origins are equally high-class home console experiences ported to handheld that mimic the quality of the original in virtually every way.

Add digital-only Vita exclusives such as Hustle Kings, Escape Plan, Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack and Motorstorm RC and you’ve got a set of top class experiences that you really can’t find anywhere else.

Even the ones you can find elsewhere are worthwhile and/or improved on the Vita. Sony’s recent and aggressive push of cross-buy/play has been a huge success for those that own a PS3 and a Vita, providing much improved value for money and is going a long way to breaking down barriers between hardware. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and Retro City Rampage all fall into this category and all look and play brilliantly in the palm of your hand. 

Special mention must go out to Drinkbox’s Guacamelee in the cross-buy category, a metroidvania style game featuring a Mexican wrestler that plays superbly and arguably looks better on the Vita’s OLED screen than it does through a PS3 and HD TV. More developers like Drinkbox (also reasonable for Mutant Blobs Attack) need to take a long, hard look at what the Vita can offer and start designing games for it if the console is going to succeed in the long term.

All of these games mentioned are designed to appeal to the serious gamer, none are specifically targeted at the casual, I-just-love-to-touch-the-screen-and-see-things-happen, crowd. Not only are these games designed for the hardcore crowd, they are worthy of the hardcore crowd. The quality is high, the longevity is commendable and the diversity is equal to that of any console.

A Sweet Sprinkling Of Retro Style

That’s just the more modern crop. We haven’t even mentioned the best-in-class back catalogue of PSOne, PSP and NEO GEO games on offer for (usually) bargain prices. On how many consoles are you able to go from playing LittleBigPlanet one moment, to loading up Final Fantasy IX the next, followed by a few bouts on the original Guilty Gear before replaying Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey? Throw in some arcade action in the form of Metal Slug, overlooked PSP gems like Corpse Party and old-school Resident Evil and you’ve got a veritable history of many of videogaming’s best moments right there in the palm of your hand.

And it’s not just the games, it’s the extra-curricular add-ons around the games that make the Vita even more enticing. The dual analogue sticks mean that first and third person games are playable with a degree of skill, the online connectivity brings worthwhile multiplayer and a PS Plus membership provides free games (recent freebies Thomas Was Alone and Virtue’s Last Reward being particularly worthwhile purchases, free or not).

Ignore the marketing blurb and the naysayers preaching that the future of handheld solely resides in the realm of smartphones, the Vita is the best (and possibly only) portable option for the serious gamer. It’s unfortunate that such a well-designed and conceived bit of kit has failed to find the market it so clearly deserves.

A recent price-cut in Japan has helped sales in its native land, but the failure level to date may already be too severe to convince new developers to jump on board and start investing time, money and staff into producing new content for it.

Here’s hoping that’s not the case. Here’s hoping that the console finds a bigger audience. Here’s hoping new games continue to be made and old ones continue to find a new home. Here’s hoping an undeserved failure finds deserved success.

Long live the PS Vita.

We've been drenched by waves of GTA 5 info that trickled out of media demos and only just dried ourselves off. We've got 20 new screenshots, 64 Facts You Didn't Know and Why It Could Be The Best Open-World Game Yet.

Oh, and this chunky analysis video.

But there was something else about the GTA 5 coverage that only just occured to us when we recovered from the information overload. GTA 5 could be the last great console game of this generation.

Sobering thought isn't it?

Think about the best console games this gen and there are only a few that would be universally agreed on as being great. We'd say BioShock, Red Dead Redemption, Portal, Walking Dead, Fallout 3 and maybe - maybe - Uncharted 2 qualify.

Skyrim? There are some who didn't click with the combat and found the world bland. Assassin's Creed II? Very good but perhaps not quite great. Mass Effect 2? Too much gnashing of teeth over the action vs RPG slant. Even GTA IV itself was considered too serious in contrast to the humour of the previous entries.

There will be other candidates that we've missed and of course, it remains to be seen whether GTA 5 will have the quality to join the greats of this gen. But its release looks like it will signal the end of this gen, in unofficial terms, as more projects will look to include PS4 and next Xbox releases before shifting exclusively to those platforms.

After all, what's being released after GTA 5 that will be exclusive to this generation of console hardware? Battlefield 4, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Call Of Duty: Ghosts, all of which are shaping up to be major next-gen titles as well. Batman: Arkham Origins could also make the leap and in any case, with a new developer at the helm plus the inclusion of multiplayer, there are a few question marks next to its name.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist and The Last Of Us will both hit the shelves before GTA 5 does, so they don't count either.

E3 will bring announcements but it's unlikely that any games revealed in June will be exclusive to this generation of console hardware - we're simply too close to the release date of PS4 and next Xbox for them to be ignored for high-profile projects. Gran Turismo 6 for PS3 seems the only potential candidate for a last hoorah on current-gen, bar any surprise announcements.

In fact, there's only one game we see that has the potential to steal GTA 5's thunder as this gen's last great console game - Beyond: Two Souls.

But we may have missed some candidates - are there any others you reckon that fit the bill?

We've played GTA 5. We've got some fleshed out thoughts on Rockstar's sequel to read through but if you want the quick lowdown on GTA 5, here are 64 facts about the game you (probably) (hopefully) (maybe) didn't know…

GTA 5: LOS SANTOS AND BLAINE COUNTY

•    It will be split into two major areas – Los Santos (the city) and Blaine County (the countryside).

•    None of the world will be sealed off at the start of the game. You can explore it all straight away.

•    Land mass is three and a half times the size of Red Dead Redemption.

•    Including underwater areas, the total playable area is five times the size of Red Dead Redemption.

•    The underwater areas look dense and busy. The ocean bed is littered with downed chunks of ships and liners, plus other divers exploring the wreckage. And yes, there are sharks swimming about.

•    NPCs take part in activities appropriate to the areas they’re in (such as the divers). You’ll notice people fishing next to rivers in Blaine County, for example. Slightly less related – you’ll also see drug addicts passed out on the beach.

•    There’s a 24-hour day/night cycle and weather system.

•    Vinewood is GTA 5’s equivalent of Hollywood (complete with an in-game version of the Chinese Theatre) and you can take part in an open-top tour bus in that particular area.

GTA 5: SIDE MISSIONS

•    There are plenty of distractions to take part in. Side missions include hijacking security vans and picking up hitchhikers.

•    Sports events include yoga, golf, tennis, triathlons and bike races.

•    Challenges include stunt jumps and flying challenges.

•    You can also acquire property – player housing returns and you can also buy garages, marinas and businesses.

GTA 5 STORY: RECESSION, REALITY TV

•    The recession has long been talked about as being a driving point of the plot and it’s now been confirmed. The three main characters – Franklin, Trevor and Michael – driven by the chance to set themselves up for life in uncertain economic times by pulling off heists.

•    ‘Cheap reality TV’ will also factor into the plot and the humour of the game.

•    The Lost will be back. At one point, Trevor gets in a fight with the Western branch of the GTA IV gang.

GTA 5: CHARACTERS AND BACKGROUND

•    Franklin was doing legal work for a car dealership run by Simeon Yetarian but is just as comfortable committing crime. His day job is what brings him to meet Michael.

•    Trevor is an ex-army pilot, ‘driven by the chance of a cheap high and the next big score’. He used to work criminal jobs with Michael before the events of GTA 5 kick off.

•    Michael is retired but miserable, distant from his family and only finding joy in bottles of whiskey and old action Vinewood action movies. His boredom drives him back to the life of crime he abandoned.

•    You can customise each character. Confirmed so far – tattoos, haircuts and clothing. You’ll notice tattoo parlours dotted around Los Santos.

•    You can also level up their skills, San Andreas style. One skill we noticed that could be levelled up was stealth.

•    The three main characters will have different special abilities. Michael has a bullet-time variant, Trevor can do double damage (and also has a unique melee attack) while Franklin can steer around corners in slow-mo.

•    The special abilities are a limited resource, so they have to be used strategically.

GTA 5 CHARACTER SWITCHING

•    You can switch between characters at almost any point in the game. You bring up a character wheel to switch between characters.

•    It uses a Google Street View-style system. The map zooms out in stages, crosses across the map to the character you want to play as, then zooms back in with a slight pause when arriving at the new character. It takes a few seconds to switch between characters out in the open world.

•    Character switching during missions, however, is instant.

•    Character switching during missions can take place during a cutscene, or during gameplay – either triggered automatically or manually by the player. It will vary from mission to mission.

GTA 5 HUMOUR

•    At the equivalent of Chinese Theater, there’s a street performer dressed as superhero ‘Impotent Rage’.

•    Another is dressed as ‘Republican Space Ranger’, who looks a lot like Master Chief.

•    Overall, the tone is less serious than GTA IV.

GTA 5: VEHICLES AND CUSTOMISATION

•    Water physics have redone so boats bounce off and crash through waves.

•    Some boats will come with scuba gear. The Zodiac Rib, which we saw in the demo, is one such example.

•    Planes will come with parachutes.

•    Helicopters will return.

•    Car customisation includes paintjobs, wheels, window tints, grills, spoilers.

•    You can also play with the way vehicles handle and feel, changing the suspension, engine and brakes.

•    GTA 5 will have the largest selection of vehicles seen in a GTA game.

GTA 5 MUSIC: ORIGINAL AND LICENSED

•    Regulate by Warren G and Nate Dogg is one of the songs on GTA 5’s soundtrack.

•    Glamorous by Fergie is another track we heard.

•    There was a third, a country song that played where Trevor was in the boat, that we didn’t recognise.

•    The original score comes into play whenever you’re away from a radio. Think how the music worked in Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire.

•    The underwater sections have their own ‘theme’.

•    Heists also have their own music, which become tighter and more frantic as the tension builds.

GTA 5 MISSIONS AND HEISTS

•    Actress in GTA’s universe, Lacey Jones, is being harassed by the press. Michael chats to her when he leaves the Von Crustenburg hotel, not recognising who she is, and offers to drive her home. This particular mission sees you escaping the pursuing press, who are after Jones.

•    Michael earns for completing this mission but the real money comes from completing the many heists on offer.

•    You can customise your gear before a heist. For example, Trevor can wear a mask that’s a monkey head smoking a cigarette. Other masks include a clown mask and Jason Vorhees hockey mask.

•    You can hire crew members for some heists, although you’ll have to share a cut of the spoils with them.

•    If you stick with the same crew members, they will level up their skills as they take on more heists.

•    You can also choose a getaway spot and where to plant your vehicle before the heist.

•    Some missions see all three characters teaming up – one example we’re shown is called Blitz Play, when Michael gets a tip from FIB about an armoured van being transported and the trio team up to take it out. This isn't one of the main heist missions but rather, something Rockstar picked to show the many different aspects of a GTA 5 mission.

•    Character switching is a big part of heist missions. Michael tells Trevor to look for the car, at which point it switches to Trevor looking through binoculars at the car. Michael drives a rubbish truck in from of the vehicle, then Franklin rams the armoured van with a tow truck.

•    This brute force approach of heists inevitably alerts the police but heists can also be carried out in a stealth-like manner.

GTA 5 COMBAT: AUTO-AIM AND WEAPONS

•    The stars system for police returns. We haven’t seen what the different ratings do but we can say that at four stars, police snipers are called in.

•    Auto-aim isn’t as rigid at GTA IV but like Max Payne 3, there will be variable targeting options, including free aim, soft lock and hard lock.

•    You can run and gun while maining control of the reticle.

•    Weapons wheel selection from Red Dead Redemption is used here.

•    Also similar to Red Dead Redemption is that the reticle will switch from white to red to identify an enemy and a tiny X will appear over the reticle when the target is killed.

•    This will have the largest selection of weapons from any GTA game.

•    Weapons we’ve seen – sniper rifles, machine guns and sticky bombs.

•    Weapon costumisation includes silencers, scopes, extended mags and laser sights.

GTA 5: MISCELLANEOUS FACTS

•    New phone looks like an Android handset, with internet built-in.

•    You can snap pictures using your phone and upload it to Rockstar Social Club.

•    Pamela Drake is one of the NPCs in Vinewood, who will tell her story to anyone who will listen.

•    Deer will roam around Blaine County.

•    The internet cafes in GTA 5 are called Tw@.

After seeing Grand Theft Auto V in action, the feeling I took away from it was the impressive way it wove together elements from the many different Rockstar games we’ve seen released in the past ten years.

This immense world, this county, captures the vibe of San Andreas, with the detail of Grand Theft Auto IV, scale on a par to Red Dead Redemption and the multiple character snapshots seen in Episodes From Liberty City – indeed, if Rockstar wanted to build the ultimate open world, adding up these elements really should yield some success.

In the gameplay demo, we saw three very different snapshots of Los Santos. First, we saw Franklin jumping out of a helicopter before parachuting over the immense natural landscape in the game, selling the San Andreas-style vibe that will be reprised in Grand Theft Auto V.

It’s astonishing to take in – you can see various shades of this open world in the distance over this enormous landmass, from mountains to the distant sight of skyscrapers.

As Franklin breezes past Mount Chiliad, we spot wildlife as well. When he lands, we see people fishing by a river. The detail doesn’t seem to let up, even when it feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere.

Secondly, we cut to Trevor, who wakes up on an island in the middle of nowhere in his underpants, surrounded by the bodies of the Lost, as seen in Episodes From Liberty City (Trev fell out with their Western chapter).

In Trevor’s case, we get to see jaw-dropping detail as he dives into the ocean, revealing a whole world going on below the surface. We see divers, seeking out lost cargo from enormous chunks of a downed tanker – then, we spot sharks, which leads to Trevor gulping in his scuba gear.

The underwater sections were a real unknown quantity prior to this demo, but if even parts of the map can replicate this level of detail on the ocean floor, we’ve got a lot to look forward to here.

Finally, we saw the world through Michael’s eyes in more of a traditional GTA-style environment: central Vinewood. The camera looks forward, where we catch a glimpse of the Los Santos skyline at night; it then pans behind, showing the giant Vinewood sign on the hill.

We see a fading actress on GTA’s equivalent of Hollywood Boulevard, Pamela Drake, relaying her story to anyone who will listen. An open world event, where Michael has to drive a young starlet called Lacey Jonas away from prying photographers exposes even more details, such as a deer jumping out the way of the headlights of the car, implying how the urban and nature elements of the open world design will collide.

It’s a three-pronged illustration of the variety waiting for you in Los Santos, then, and the instantaneous character switch shows us that we can tap into different parts of the world in just a few seconds.

The potential for exploration is immense: this is Rockstar’s biggest open world ever, and from what we’ve seen so far, the concentrated detail will live up to the standards demonstrated in GTA IV’s dizzying Liberty City environment.

We’ve gone in-depth with the mission content we've seen in GTA V elsewhere – but as an early indicator of the open world design of Los Santos, there’s so much that will resonate with fans of previous Rockstar games.

The past ten years of Rockstar projects have all led to this; switching instantly between the three characters will really bring the most out of GTA V’s Los Angeles pastiche.

SimCity has been a weird one. It started with the previews, which consistently put fans off with criticisms over smaller areas, changes in camera or even art style.

Then there was the launch, which was initially plagued with connection issues – proving all those criticisms behind the always-on DRM were spot on – and then rolled on to include a whole host of bugs and problems with the underlying Glassbox system.

We reviewed SimCity and even then – even in spite of the connection problems – we felt the Glassbox system wasn’t perfect. It made for an entertaining and gradual growth to your cities, but it was limited in longevity.

But as much as we are fans of the SimCity franchise, there are those who play every SimCity to an uncanny level of detail. And what do these players make of Maxis’ latest SimCity?

We reached out to Simtropolis – the forum where these diehard SimCity players reside – to find out exactly what they made of SimCity’s Glassbox engine, and just how happy they are with the end result.

What The Diehard Fans Think Of SimCity

In speaking with these SimCity fans, it was interesting to note many of the community’s interest in Cities XL. Monte Cristo’s city-building game was, for many, hoped to be the next best thing since SimCity 4.

These are fans that want a depth of simulation, want a realistic looking art style and they want to be heard. Maarten (MandelSoft) spoke of frustrations around the 2013 SimCity, and how series fans – disheartened – simply went back to playing SimCity 4.

Maarten had a checklist of concerns over the latest SimCity: its art style, the high price tag, the always-on DRM, the simplicity of the system and its underlying Glassbox engine.

But most of all, the city size limits. Reduced to only 2k by 2k, SimCity 2013 has the smallest plots of land available in a SimCity yet. And it wasn’t helped much by the region play, either.

“For a large number of fans, this combination [of region play] was a huge game breaker!” said Maarten adding that, “the footprints of all components seem to be increased, making the cities look even smaller.” 

These limitations restricted an interest that many diehard SimCity fans adored: the recreation of real world cities.

“Besides with this restricted map size, you can't recreate existing cities in Real Life because the tiles are way too small for that (and it's not helped by the fact that you can only build on preset maps).

“The massiveness of SimCity 3000 and 4 is gone in this version.”

Martin Laforce (laforcem) agrees, going so far as to claim the game is “boring” thanks to the “small maps [that] make it hard to reproduce realistic cities.”

Martin adds, “I like the economy model but it is buggy and this is very frustrating.”

SimCity’s Lack Of Traditional Features

One of the bigger criticisms over SimCity is its lack of customisation and freedom.

Without the ability to terraform the land, gamers feel restricted. Without the ability to construct underground civic engineering, gamers feel patronised. Without the ability to build real metropolises, gamers feel insulted.

Baertooth claims to be “disappointed” by the new SimCity, mostly because many of its criticisms were already being negatively reported on by the SimCity fanbase.

“A lot of what was negatively predicted has happened,” said Baertooth. “From a broken game the fan base didn't ask for, to EA corporate greed and their desire to use online only DRM to cattle their customers, to renting games to destroy the used game market (you don't buy SimCity 2013, you access it as a service).”

Baertooth blames EA for the problems surrounding SimCity, however. He believes it is EA’s desire to “kill the right of first sale” of a consumer, and it is this that has affected the final game.

“They simplified the game,” said Baertooth, “by taking out a lot of control over how you can manipulate your city such as regional control, terraforming, and density control and replaced them with DLC.”

Macvirt also places the blame on EA: “SC2013 is a textbook case of adapting a niche product (with an established but niche audience) to a broader audience for commercial purposes. 

“Yes, EA did leave a lot of gaps in that process of adaptation, and yes they did create several issues for themselves which could have easily been prevented.”

Macvirt adds that the target market is left unscathed while the existing fans, the true SimCity fans, are the ones affected.

Other concerns over EA’s input comes from StoNe220022, who doesn’t criticise the publisher’s business practice but instead the decision to focus on short-term entertainment.

“Once you have seen it or experienced it,” he says, “the feeling goes away and all of the effort in investing time in to producing it is gone, at least until the next user comes along.”

He adds that while it’s entertaining to witness the thoughts of your Sims and each individual person’s desires, the repetition sets in quickly and you’re left with “no drive to load up the game”.

Not Everyone Hates SimCity

Let’s be clear here for fear of understating it: the majority of Simtropolis users do not like the latest SimCity.

Despite that, there were a couple of people who found themselves quite taken with Maxis’ latest, flaws and all.

Perablenta’s biggest praise is its accessibility. After having found SimCity 4 too obtuse for its own good, he found SimCity of 2013 a far more enjoyable experience due to not having to learn the science behind the simulation.

Talking of SimCity 4, Perablenta said, “My biggest annoyance was the hidden math behind the game, because you could simply sense the places and moments by paying attention to some gameplay mechanic where the game was run by that math and not the logic by which your playing.”

Perablenta wants a simulation game that is able to “mask its inner workings with fluid gameplay” and to “allow me the freedom to unleash my creativity and ideas” without behind restrain by arbitrary maths.

“In that respect,” says Perablenta, “the most important thing to me in a game like a city builder, I think the SimCity of 2013 is better then SC4."

Xenocity is also quite happy with SimCity. “I don't mind the fact there are spaces between cities,” he says, “since most of the world and my state are built like that (except for the few cities that border Detroit).

“Urban sprawl is literally an American invention that only exists in certain parts of the US”

Even the city size limits is complimented by Xenocity, who adds that the new SimCity is “more challenging and engaging because you actually have to make the best use of all your land.

“I also enjoy the challenges of adapting my city to the environment,” claimed Xenocity. Despite this he’s well aware that the game isn’t perfect; once the region play is resolved and the bugs that cause your cities to constantly complain about crime, freight, education or traffic then SimCity will be a great game.

Which still sounds like a lot of work for Maxis to resolve.

Morris Walters is pleasantly matter-of-fact regarding his thoughts on the latest SimCity. “The game is what it is,” he said, accepting that the pressures of the community could never have resulted in a success SimCity reboot.

“Everybody is an expert at playing the game they owned and each had their way of looking at what made it fun,” he added. 

“And a game written by all those people would have made no one happy. Someone’s favourite feature would have been left out, or someone’s most hated feature put in.”

That’s a fair point, really. A game like SimCity relies quite heavily on each player’s own creativity and input – and when doing so each player creates their own ideas of what is important to the franchise.

Some may say a perfect transportation system is their favourite way of designing a city, and without an underground subway system, how could SimCity 2013 cope?

Others might have adored the subtle – but important – regional play of SimCity 4, and by that extent SimCity 2013 must feel neutered.

Say nothing of the restrictions of the Glassbox engine and you’ll find a SimCity game brimming with creativity, but whether it’s in the form that the diehard SimCity players – or indeed, yourself – would prefer comes down to the personality of each individual gamer.

And in that sense, Maxis didn’t stand a chance. The launch may have really restricted any case the famed developer might have had, but with such a vocal – and yet hugely important – community and its myriad hopes and desires, this SimCity reboot was doomed from the start.

Recently the remainder of THQ's assets and IPs were sold as the final part of the company's bankruptcy.

The company at the forefront of this sale was Nordic Games, who bought up a large percentage of the remaining franchises including Red Faction, Darksiders and a number of others.

But many gamers may not have heard the name Nordic Games before. The publisher's efforts are focus, but contained - appealing to a select group of gamers but rarely in the media's limelight.

So we caught up with Lars Wingefors, owner and CEO of Nordic Games, to ask him what these new acquisitions mean for the company - and what the future might hold.

So I guess first, what was it that interested you the most about this set of IPs that made you want to make a bid?

All the lots were filled with interesting and successful IPs, so we figured: “Let’s do this”. In the very beginning of the entire auction process we focused on IPs, where we expected not too much competition from other big industry conglomerates due to their scale.

Of course we looked at each and every single one of them, also all the A-tier of their brands, but we quickly started to put our personal package of desired IPs together and set our maximum bids.

For a lot of gamers the name Nordic Games is probably an unknown quantity – you’ve been quietly getting on with it in the industry, I think. How has the reaction been now that you’re suddenly in control of all these new IPs?

The reaction was quite impressive to tell you the truth. Reactions were mainly positive, especially from the great communities a lot of these franchises have. Some on the other hand expressed a doubtful stance, which is also OK for us.

One thing we explicitly won’t do now is to go out and fuel expectations about sequels/DLCs etc. at such an early stage of the process, this is not how we operate.

What will the process be going forward into turning out new games for these IPs? Which do you expect will be most interesting to gamers?

There are a lot of IPs which are very interesting for gamers and us, like Darksiders, MX vs ATV, Red Faction, Supreme Commander, Titan Quest etc., but first and foremost we will thoroughly analyse everything at hand and then decide about the 7 W’ s (who, what, where, in what way, why, when, for whom).

Will you be looking to hire existing developers to work on these games, or do you expect Nordic Games might set up its own in-house set of developers?

I think it is too early to say something in that direction, but we will figure out the best way for us and then we should talk about this again and in more detail. First, we want to have a variety of different options at hand, and then we will decide on the best possible way for any given project.

We’ve already seen ex-Vigil Games developers getting involved in the Darksiders process – do you think you might try and reform the team? What’s the best solution to this do you think?

Good and difficult question. Vigil did an outstanding job with Darksiders. As far as reforming the team is concerned, I don’t know if all members of the former team are interested in picking up on it again, but I guess time will tell.

The best solution could be a well-rounded mix of experienced and young talent to take on the challenge.

What is interesting is games like this already have an invested player base and storyline – though it’s early yet, do you think you might opt to continue the storylines or create completely new ones?

It is early for such a question, but our general approach to this would be to first talk to the community of a given title about it, collect different opinions, get their input and then make a decision based on all these findings.

You also picked up a lot of older – but still very popular – IPs such as Titan Quest. What will your approach to these games be? I’d personally love to see a new Titan Quest.

I know that one of our guys (that’s right Phil, looking at you) still fires up his Dreamhunter from time to time and would hug you for this question.

Our approach will be our general approach to any IP. Theoretically we could start to develop sequels to 20 IPs easily right now, which we obviously won’t do, simply because we do like to have a certain focus in our project selection, plus: we like to be very close to the development process itself.

We don’t “just” give out a project and don’t care about it until there is a milestone delivery coming up. We do have a lot of creative potential in our company, too, not exclusively businessmen.

Related to the last question, if you are interested in creating new sequels for older games, would you look to get as many of the original developers back together?

We’ll see about that. The more options we have, the better. I don’t like to make a global statement for all projects just to realise that there might be better options available. We are very open-minded in this department, which sometimes is confused with a lack of plan.

Since you’re coming to these franchises fresh, how will you approach development? Will you have a set goal in mind, or will you prefer to giving the developers a little more free reign over these franchises’ direction?

As usual, we’ll have the golden triangle in place: community, dev, us.

How has having this sudden influx of new franchises changed your outlook on the company? It must be a strange change to suddenly happen.

The sudden influx has not quite happened yet, at least not in our daily business. For the time being, we work as this deal would not exist, some of the guys even declared their office as “THQ-free zone”.

As soon as this all becomes “real” and tangible for every one of us (actual transfer of artworks/screenshots, marketing materials, source code etc.), then we will start thinking about the next steps without neglecting our 2013 line-up.

With next-gen on the horizon (as early as Holiday 2013) will this factor into your approach with some of the franchises?

Yes definitely, but not with an immediate effect. When a new generation launches we always opt for the “wait-and-see” approach. Even a great platform sometimes isn't able to convince a critical mass needed for multiple genres.

A lot of factors are important here. Plus we are not in the position to be under the obligatory first-movers in that sense, so we will be careful for the time being

As a general thought, what are your opinions on the next-generation of consoles? Do they do anything that interests you?

In order to get a more complete picture, we are eagerly waiting for 21 May. So far, we like a few features that have been announced by Sony, but nothing where we jumped out of our chairs, high-fived, and opened a bottle of Champagne, really.

Skyrim is done. Over. Finished.

No more DLC. No more content. No more quests. No more updates.

Okay, that's not quite true. Skyrim will have minor updates as it's needed but Bethesda also says the studio is 'moving to our next adventure'. It's done with Skyrim. 'Minors updates as it's needed' sounds like little more than occasionally kicking the tires on its old car to make sure it still works (though not kicking too hard in the case of the PS3 version).

And on PC, the modding community will sustain the life of Skyrim by improving the game (new items, realistic lighting, character enhancement) or distorting it through their own lens (Macho Man dragons, posh mudcrabs, giant chickens).

This would suggest Skyrim was a broken game. But as with Morrowind and as with Oblivion, it was something you'd accept as inevitable byproduct of the scale of ambition and in any case, experimenting and prodding the game itself was engaging because you could never quite predict how things would play out.

Skyrim never toppled over when you did what was expected - talking to shopkeepers rather than sticking buckets on their hand, fighting bandits rather than tricking them into a nearby river - but it was those accidental moments that proved so compelling. No other game, not a Grand Theft Auto, not a Witcher, not a Saints Row, gave you as many tools to play with the world as Skyrim did.

On PC, the modding community has done a fantastic job of providing adrenalin shots for Skyrim, showing how imagination and craft can re-invigorate the experience.

Skyrim Is Done - What's Next?

What next for The Elder Scrolls?

The Elder Scrolls Online is looming into view but that's unlikely to have any real impact on plans for the next mainline Elder Scrolls title. The obvious reason is that as a MMORPG, the gameplay will differ from the traditional Elder Scrolls experience. If you want to read more about how, we've got a chunky Elder Scrolls Online gameplay preview to get through.

The other reason Elder Scrolls Online's presence won't impact on the next mainline Elder Scrolls title is that it's being developed by ZeniMax Online Studios and not Bethesda Game Studios, which developed Oblivion and Skyrim.

So what is Bethesda Game Studios working on? Rumours continue to mount about Fallout 4, and will likely continue to do so until Bethesda confirms what BGS is working on. We're almost certain it will be Fallout 4 but again, Fallout 4 talk is rumour territory right now.

Elder Scrolls Next-Gen

There are also next-gen consoles looming into view. What will this change for the series?

This question has been answered once before, with Oblivion, which was one of the earliest releases for Xbox 360. It was also, of course, a sequel to Morrowind for Xbox. What the new hardware afforded the Elder Scrolls series was a chance to scale the size of the experience up but the basic gameplay template set out in Morrowind wasn't tinkered with too much.

Combat was cleaned up, fast travel and so on but there was no fundamental difference to the core gameplay. It was largely the same. So if/when (delete as appropriate) the next Elder Scrolls title is announced, we doubt the new hardware will change too much, except the scale and ambition of the experience.

Bethesda will push the technology to create bigger and more intricate worlds. There will be more spinning cogs added to the machine. Bethesda will have more experience in creating these kinds of worlds but that will be tempered by the drive to top Skyrim, using the hardware to push the size of the experience. We'd be very surprised if the same type of physics glitches and AI exploits weren't present in whatever next-gen Elder Scrolls game will eventually come forward. Again, it likely won't detract from the game itself but instead a fun element to toy around with, adding an extra layer to the game.

Thanks For The Memories, Skyrim

Bethesda's statement that it will move on from Skyrim isn't the final chapter for the open-world RPG, which will be supported by modders and will continue to find its way into new homes via discounted and second-hand copies.

But with no more DLC or content from the studio in the pipeline, we can finally close the book on Skyrim and look forward to the next chapter in the Elder Scrolls series, however far off it may be.

And when it does arrive? The first thing we'll try is putting a bucket on the shopkeeper's head.

Most obvious question first – why?

After wrapping up Far Cry 3, Ubisoft gave us the great opportunity to blow off some steam and have fun. We're all kids from the 80s or 90s and we wanted to write a love letter to our childhood selves and remember those great moments spent watching cartoons like He-Man or awesome action movies like Terminator.

When we got the green light for the project, we couldn't believe it. Honestly, we felt like kids that got all the keys to a toy factory and the fun we had making Blood Dragon really translates into the game. It's filled with lasers, cheesy-one liners, cyber-love and a lot of explosions.

At what point did the team start work on Blood Dragon?

In some ways the conception of Blood Dragon started in the late 80s where most of our inspiration comes from. It's an era where over-the-top action movies were at their pinnacle, and lots of time was spent watching the best and worst straight to VHS flicks. This allowed us to stay true to that moment in time. Production actually started a couple of months before Far Cry 3 got on store shelves.

Is the team who made Blood Dragon the same team that made Far Cry 3? If so, how challenging was it to make a fun 80s-themed shooter complete with visuals and music to fit that aesthetic after making what was a serious-in-tone jungle shooter?

A portion of the original Far Cry 3 team jumped on Blood Dragon and everybody was really hyped about it. It's not every day that a big publisher like Ubisoft gives you the opportunity to be creative and roll with a crazy idea like this one.

Since Blood Dragon is based on the same award-winning technology from Far Cry 3, the team was used to the tools and knew exactly how we could take this concept to the retro-future of 2007. Far Cry 3 players will definitely feel familiar with the gameplay since it's still an open world game.

It was not very hard on that side really, we've added a couple of tools that the player will be able to use such as the dragon which you can actually lure to help you take out hordes of cyborgs. We've also got a minigun, a laser rifle, a quad-barrel shotgun and explosive rounds for our sniper rifle which we did not have in Far Cry 3. Those are some real badass weapons, my favourite being the dragon, obviously.

As for the music, this was an easy one, the band Power Glove jumped on it and these guys out did themselves, they did a great job doing what they do best and enjoyed working on the project. As for our key art, the marketing team worked with an artist called James White, this guy nailed the tone right away.

How has developing Blood Dragon compared to developing Far Cry 3?

Developing Blood Dragon was like going to your childhood friend’s 12th birthday party. There were Terminator posters everywhere, we played with He-Man action figures, watched the worst action movies from the 80s on VHS and had the best 80s themed Halloween day ever.

Does Blood Dragon fit in with the Far Cry 3 storyline at all?

In terms of narrative, Blood Dragon is completely independent from Far Cry 3. You get the chance to play as Rex Power Colt, a Mark IV cyber-commando sent to a remote island to save the world, get the girl and go on a cyborg killing mayhem. Michal Biehn, the iconic actor from the 80s that played Kyle Reese in Terminator, is the voice of our main character and it was awesome to work with one of our childhood heroes. For Michael Biehn, in some way, Blood Dragon is like a sweet vengeance from his role in Terminator.

Why make this a standalone shooter rather than DLC for Far Cry 3?

The idea was to make Blood Dragon have its own universe, one in which we had the freedom to tell a ridiculous story and use neon pink and lasers a lot. Also, making it a standalone means that more people will be able to enjoy the cyber-action and the best terrible script that we put together. Who doesn’t like some bromance, cyber-love and laser shooting dragons that eat cyborgs?

Far Cry 3 reviewed as one of 2012's highest scoring games. Did you expect it to do as well as it did?

During Far Cry 3’s development, we knew we had something special that tied strong narrative and open world gameplay together. We're all very happy with the end result and how it was received by the gamers. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a smaller scale brainchild of a more robust offering like Far Cry 3. However, it packs a punch and hopefully the community shares our love with the 80s and 90s, mindless fun and will enjoy Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon as much as we enjoyed developing it.

Guacamelee released earlier this month to an instant following, with gamers and critics alike praising the game incessantly on Twitter and Facebook.

Interested to find out how an indie developer like DrinkBox Studios handles such an unexpected outpouring of support, we spoke to co-founder Graham Smith about the game, it's success and where the developer is going.

How did you react to the excitement surrounding Guacamelee’s release? It had a lot of interest on Twitter and from critics.

We were all pretty ecstatic watching the reaction when Guacamelee! came out. There was definitely a productivity drop in the office as everyone was clicking refresh on Twitter all day!

It was a good feeling to see that people were really enjoying the game that we spent so much time and effort making.

Indie developers have really seen a rise in popularity these days: why do you think that is? What has changed in the industry for this to happen?

To be honest, indie games are still nowhere near as popular as the big AAA franchises. However it’s true that they seem to be on the rise over the last few years.

I can tell you that personally I love indie games because they are often shorter experiences (time is precious!) and often explore ideas or mechanics that are unique and fresh. 

It’s a lot easier nowadays for talented people to get a game out to the world. The harder part seems to be making your game stand out from the crowd and get attention.

It seems these days a lot of gamers are feeling a bit of fatigue surrounding many of the AAA games that are released; how can the industry balance this reliance on big-name games with ‘sequel apathy’?

I think that that the main reason the industry makes sequels is because a lot of people buy sequels. I’m feeling the fatigue myself, but I still bought the Tomb Raider reboot, and Bioshock: Infinite! 

I’d love to see the larger publishers take more risks, even with limited budgets. You do see this from time to time, but I wish it happened more frequently.

So what does being ‘indie’ mean to you?

For me being indie means focusing on making games that are interesting and unique that everyone in the studio will be proud of releasing. 

This might make it difficult to find funding for a game (publishers are wary of risk) and come at the expense of some revenues (not everyone will want to play our weird games), but despite these drawbacks it still seems to be working alright for us!

Are there even boundaries and limitations that you encounter as an indie, and if so how do you try to overcome them?

Unless you are working with publisher funding, the first few years of an indie company can definitely be financially challenging. We managed to get through our initial years by taking on external contract work, and by applying for government assistance (yay Canada!).

Also, working with Sony through their Pub Fund program (for both About a Blob and Guacamelee!) helped to take away a lot of the financial risk after the game was released.

Striving to get good press coverage for our games has also been a challenge for us in the past. None of us had ever done any marketing or PR work before starting at DrinkBox, and we really underestimated the importance of getting a strong buzz going for a game before it comes out.

It also did not help that when we first started the company that no one had heard of us, making getting coverage from the larger gaming sites that much more challenging.

So far your games have only appeared on PS3 and PS Vita; what was it about these platforms and Sony that made sense for your games?

About a Blob and Guacamelee! were both released through the Sony Pub Fund, which gives the developer an advance on royalties when the game is released in exchange for a period of exclusivity. We have actually released Mutant Blobs Attack on PC via Steam, but it was released first on the PS Vita.

We don’t actually have any objection to releasing on other platforms. When we were initially pitching Guacamelee! to publishers, we were thinking to release the game on PS3/X360/PC.

After Sony approached us with a Pub Fund deal for the game, we decided to take the deal and switched to PS3 and PS Vita for the initial release.

Now that Guacamelee is out of the way, you must be eager to jump into your next project. What’s next for DrinkBox and where would you like to see the company in, say, 5 years time?

In 5 years time I’d love for DrinkBox to have built up a portfolio of good games, and have established a strong reputation with gamers.

I assume you’ve seen Sony’s PS4 reveal – how do you feel the company handled it?

I think the PS4 event came at a great time for Sony, and I’m personally really excited for the system. The Vita Remote-Play for all PS4 titles feature is one that I know I will take real advantage of.

Do you think there’s a risk of indie developers like yourself finding it harder to get noticed once next-gen rolls around? I mean, most gamers will be excited to see games that push the boundaries of graphics, not innovative or interesting gameplay.

I think that indies will still find a way to make use of the new hardware capabilities of the PS4. We actually did have to cut back on some of the things we were doing in About a Blob and Guacamelee! on PS3 for performance reasons. PS4 will allow us to push things further in our games as well (eg Physics, Effects, number of AI’s, etc).

Similarly, how much do you agree that these days there’s an unnecessary focus on the superficial aspects of a game rather than the things that really matter?

While I do think that gameplay is one of the most important aspects of a game to have working well, I also think that amazing graphics do help to make an experience even better.

My two most recent AAA purchases are both good examples of this (Tomb Raider and Bioshock: Infinite). Without the amazing visuals, these games might still be great, but the visuals help to push them to the next level.

Lastly, what do you think will be the most identifying feature of next-gen consoles (both PS4 and Xbox 720) and what do you think they need to do to be a success? 

I’m really curious what Microsoft’s strategy is going to be with their next generation console. Sony seems to be pushing things farther on the social side and connectivity with the PS4, which I do think is a really cool direction to be taking.

To really be a success, I think they each need to secure desirable exclusive content for their systems that take advantage of the next-gen features they are offering.

Xing Interactive might not be a publisher you've heard of. It's unlikely you'll see Snack Games, Xing Interactive's current baby, competing for TV ad space with the likes of Call Of Duty or FIFA.

But then Xing Interactive hasn't had to do that to be successful. Having been founded in the Netherlands in 2001 as a PC-only games publisher, it now sells its products in 32 countries worldwide and opened a UK office this year.

As managing director David Connolly tells us, Xing Interactive is 'also considered the “last man standing” in publishing independently produced games.'

"From our perspective we are expanding and working in the mainstream computer games industry but also broadening the sales market, selling in non-traditional locations too," says Connolly. "Our slogan is “we make the games you play”, focused more on giving people what they want. We aim to provide the best mixture of price vs quality; i.e the best value for money."

We chat to David Connolly about Xing Interactive's success and ask why retail has been such a challenging environment for publishers…

Big question to begin with but there has been a lot of drama recently with high-street retail, as seen with the problems GAME and HMV have faced. Why do you think high-street retail has suffered so much?

It is unfortunate the issues that these two large retailers have faced. Without being too technical, issues at GAME may go back as far as when a new Management team let go many of the knowledgeable staff to cut costs and the brand was never the same from an experience or in-store customer service perspective.

HMV’s problems are more in the music industry and should have been tackled 5-10 years ago with proactive new strategy. Attempting to shift a previously hugely successful retailer in that manner would not have been an easy decision to make though.

Looking at the facts of specialist game retail outlets, the numbers are roughly similar minus outlets that those two closed.

Supermarkets are now a huge presence in games retail too. How much power would you say supermarkets have over the games industry?

They have an influence that goes beyond sales but they are far from perfect. Asda and Tesco came up with a plan for £1 PC games but then that fashion went. Now it’s only Morrisons that is looking to stock any kind of range.

So the issue, especially when some of the biggest retailers in the UK, is of shelf space and then the furore of news that was created when they pulled out of stocking a large variety. Even though £1-£2 games a sensible person might have predicted as a fad in the first place. 

Fact is that it is neck and neck between supermarkets and independent computer game retailers. But you’re going to end up with a load of ‘Sims’ games in the PC Games charts if that’s the other thing supermarkets stock.

What has been your retail strategy with Snack Games and how successful has it been for Xing thus far?

What we are doing is taking two different approaches for the computer games industry, and other retailers.

For the mainstream: we are creating quality compilations of games downwards of £15, so it will tend to include 10 games in one. £1.50 per game pro rata. But these are games that have individual internet reviews of 86% and 89%, for example. So this is what I am talking about with “best value for money”. I would say it’s exceptional value and is strong in comparison to other publishers in the market.

We are also selling individual titles for about £6 aimed at impulse purchases, and that is spread far and wide across 100+ retailers in the UK. We also have a website www.xinginteractive.co.uk and UK Office 01204 860 360.

The strategy we are pursuing is strong and also helps expands the market. Xing Interactive has sold 50,000+ of many games, 100,000+ of a few and we come out well against the competition.

What would you say is the biggest challenge facing ‘smaller’ publishers today?

I would say shelf-space. PC game sales are not down (as many claim) there are simply fewer titles on the market, due to the issues I mentioned such as supermarkets.

If you look at our title, Snack Games, it’s 10 games in 1 for £15, that on the internet or a few years ago would be that close to that price for 1. It has no problem selling. The packaging is very attractive, and the whole offering is appealing.

With the best will in the world, it takes co-operation from every link in the chain from publisher, distributor and retailer (not just us) to make a sales success and start troubling the Chart-compilers. So if the buyer at Morrisons doesn’t ‘get’ the strategy (and our strategy is different to a lot of other publishers) then okay, it is my job to persuade him but we also have to get on with it in the hundreds of retailers we do work with. Pac-Man didn’t gobble one big pill and then call it a day now did he?     

What impact do you think the launch of next-gen consoles will have on games retail on the high-street?

We hear different things from the two big players. Sony are actively asking for more retailers “past, present and new” to help them support their next PS launch. I have spoken to sources close to Microsoft on the other hand who insist that the next Xbox will not be compatible with second hand, will require permanently on connection, and “you’ll have to go through Microsoft to do anything”. So that would not be good news! Maybe another reason to support PC publishers can I say?!

The industry appears to be moving towards a digital download future. Is this a healthy move for the games industry? How do you think retail will respond?

There could be a big issue on consoles with one of the big players going their own way. An independent retailer put it this way “Microsoft will still make a profit out of Xbox. As for the rest of us, tough titty”.

On the PC, Digital Downloads are up 24% Year-on-Year. The physical market is stable or up a few percentage points for the titles out there. So yes there’s a decline, but only because there’s less shelf space is the point.

I’ve not really seen the decline that is talked about in physical: now it’s close to 80% of people own a PC, and everything is fine for us: Xing Interactive has over 100 titles on the books and has been profitable for 12 years. Yes we’re small and just starting as an active office in the UK, but this is one of the most successful, entertaining and largest industries in Britain: plenty of room for dynamism and good results both digital and physical.

Most people have never heard of, let alone played, 1997’s The Last Express. That’s a shame. To be dramatic: it’s a tragedy.

No matter the hyperbole, it’s something that needs to change. This is a game whose immense sophistication, originality and ambition makes it one of those real pieces of entertainment capable of truly absorbing those that give it the opportunity to do so. The fact that a game capable of this degree of achievement has gone largely forgotten begs the question of how many great experiences have gone the same way over the years.

Break down The Last Express into its individual components and what you’ll find is a point-and-click adventure that plays by many of the same rules as the other members of what is one of gaming’s most venerable genres.

However, The Last Express does not play exclusively by the rules. It’s the elements it adds, and the rules it breaks that make it stand out and rise above the crowd.

The Characters Who Won't Wait For You

The whole thing is set on a train; the last journey of The Orient Express before the onset of World War One forced the link between Paris and Constantinople out of commission.

As anyone with even the remotest knowledge of The Orient Express might expect, this is an environment where only the most lavish is acceptable and the people are either snobbishly ignorant or snobbishly superior. Within these confines a superbly written narrative of ideological tensions between nations, criminal mystery and personal survival takes centre stage.

While the plot is engaging and worthy of the loftiest of praise, it’s not the most striking aspect of The Last Express. Interestingly, for a game set in the claustrophobic carriages of a train, the way in which it plays and uses time to further entangle you within its web demonstrates the sheer extent of its ambition and the talent of its creators.

For every second the game is running, events are running in real-time. This stands in stark contrast to the overwhelming number of games that refuse to budge and move forward without input from the player. If you fail to visit one of the game’s characters before the hour grows late and they grow sleepy, then they will go to bed. They will not politely wait until you’re ready to ask your questions, thus giving you a clear and linear path to progression.

The Last Express - Every Playthrough Could Be Different

This seemingly simple, but deceptively complex, mechanic has an enormous effect on gameplay. Fail to speak to the quiet Russian one day and you’ll have to wait until you bump into him again. The catch is that you don’t know where he’ll be as people don’t follow the same routine every day, you don’t know if he will have heard something that changes his opinion of you and therefore affects his answers and you don’t know how interim events will have changed the overall picture.

The questions you want to ask may have completely changed, you might not want to talk to him anymore, he may not even be around to talk to – he may have gotten off the train at the last stop, or even died.

Yes, this means that every playthrough is potentially different. But more than that, your knowledge that time and events don’t patiently wait for your input creates a strong and palpable sense that you’re playing within a living and breathing world. It’s a world which you are a part of, not a world you’re looking down at from some sort of Godly, extracted position of superior knowledge.

The unyielding format of a linear and constant progression of time means that your input is influenced and altered depending on when you act, but in juxtaposition, it also provides a stable and predictable flow. This is a train with a set destination, therefore it will stop at stations along the way; the same stations on each playthrough. When the train reaches its final destination the game ends, whether or not you have answered the questions posed or not (read: ‘completed’ the game)

Its Unique Visual Style

However, it’s not just the mechanics of The Last Express that make it such a joy to sit through and puzzle over its mysteries. The way in which it was made, certainly as far as the visuals are concerned, is equally impressive and progressive. Rather than draw and animate a cast, real actors were filmed acting out movements against a green-screen backdrop.

That footage would then be painted over and transferred into the game, giving the train’s passengers a real-life quality despite the broad and stark colour palette. This technique, known as rotoscoping, was also employed by The Last Express’ designer Jordan Mechner in his earlier Prince of Persia game and in various movies – including A Scanner Darkly.

It’s impossible to stress the value of what is added to a game of this type through the use of rotoscoping. Given that the game is set against a real period of history, on a real train operating a real route and centred on a cast of diverse human beings, the realism aspect provided by the actors is profound. Subtle movements of the hands, nods and turns of the head and natural motions of clothes all combine with the linear progression of time to create a world that feels natural without feeling like an attempt at simply reproducing reality.

In essence, while feeling lifelike, the animation technique of rotoscoping reminds us that this is still a game and not an interactive movie. The Last Express shows that filmic techniques can employed without the entire project shifting position so far that it becomes more film than game... or, at the very least, more an excuse for passive rather than interactive storytelling.

The approach to visuals also means that, despite its 16 years of existence, The Last Express does not look at all dated. Frankly, there’s very little else that comes anywhere near to looking anything like it. It looks unique, meaning it’s going to be difficult for it to look its age until someone else comes along and serves us up a game that improves upon the same visual approach.

Of course, a unique visual approach involving filming real actors and inserting them into a game world doesn’t come cheap. And that’s part of the reason why The Last Express is not as celebrated and as famous as it definitely deserves to be.

By the time it was completed, production was rumoured to have cost in excess of six million dollars – a lofty sum that any point and click adventure, good or bad, is going to struggle to recoup. Especially for a 1997 PC game in the face of extreme competition from the all conquering PlayStation One.

The Last Express Reviews

Reviews for The Last Express were favourable, but only roughly 100,000 sales were made. Result: publisher bites the dust shortly after release and game is removed from circulation.

The Last Express is a prime example of how the worlds of commerce and quality don’t always see eye to eye. Yes, here is a game that is one of the best ever examples of its genre, a game that was brave enough to try new things, a game designed by people smart enough to combine those new things into something that works and works very well.

However, the cost was simply too high; a success for the progression of videogames as an entertainment form, a failure in commercial planning.
Whatever the case, thanks to the rise in digital PC content, it is available to anyone with a PC capable of running a 16-year-old game. It even has an inferior iPhone version.

There are much worse ways to spend a weekend than by scrolling back through the catalogue and getting to know one of the games that wrongly found its way on the scrap heap.

Is Dark Souls the hardest game this gen? Some will debate that Demon's Souls is tougher. Others will say that… well. We've got seven games below that could come up as viable counter-arguments to Dark Souls being the toughest game this gen.

The only criteria we've applied is this is taking into account the game's difficulty on default and not games when they've been cranked up to the hardest difficulty setting - so that means no Call of Duty: World at War, no Lost Planet, no Vanquish, no Left 4 Dead, etc.

You probably won't agree with all of these entries, so let us know your own suggestions.

Ninja Gaiden 3

It doesn't seem to be a difficult game, being a mix of date-sim and block puzzles. It's only the latter that provides challenge in the typical way, as you pull and push blocks to climb a tower.

Then as the plot winds towards its conclusion and the end credits loom in view, a dozing programmer fell on the Make-Everything-Bastard-Hard lever and cranked it up to impossibly hard. Boss battles are ridiculous in Catherine. While the block puzzles are hard enough - often you can ruin the tower early on without knowing until you realise further progress is impossible - the unpredictability of boss battles make

In terms of raw difficulty, is Catherine harder than Dark Souls? It's debatable. But when the red mist descends and you're screaming at the TV, there's no denying its difficulty is certainly more frustrating to endure.

There are few developers in the games industry that you could genuinely describe as “legendary”, but Will Wright is very much one of them.

At multiple steps throughout his career he's been a driving force behind pushing gaming beyond the norm, looking for ways to expand or improve the industry in myriad ways.

We spoke with Will Wright about how his career has grown and adapted over the years, about some of his most important games and where he sees the games industry going in the future.

And if you're interested in reading our interview with the renowned SimCity creator - and you should be - then why not check out our huge transcript of our Will Wright interview?

In The Beginning...

First there was SimCity. Well, technically, first there was Raid On Bungeling Bay; but most of us forget about that in lieu of Will Wright's first smash hit.

SimCity dared to be different, and at a time when technical limitations meant most games follow the template set before it, Will Wright decided to make a game without any defined goals or predetermined win/lose state.

This became true for many of Will Wright's future games, but most of us will remember such a feature from The Sims - the doll house simulator that saw players recreate digital versions of their own lives.

“I think a lot of those games invited the player in to put a lot of themselves into the game,” explained Will Wright, “so when people would play SimCity or even The Sims a lot of their assumptions about the way the world works was also invited in.

“What do you think makes a good city? Is it less crime, less traffic, less pollution? Or for The Sims, what makes you happy? And so in that case the game wasn't giving you an explicit goal.”

With so many games - even now - directing us through identikit corridors or set up to fear an ultimate game over screen, to have that kind of freedom is a criminally underused feature of videogames.

“In both cases I think the player was critical in determining goal state, and then you could look at someone's city - or family in The Sims - and get a sense of who they were just by the way they were playing the game and what they were pursuing.”

Speaking with Wright, it's clear that this is the kind of passion that really drives him to make games. It's not enough to just make a fun experience - although that is obviously important - Wright knows that games can get us involved in so many other ways.

“Well, I think in some sense they started a new genre,” said Wright of SimCity and The Sims. “They were also, I think, kind of some of the earlier games that were leaning more to a mainstream audience.

“They were interesting people that were not necessarily into dragons or history or sports, and I think that is becoming more and more mainstream, kind of what you might call 'casual' gamers. And so they were games that were more about reality than fantasy.”

This audience was just a happy accident, at least with SimCity. Wright expected a large chunk of the game's audience to be strategy fans, and never could he have expected to appeal to such a widespread and varied market.

“It was more that I was interested in these subjects, I was interested in the way games intersected reality. I enjoyed playing these other games a lot and I just felt that there wasn't enough exploration of games that were really kind of getting people to think about the world around them.

“So in the back of my mind my assumption was that this would appeal to a wider range of people.”

You'd be forgiven for thinking that everything Will Wright touched turned to gold, but that wasn't necessarily true. SimEarth, for example, didn't really achieve the goals he had been hoping for.

“SimEarth ended up having a totally different demographic than I was expecting. It was very popular among twelve year olds, and I thought it would be hitting an older audience. SimEarth ended up turning out more like a simulation just for me, you know, I enjoyed the simulation but it wasn't much of a game.”

Does he regret making these games? Not at all. If he had the chance, Wright believes there's nothing he would change about any of the games he's worked on: “Nothing at all, actually. I think even the things that I did that were basically failures, I learned a lot from, so it got me to where I am.”

Where Is Will Wright Now?

So what's Will Wright up to now? After leaving Maxis in 2009 he's avoided the limelight much more, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been as experimental as ever.

His first port of call was Stupid Fun Club, a think tank set up to create inventive and interesting… things.

“We did a lot of different stuff,” explained Wright, “we did some television stuff, some toy stuff, some stuff just dealing with the web. And some of the stuff just morphed into what we're doing now.

“We did a TV show, it was kind of like an interactive television show, we did a few toy things, we did an ant farm - it's cause I'm into ants - it was all over the map.”

But Stupid Fun Club was just a taster. Will Wright is getting back into games development and though nothing too solid has been decided on yet you can be certain it'll be something totally new. Syntertainment is Will Wright's latest venture.

“We just formed it a few months ago and we're in stealth mode right now,” Wright told us, “we're still forming the company and hiring people, but we're basically a game company and we're going to be focusing on very personalised games.

“It'll probably be more on the social/mobile side, but we're still in a brainstorming period, kind of zoning in on specific designs.”

Syntertainment is just one of three spin-off companies formed from Stupid Fun Club, with another being a joint venture with Warner Digital named Media Graph and the third being a toy company called Robot Lemons.

While Will Wright is involved informally with all of them, he is more directly involved with Media Graph and Syntertainment. The focus here will be mainstream gamers, targeting a wider group of people and perhaps those who haven't even touched a game before.

“I tend to be interested in things that are going to have a much wider group of people,” claimed Wright, “people who even to this day aren't playing games. What kind of things would they actually enjoy that, for whatever reasons, aren't playing games right now.”

Wright ensures us that no definitive idea has been locked down yet, but it's clear there's a particular concept that he wants to tackle with Syntertainment's games.

“I think it's going to be things that are more player focused,” he said. “It may be something that's very sandbox or it might be something very directed, maybe something very goal orientated.

“But it's really about the individual player, and I don't mean the player coming in and playing a role, I mean you - real you - who you are.”

Where's Next For Will Wright?

In speaking with Will Wright one thing has become clear: the man is a visionary. It might not be popular to talk of mobile gaming these days - at least in terms of “hardcore” gamers - but that matters little to Will Wright and his driven passion for creative game development.

In fact, it's this distinction between 'casual' and 'hardcore' gamers that Will Wright believes we need to step away from. In many ways we already are.

“Yeah, I think we need to change away from that,” said Wright. “We don't really have people saying I'm a reader or a movie_watcher. I mean you do have hardcore readers and hardcore cinemaphiles, but for the rough idea most people around you have read books and have seen movies. 

“But for the longest time it wasn't unusual that a lot of people, maybe most people around you, had probably never played a game. And that's shifting rapidly.”

It's the increasing number of ways to play games that is really helping the industry shift and expand, claims Wright. Games aren't devoted to a console under your tele anymore; they're on your browser, on your phone, on Facebook, on the cloud, on your toaster. Everywhere.

“I think the platform diversity was a large part of it. So all of a sudden people could do apps on the iPhone, which started driving some of the more mainstream console makers to realise that there's a lot of interest in things that weren't necessarily giant triple-A titles.”

As such the scale of game development has widened dramatically, claims Wright.

“I think it's remarkable how you look at some of those games and how simple they are yet people just love them, like Angry Birds. Compare Angry Birds to Half_Life, it's a remarkably different scale of development.

“Spending more money in development doesn't necessarily mean more money in sales, at all. Again, it's a property of this diversity of platform and demographic.

Diversity is a large part of our gaming future, states Wright, whether it's diversity of the platforms or the gamers themselves.

“You're going to have certain areas that are unexplored and people are going to start making themselves go and explore them, and you know there will be some saturation point.”

This saturation point could something “open and creative” or it could be a rehash of “World War II shooters”, but there will always be an audience for both aspects believes Wright.

“It might just be that the killer app hasn't been made in that area, or the stuff there doesn't really hit the sweet spot.”

With that said, there's always going to be a developer working on the next sequel. That's inherent to any industry, and Will Wright agrees.

“But I think some people do just want to sit back and have a very familiar and comfortable experience, they want to play Call Of Duty. I don't think every game has to be necessarily pushing the envelope.”

Yet when gamer fatigue is seemingly at its peak - sales on videogames are decreasing dramatically as the current generation of consoles trudges on - Will Wright doesn't think there's anything inherently wrong with the culture of sequels, providing that underlying variety is still there.

“I don't think we're going to go back to a monolithic world were now everybody just plays indie games. When Zynga was growing everyone thought social games were going to take over.

“But now they ended being a significant portion of the pie, but they're just one slice of the pie. But what is happening is that the pie is just getting more and more slices, but there isn't going to be just one that ends up being the right answer.”

Wright thinks there's as much room for a 20-hour cinematic Final Fantasy as there is for five minutes on Angry Birds. “I think all these things are going to live alongside each other,” he told us.

With next-gen on the horizon there's a lot of excitement around the future of the industry, and while Will Wright and Syntertainment likely won't find their way on consoles - at least for a while - Wright must have some thoughts on what next-gen needs to do?

“You know, as a designer I don't feel we have any significant limitations on the technology side. If you asked me twenty years ago I would have had a long list of things that I would love to be able to do with a computer but over the years all those bottlenecks and barriers have slowly evaporated.

That doesn't mean there aren't ways to improve console hardware: “I think the interface side still feels like a big bottleneck,” explained Wright. “I was never really satisfied with Kinect, it feels too sloppy, too imprecise. The idea of having to learn these 16-button controllers too, feels like a big bottleneck.

“I still find the mouse to be one of best input devices ever made but it's not very comfortable for the living room environment. I think that addressing the inputs would be one of the few things I would look at from the technology side.”

So what is Will Wright's endgame? Where would he like to see the industry going and, if he has anything to do with it, what will games become?

“I think that the reason I'm interested in the direction that I'm heading is that games are now in a position of learning a tremendous amount about the players,” said Wright.

“I'd like to think games can get to a point where they're understanding players to a degree that even the players don't know about themselves and we start learning more about ourselves by the way we play games.

“So that in some sense these games become mirrors, and we're able to see parts of ourselves and understand ourselves - not just the world - in ways that we weren't able to before.”

Which, in many ways, has always been true of Will Wright's games. How you design a world in SimCity - and how it differs from another player - must speak on some level about 'what makes you tick'.

We might not know what Will Wright's next game is, but we're sure as hell excited to find out.

Ever wanted to know what Will Wright thought about his games, the industry and even what he believes to be the future of gaming? We certainly did, so we asked him:

So, you’re working at Syntertainment now, but I haven’t seen much about it…

Yeah, cause we haven’t really talked about it much at all. We just formed it a few months ago and we’re in stealth mode right now.

Ah, okay. Are you willing to talk about it now?

Well, we can’t really talk about it too much, you know, we’re still forming the company and hiring people, but we’re basically a game company and we’re going to be focusing on very personalised games.

Personalised games? As in…?

Well, these are games that are centred around your life and they’ll be things that are based in reality, you know as opposed to some kind of fantasy world.

So what exactly is it you’re working on now, is it literally just getting the company together now or are there any games in particular?

Yeah, there are game concepts that we’re developing in this company, you know, again personalised things. It’ll probably be more on the social/mobile side, but we’re still in a brainstorming period, kind of zoning in on specific designs but we’re not really at that level of specificity yet.

So are you still involved with Stupid Fun Club at all?

Well this is kind of a spin­off of Stupid Fun Club, and we’ve got another spin­off that is kind of a joint venture with Warner Digital called Media Graph, and there’s another, our toy guys have gone off to start a toy company called Robot Lemons. So in some sense the Stupid Fun Club is split up into three separate companies now.

Oh okay, so are you involved in all of these?

I’m involved in the Warner one directly, more informally with the others but we’re all still in the same building so we’re all pretty much working alongside of each other.

So Stupid Fun Club wasn’t a games company, it was more of a think tank – what kind of stuff did you work on there?

Yeah we did a lot of different stuff, we did some television stuff, some toy stuff, some stuff just dealing with the web. And some of the stuff just morphed into what we’re doing now. We did a TV show, it was kind of like an interactive television show, we did a few toy things, we did an ant farm – it’s cause I’m into ants – it was all over the map.

Okay, so that’s what you’re doing now: but what about your heritage, if you will. They say hindsight is 20/20, so looking back at a lot of your classic games – so SimCity, or The Sims – what are your thoughts on them now so much time has passed?

Well, I think in some sense they started a new genre. They were also, I think, kind of some of the earlier games that were leaning more to a mainstream audience.

They were interesting people that were not necessarily into dragons or history or sports, and I think that is becoming more and more mainstream, kind of what you might call ‘casual’ gamers. And so games they were games that were more about reality than fantasy.

Was that always the goal, to target that kind of audience?

Well, I think so. Kind of indirectly. It was more that I was interested in these subjects, I was interested in the way games intersected reality. I enjoyed playing these other games a lot and I just felt that there wasn’t enough exploration of games that were really kind of getting people to think about the world around them. So in the back of my mind my assumption was that this would appeal to a wider range of people.

So, looking back, do you think there’s anything you might change if you had the chance?

No. Nothing at all, actually. I think even the things that I did that were basically failures, I learned a lot from, so it got me to where I am.

How do you mean “failures”?

Yeah, well games that could’ve performed better or didn’t quite end up the way I thought they would, you know, I learnt a lot from.

So like SimAnt, then?

Actually SimEarth, more so. SimAnt to some degree, but SimEarth ended up having a totally different demographic than I was expecting. Yeah, it was very popular among twelve year olds, and I thought it would be hitting an older audience. SimEarth ended up turning out more like a simulation just for me, you know, I enjoyed the simulation but it wasn’t much of a game.

Why do you think you managed to achieve such success with these simulation type games? Especially with SimCity and The Sims?

I think a lot of those games invited the player in to put a lot of themselves into the game, so when people would play SimCity or even The Sims a lot of their assumptions about the way the world works was also invited in. What do you think makes a good city? Is it less crime, less traffic, less pollution? Or for The Sims, what makes you happy?

And so in that case the game wasn’t giving you an explicit goal; SimCity wasn’t saying you had to make a big city or you had to make a happy city, the first thing the player had to do was sit down and think in their head ‘okay, to me, what kind of city would I want to live in?’ or in The Sims ‘what kind do I want to lead?’.

In both cases I think the player was critical in determining goal state, and then you could look at someone’s city – or family in The Sims – and get a sense of who they were just by the way they were playing the game and what they were pursuing.

For me I always got the sense that these kind of games – especially the ones that you’ve made – they were always about making fun out of complex systems, would you agree with that?

Oh yeah, they’re very much about the way complex systems operate, which are kind of intuitive in a lot of ways. And I think that when you can sit and play with a complex system like that you get an almost intuitive sense of it, much more so than reading about it or watching a movie. You can actually interact with it, and you can get some sense of, you know, you push something in here and something pops out there. There are all this inter­relationships and some of them are very subtle.

How do you go about turning such complicated systems into entertainment?

Well for me I break down what the major factors are. It’s very much like building a model, and you’re looking at the major things that you want to model first, and you look at what will impact those and you work through like layers of an onion.

You kind of have to build it in the right order from the inside out. And at the same time you’re not really trying to replicate the system, you’re trying to build more of a caricature of it. So you want to exaggerate things, make things a little more dramatic or a little more obvious and so in some sense it’s very much a caricature of simulation.

Do you think this will have changed much now? Do you think game development has changed at all since you first created SimCity?

Well, we’ve gone through this major arc. You know games started out as fairly simple affairs and small teams – you know, my first games I was the only person working on them – and over time they grew to more movie­like productions; tens­ of millions of dollars, hundreds or more people.

I think that more recently over the last five years or so we’ve seen a major, major change in the game industry towards mobile, towards social, towards casual players and a lot of the money in games is going towards things that are, technically, more simple, but socially more complex.

The size of the development teams is typically quite a bit smaller now for these sorts of games than it is for a triple­A console title. So we still have those blockbuster types of things, but in some sense the whole industry has diversified in platforms, in demographics and in genres. And in fact I think it’s very healthy for the industry.

Do you think this was an inevitable change for the industry?

I’m not sure it was inevitable, but I’m glad it happened. I think for a while we were at the risk of our industry going more of the way of comic books, where there was a group of diehard dedicated people doing these things but it wasn’t growing and it was never going to hit a mainstream audience.

What do you think was key to this change then?

Well I think accessibility for one thing. The fact that we all have – well, not all of us – but most people have a very powerful computer sitting in their pocket. It’s instant on, they can pull them out at a moment’s notice.

I think that a lot of people into gaming probably wouldn’t bother about downloading or buying a CD and putting on your computer; but even the delivery mechanisms or distribution, the fact that I can hear about a cool game, pull out my iPhone and download it and be playing it within minutes. If you think about it, that’s amazingly less friction than going down to a software store, buying a CD and putting it in an Xbox.

A few years back at an art exhibition in Vancouver you said we were on the cusp of a ‘Cambrian explosion of possibility’: is this kind of technology a part of that?

Well yeah, that’s what we’re seeing right now I think. We’re seeing this vastly parallel exploration of the possibility space now. Just about any kind game you can imagine is out there somewhere in app form or indie game or otherwise. So I see quite a bit more inventiveness and exploration of game space now than I did even ten years ago.

At some point it may settle down and we may see more genres than we had before, we might have 30 main genres instead of the main 10, but we’ll be dealing with a much wider audience. I think games are becoming as diverse as books and movies.

For me, I’m not sure if you’d agree, there was a time when I was really into iPad and mobile gaming but now it seems there are a lot more clones than before. It seems the touch input has become a limit of sorts to the platform.

I think it’s the property of one type of platform. You when you have tablets and touch devices; before it was joypad or joystick and mouse and I’m sure we’ll see more gestural interfaces like the Kinect so there are quite a bit more input mechanics.

I think there are limitations to touch interface, just as there are limitations in any other button interface. So each one of these platforms is going to have its own particulars, and we’re going to see more exploration of that than we had done before. For the longest time all we had was just keyboard, mouse and joystick.

Was this part of your ultimate goal? What was the reason for leaving Maxis and forming these new tangents?

Mostly I just wanted to be a bit more experimental. I think the games industry is getting kind of ubiquitous and diverse enough where it’s kind of intersecting all these other things – like television, like toys, like people’s daily lives – and also the scale of development.

You know when all the really big games were 30­-40 million dollar productions, it’s very hard to approach that with a small team without the resources of a large company. But that’s changed a lot; the fact that we can do very cool, significant things with much smaller budgets and much smaller teams. It just made kind of make sense in that… sense.

Out of interest, have you played the latest SimCity?

Actually I have, I’ve been playing it quite a bit.

What do you think?

I like it a lot. It’s interesting, in some sense it reminds me of the post­economic crash. It’s not about making your city big, it’s about making them not poor. I think they did a good job of balancing all the interrelated factors.

At first it felt a little claustrophobic, you know with the size of the land, but after playing for a while I think it really makes a lot of sense. Because really it makes you focus more on interrelations of those factors, so you could make a city four times bigger but you’d be dealing with the exact same variables.

So by kind of focusing it in it feels more personal, and so I really do want to zoom down and get a sense of what it feels like on the street. I think the visuals are just amazing, I love the tilt­ shift focal lens.

Visually it’s great. It was my old art director actually that was lead designer, and he had a very definite vision about the way that it would feel. But yeah, I’m enjoying it quite a bit.

Do you get a chance to play many other games, console or PC type I mean?

Oh yeah, I try to. I kind of get stuck on certain ones, but I at least try and get people to show me things that are cool or inventive. I never get enough time to play them as much as I want to though.

You get stuck on certain ones? Which one have you been playing most recently then?

Probably the one I’ve been playing the most is World Of Tanks. Just cause as a kid I was a big World War history buff and had models of tanks and all that stuff, so I like the fact that they have real models. Also, it feels like it’s a shooter that is designed for… how should I put it… older people.

You don’t need super quick reflexes: you know when I usually play shooters I get creamed by these fifteen year olds, but World Of Tanks is much more strategic so you can let your strategy compensate for your reflexes.

Excellent. So, you’ve always been a fan of creativity and freedom in games as you mentioned earlier, but that’s something I think has become increasingly saturated – at least on the console market – why do you think it’s moving away from that?

I think that, again, it’s a diversity thing. You’re going to have certain areas that are unexplored and people are going to start making themselves go and explore them, and you know there will be some saturation point.

Whether it’s something that’s open and creative or World War II shooters, but then that genre or group or theme might grow over time. It might just be that the killer app hasn’t been made in that area, or the stuff there doesn’t really hit the sweet spot.

But I think some people do just want to sit back and have a very familiar and comfortable experience, they want to play Call Of Duty. I don’t think every game has to be necessarily pushing the envelope.

So it sounds to me that you feel that it’s not the games that are becoming more diverse, but it’s the people playing them.

Oh definitely. It’s a chicken and egg thing, really. At first all the games we really catering to 16­year­old boys because those were the only people buying games, and then it took a while for more women to come in and more older people.

The Wii came out, that made games accessible to a wider group of people that really didn’t get the 16-­button interface. Social games started coming out that were much more about playing with your friends, you know Zynga type stuff, and that would appeal to more women.

So different kinds of games would come out that would to appeal to different chunks of demographics and once they get introduced to games they might start exploring.

They end up like simulation games even though they started social games, for them games are a form of media that they intend to enjoy just like a book or a move.

Whereas before we had a concept of gamers and non­gamers, and it was fairly limited – maybe a third of people around you were gamers and knew games and all the things about them and everyone else was clueless and knew nothing about them. I think that scale is tipping very rapidly.

That’s interesting because you get a lot of people still – even now – classifying themselves as hardcore gamers or casual gamers…

Yeah, I think we need to change away from that. We don’t really have people saying I’m a reader or a movie­-watcher. I mean you do have hardcore readers and hardcore cinemaphiles, but for the rough idea most people around you have read books and have seen movies. But for the longest time it wasn’t unusual that a lot of people, maybe most people around you, had probably never played a game. And that’s shifting rapidly.

You mentioned earlier about indie games, and we’ve seen a huge surge of popularity in that kind of thing recently, why do you think that is now?

Yeah, that’s kind of what I meant by the Cambrian explosion. All of a sudden we have a lot more design possibilities to explore, based on demographics, based on platforms and even game styles and themes.

What do you think the important turning point for this rise in popularity was?

Well again I think the platform diversity was a large part of it. So all of a sudden people could do apps on the iPhone, which started driving some of the more mainstream console makers to realise that there’s a lot of interest in things that weren’t necessarily giant triple­A titles. And even retro gaming, people playing games on emulators.

I think it’s remarkable how you look at some of those games and how simple they are yet people just love them, like Angry Birds. Compare Angry Birds to Half­Life, it’s a remarkably different scale of development.

Spending more money in development doesn’t necessarily mean more money in sales, at all. Again, it’s a property of this diversity of platform and demographic.

So do you think these kind of two distinctions will always be separate, or do you think these kind of smaller indie games will become the de facto way of playing games?

No, I don’t think we’re going to go back to a monolithic world were now everybody just plays indie games. When Zynga was growing everyone thought social games were going to take over, but now they ended being a significant portion of the pie, but they’re just one slice of the pie.

But what is happening is that the pie is just getting more and more slices, but there isn’t going to be just one that ends up being the right answer. I think people do want some expanses where they sit down and they get a Final Fantasy, 20­hour, cinematic experience but they also want to sit down and play Angry Birds for five minutes on the iPhone. I think all these things are going to live alongside each other.

Tying into this, we’ve seen the rise of Kickstarter and crowdfunding becoming increasingly popular, how important do you think this kind of business model is for the industry?

It fills a nice niche for a certain types of games, a certain scale of development but it’s very Darwinian so when you have the first five or ten games out there trying to get Kickstarter funds it’s kind of novel or interesting and people think ‘okay, let’s try this’ but then people see that and then a 1,000 other people try to do it and now their fighting for – in essence – the same money. So it’s going to hit some equilibrium, but I think it does fill that funding niche, especially for new developers.

Kickstarter certainly seems to offer a lot more in terms of new ideas, kind of a counter to the iterative nature of the games industry – so we’re seeing a lot of sequels and HD remakes and the like – do you think this is a sign of gamers having lost their interest in these kind of big blockbuster games?

Well, sequels have always ended up being the most profitable genre of games. I think that a while back it was a much bigger concern because there were so few projects because they were so expensive and most of those projects – you know that were coming out of E3 or whatever – were sequels to existing games.

It felt like a real liability, in that we were going down the same path further and further without exploring any other paths. But nowadays with all this diversity – you know, games and platforms – I don't really think that's an issue.

So if there's a big franchise and a publisher or developer wants to do a sequel there's a reason for it, there's an established audience for that. So I don't really think of sequels as being the dead-end they once were.

With SimCity and The Sims you created new genres, but it seems the interest in these – and games like them – have kind of reduced in popularity. Why do you think that is?

Well again it kind of depends on where the audience is going. I think SimCity had a very particular audience of hardcore strategy players that like intricate things. And again, a few games over the years have always populated that space.

I think there’s always a balance that you have to strike with the sequel, in to how much are you catering to the old players of the previous versions versus how accessible are you making it to new players who never played it at all.

And that’s always a tricky balance. Even in filmmaking when you’re making a sequel to a big film, how much of the back-story are you going to explain in that sequel? Can someone go and see Terminator 2 having not seen Terminator 1? We need to strike a balance between all these things and I think that’s being done continually by publishers and developers.

Do you think publishers are managing it better?

That would depend on the individual case. Of course some people manage their franchises very well while other ones will screw them up, so it really is a case-by-case type thing.

We’ve spoken a bit about mobile gaming but do you think they’ve had a big impact on dedicated handheld consoles like the PS Vita and the 3DS?

Oh definitely, yeah. I mean if for no reason other than economically. Especially if you’re looking at a parent and their kid is playing games and they see iPhone games or mobile games costing two or three dollars whereas the more dedicated console games you’re paying at least 20-30 bucks for. That’s been a huge impact on dedicated game makers.

Do you think that’s primarily the thing that Sony and Nintendo need to change to reach better success?

It’s an economic issue, yeah. But I think this idea of having an app market with instantly accessible games at a very low price point is an economic pressure that they’re being very much impacted by right now.

How about the Wii U? Have you had a chance to play with one? What are your thoughts on the dual-screen gameplay?

I haven’t actually really had a chance to play with the Wii U, so all I know is what I’ve read about it. Although Nintendo has always surprised me, you know when I first saw the DS I thought ‘what a stupid machine’ and then I ended up getting one and I ended up playing the shit out of it, just because there were the sort of games on it that I love. I would be cautious to write off Nintendo easily, but again I haven’t really played with the Wii U yet. 

Is it something you’d be interested in developing for at some point?

I’d have to see it. Again, where I’m heading right now is quite a bit more mainstream and more ubiquitous for this, something that you’re playing all the time so I’m more interested in mobile platforms and stuff.

Okay, well looking forward a bit. Obviously next-gen is quite a popular topic at the moment; what would you like to see from the next-generation of consoles?

Gosh. You know, as a designer I don’t feel we have any significant limitations on the technology side. If you asked me twenty years ago I would have had a long list of things that I would love to be able to do with a computer but over the years all those bottlenecks and barriers have slowly evaporated.

I think the interface side still feels like a big bottleneck. I was never really satisfied with Kinect, it feels too sloppy, too imprecise. The idea of having to learn these 16-button controllers too, feels like a big bottleneck.

I still find the mouse to be one of best input devices ever made but it’s not very comfortable for the living room environment. I think that addressing the inputs would be one of the few things I would look at from the technology side.

Well we’ve seen the PS4 announced and the new controller has a touch panel on there that could be used to replicate a mouse. Does that interest you?

Yeah, I mean stuff like that might not be one solution for a number of different things. I feel like the amount of data that we have coming out of these games with the rendering and the visuals is tremendous now, and it’s improved thousand-fold from when games started.

But the input going back into the computer has only just barely crept up a little bit, in terms of the number of bytes we’re inputting back into the game.

Valve has its own idea on input too, and has talked quite a bit about biometrics to input back into the game.

Yeah, I think understanding emotional input – again, it’s probably going to be a hybrid of all these things and probably a lot of it is going to end up being on the software side. There’s not going to be one solution where we think ‘oh yeah, I want to do that’ but it’s going to be an intelligent use of a larger array of different methods that we’ll use.

But the main idea is how many bytes can we get back into the computer from the player. I think all these things are possible, and these things will have a certain amount of audience. A lot of these things tend to be targeting more hardcore technophile audience.

I think I tend to be interested in things that are going to have a much wider group of people, people who are even to this day aren’t playing games. What kind of things would they actually enjoy that, for whatever reasons, aren’t playing games right now.

You tend to be interested in sandbox experiences, will this be part of your future?

It’s not necessarily sandbox. I think it’s going to be things that are more player focused. It may be something that’s very sandbox or it might be something very directed, maybe something very goal orientated. But it’s really about the individual player, and I don’t mean the player coming in and playing a role, I mean you – real you – who you are.

Okay, well one last question then – more of a forward looking one. Where do you see the industry going in 5, 10 and even 15 years time?

Ooo, I think that the reason I’m interested in the direction that I’m heading is that games are now in a position of learning a tremendous amount about the players.

We’re in a position of collecting a tremendous amount of metrics and learning about a person and understanding them, and I’d like to think games can get to a point where they’re understanding players to a degree that even the players don’t know about themselves and we start learning more about ourselves by the way we play games.

It can basically start building internal monologues of who we are, what we like, what makes us tick and report this back to us in interesting ways. So that in some sense these games become mirrors, and we’re able to see parts of ourselves and understand ourselves – not just the world – in ways that we weren’t able to before.

Nintendo makes games. Lots of games. But the house of Mario, Zelda and Pokemon has often shied away from some types of title, or changed direction to the surprise of fans in its history.

No-one saw The Wind Waker's cel-shaded art style coming, or Wii Sports. But what about the games fans are begging the company to make? NowGamer runs down five titles Nintendo should make, but almost certainly won't.

A Mature, Realistic Zelda

Rumours about Zelda: Wii U suggest Nintendo will opt for a cel-shaded style which is also semi-realistic, just like Skyward Sword, as the company feels this is the best balance between the two.

But this is not what most fans want. Putting aside that the mature-themed, dark and realistic Twilight Princess on Wii outsold Skyward Sword by several million, most discussions on fan forums centre around that fans want a more realistic looking Link next time around, with darker undertones.

The Zelda U tech demo shown off at E3 2011 is a perfect example of what fans are looking for: a brilliantly high-res, HD effort with realism to the visuals.

Of course, Wind Waker was also one of the most respected entries in the franchise and that was the least mature of all the games, so we can’t make a sweeping generalization – but it seems more people want a mature Zelda, even though Nintendo is looking to stay cel-shaded.

A Pokemon MMO

It prints money. Well, it would, if it existed. A mega-online Pokemon entry on Wii U which asks trainers to pick a starter and participate in online battles all over a huge, 3D region, become gym leaders or Elite Four members and even form clans like Team Rocket, all under a subscription charge, would make Nintendo a lot of money.

But the company has consistently stated it would not make a home console Pokemon game – at least, not a game that uses the mechanics of the main entries in the series or threatens the dominance of handheld titles like Pokemon X & Y – and as such, Pokemon MMO is probably never going to happen.

As The Pokemon Company’s  JC Smith said “"Traditionally Game Freak has always loved the game to be on a portable device because of the communication, trading, and the experience of taking this adventure with you," J.C. Smith.

"That's why they've always prioritised a portable version of the game first. They've always liked what you can do in the real world with that... It comes down to what the creators want to do. Every time I've heard them talk about it, it's been about the portable experience."

Miyamoto’s FPS

The man behind Mario and Zelda has previously stated he wants to make an FPS. 

But this can only end in failure. While almost every gamer trusts the design skills of the man who gave the world some of gaming’s most beloved franchises, it is a bold move indeed for Miyamoto to turn his hand to FPS games when titles like Call Of Duty and Halo dominate the genre with gameplay perfected to a tee – especially when Nintendo is relatively new to online gaming.

Of course, Miyamoto could always craft something less routine – an action FPS in the mould of Bioshock, for example.

Sadly, it seems he might never get round to it. As Miyamoto puts it: “"Having that 3D space that in theory you are in and being able to look around and explore that-particularly being able to do that in conjunction with another person-is very interesting.

“I actually do kind of want to make a first-person shooter, but I don't have time.”

Wii Sports U

Nintendo doesn’t make sequels to its games willy-nilly, and Nintendo Land was designed to be the system-selling game that proves Wii U as a concept.

But Wii Sports sold in the tens of millions, and even the less-bundled Wii Sports Resort shifted far in excess of 10 million copies. 

Nintendo would be wise to make a new Wii Sports game for its latest console, if only because it’s almost guaranteed to sell copies – even if it can’t hope to match the iconic pull of the original. But given that the game probably wouldn’t do much for the Gamepad, it’s unlikely we’ll see this any time soon.

Super Mario Galaxy 3

Super Mario Galaxy is one of the best games of the last generation, mixing genuinely innovative platforming with a captivating space theme and a stunning orchestral soundtrack.

Some argue its sequel is even better.

With all that in mind, we’re not sure we’re quite ready to give up on the Galaxy series just yet. While we’d never want Nintendo to retread the series to death, a new installment with HD visuals on Wii U would be hard to resist.

Nintendo is likely to take things in a different direction, though, and craft a new 3D title which specifically targets the capabilitiesof the Gamepad – like Super Mario 3D Land did for 3DS.

Dark Souls fans have probably seen it by now but if you haven't, IGN has a 12-minute demo of Dark Souls 2 in action. It shows gameplay, enemies, locations and some of the new ways of dying you can expect from the final game.

But there are still a lot of questions - will it be easier? What about the frame-rate? Has Namco Bandai put From Software under any pressure?

We've got a big interview with Dark Souls 2 co-director Yui Tanamura and we've picked some of the more salient points below, to explain what the 12-minute demo didn't manage…

1. Dark Souls 2 Won’t Be Easier Than Dark Souls

Accessibility. All it took was one word by Dark Souls 2 director Tomohiro Shibuya to cause thousands of words of worry from Dark Souls fans. But this doesn’t mean Dark Souls 2 will be easier than its predecessor.

“Yes, so we did use the word accessible – by all means we did not intended for that to be communicated as making the game easier,” explained co-director Yui Tanimura when we ask him about the a-word.

“Obviously the game is not going to become easier. What we did mean by making it more accessible was to try to streamline away all of the tediousness, I guess, and cut away all the fat so we can deliver a lean, direct and pure challenging experience for players out there. So we apologise for casually using the word accessible, but please understand that the difficulty will maintain.”

2. Weather Will Play A Part

It had previously been discussed that weather could have a part to play in Dark Souls 2 and Tanimura told us more about From Software’s plans:

“So in terms of weather, it’s hard to give too much information at this point. We do plan to have players experience and play with the environment. Obviously with Dark Souls I, having players treading through water was slower than on ground, things like that, we plan to implement. One of the other things we want to sort of play with is the use of wind. We will continue to follow with more details of that later on – not necessarily with weather but with environmental [challenges], which will be key to Dark Souls 2."

3. The Frame-Rate Problem Should Be Solved

Although it had a gorgeous art style, Dark Souls wasn’t quite as beautiful in motion, with frame-rate dips punctuating the experience. That shouldn’t be an issue for Dark Souls 2. The engine has been reconstructed and one of the reasons for that “was to cater for that drop in framerate in Dark Souls 1”, as Tanimura explains.

4. Your Dark Souls Save Won’t Carry Over

Not sure why they would, or even should, but it’s been officially confirmed anyway – your Dark Souls save won’t carry over to the sequel.

5. Dark Souls 2 Is Server-Based And That WILL Make A Difference

“Because this game is going to be server-based now, we hope to implement new aspects into the game that can be done only because it’s server-based. We want to utilise that as much as possible to deliver some new experiences to fans.”

6. Lots Of Bits About The Dark Souls 2 Structure That Don’t Fit A Catchy Header

From Software have let lots of little nuggets of info slip about the actual design and structure of Dark Souls II, so here we go. First, From Software is getting rid of ‘orthodox stage structures’ (although Dark Souls was hardly known for its orthodox progression). There will be more focus on ‘3D vertical exploration structure’, which means more descending into the depths of darkness. This is where the torch system will presumably come into play more often. Finally, variation is crucial, as that’s the key to providing the satisfaction that Dark Souls is renowned for.

7. ‘Players Learn From Their Deaths’ – The Bridge Dragon Explained

One of the highlights of the Dark Souls II presentation was the rickety bridge, which sees the player sway as he tries to cross it. That seems like the danger but it’s not. A dragon swoops in, severs the bridge and leaves the players tumbling to his death in the abyss below.

“Killing players is obviously easy – you can make an enemy invincible and make them so strong that you die,” explained Tanimura. “But I think it’s important that players understand the reasons for their deaths, and to make sure that they learn from their deaths, and that’s a fine balance, but we always keep in mind to make sure it’s fair, and to make sure there’s a reason to each of the situations in the game.

That bridge incident is actually sort of a surprise feature, I guess – we want to express the emotions of “oh my god! What do I do now? Okay, no bridge – how do I get past this part?” And what’s behind that is, we want the players to think about what to do next and think of their own ways to conquer that area.

“Obviously we don’t want to do it so every time you go on the bridge, you die no matter what – that’s not the case. We’ll leave hints and clues to allow players to anticipate what’s going to happen. If they try to cross the bridge, they’ll probably die, as you saw, but there’s emotional takeback that we want from each of the situations like the bridge that we’re trying to communicate. So hopefully players, when they play the game, will understand that everything has a certain amount of meaning in terms of deaths of successes that are present in the game.”

8. Namco Bandai Has Not Put From Software Under Pressure To Broaden The Audience

Following on from the accessibility comment, there was some talk that Namco Bandai had put From Software under pressure to give the series more commercial appeal. Not so.

“We feel that the relationship between From Software and Namco Bandai is good,” Tanimura told us. “Namco Bandai gives us a lot of freedom in terms of what we want to create, and we as From Software are really able to pursue what we want to deliver to the fans, so the relationship there is great.

“Obviously From Software as compared to Namco Bandai is a small company – Namco Bandai is a much larger company, so I think a lot of the feedback from the fans and how Namco Bandai can access fan feedback is a lot larger than what From Software can, so that type of input from the publisher in terms of what fans are expecting is very useful for us in terms of taking into consideration and deciding on certain aspects of the game, so the relationship we have between the publisher and developer is a good one in that we have the freedom to create what we want to create.”

9. Dark Souls 2 Will Have Emotional Frights…

From Software will try bringing ‘emotional fright’ into some areas, by using very few enemies. The idea is presumably that tension and anticipation of what lies ahead will strike fear into players, and with fewer enemies showing up, that means players won’t have the relief of then seeing and understanding what the threat is. One such area was seen in the presentation, with the giant lizard-esque locked behind the prison door.

10. …And An Action-Packed Second Half

That header sounds a little bit too football but it's apt - From Software has mentioned the second half of Dark Souls 2 will have a lot more action than the first half. Perhaps this ties into the accessibility point – having a difficulty gradient that’s easier to recognise than that of Dark Souls.

When the game was revealed last year, hardcore players were worried the game would be easier or more accessible – what you’ve shown us at this event had very much a hardcore focus. How does the difficulty of the first and second Dark Souls games compare?

Yui Tanimura: Yes, so we did use the word accessible – by all means we did not intend for that to be communicated as making the game easier. Obviously, the game is not going to become easier. What we did mean by making it more accessible was to try to streamline away all of the tediousness, I guess, and cut away all the fat so we can really deliver a lean, direct and pure challenging experience for players out there.

So we apologise for casually using the word accessible, but please understand that the difficulty will maintain. The goal is not to make Dark Souls 2 more difficult – that’s not the intent – but the intent is to provide a more rewarding experience by being able to overcome all the difficulties, so it’s hard to directly compare which one’s going to be more difficult, but we’ll try to maintain the same experience in Dark Souls 2.

You mentioned in the presentation that Dark Souls 2 is a ‘death trap’ – at what point do you start the level design? With the player dying, or with a multi-tiered level and presenting challenges along the way?

The way I look at level design is, first I try to concrete the concept of what we want the players to feel, what emotional takeback or feedback the player gets from the experience. And with that, we try to design what kind of death they will face, and what kind of challenges and what kind of tactics we want the players to learn from.

So we’ll have that concept as a base and based on that, we will then discuss how we want people to conquer this or what kind of death we want them to experience and what kind of learning we want them to take back from the challenges in the game.

In the Edge reveal, you discussed maybe doing a weather system in the game – has there been any further discussion on that?

So in terms of weather, it’s hard to give too much information at this point. We do plan to have players experience and play with the environment. Obviously with Dark Souls I, having players treading through water was slower than on ground, things like that, we plan to implement. One of the other things we want to sort of play with is the use of wind. We will continue to follow with more details of that later on – not necessarily with weather but with environmental [challenges], which will be key to Dark Souls 2.

Obviously the next-gen consoles are being revealed – we’ve had the PS4 revealed, and obviously the release of your game is very close to the release of those consoles. Did you consider a next-gen version for release?

We understand that next-gen is coming up, and it’d be a lie to say we didn’t consider it at all, but right now there’s no intent to have Dark Souls on next-gen at this point. We feel the potential for current gen is still there and we want to deliver it to current gen consoles.

You talked about the relationship between NamcoBandai and From Software – is From Software under any pressure to increase the range of their audience, or are you free to succeed on your own terms entirely?

We feel that the relationship between From Software and Namco Bandai is good. Namco Bandai gives us a lot of freedom in terms of what we want to create, and we as From Software are really able to pursue what we want to deliver to the fans, so the relationship there is great.

Obviously From Software as compared to Namco Bandai is a small company – Namco Bandai is a much larger company, so I think a lot of the feedback from the fans and how Namco Bandai can access fan feedback is a lot larger than what From Software can, so that type of input from the publisher in terms of what fans are expecting is very useful for us in terms of taking into consideration and deciding on certain aspects of the game, so the relationship we have between the publisher and developer is a good one in that we have the freedom to create what we want to create. But at the same time, we have the feedback of a larger audience as well.

So Namco allow you to process a more accurate, larger clutch of fanbase?

Right, but with the freedom to create what we want, based on that. Up to From Software, so we can stay loyal to the fans.

One of the main issues of the first Dark Souls was its framerate – do you think the new engine will solve that issue?

Yes, one of the reasons we implemented a new engine was to cater for that drop in framerate in Dark Souls 1, so again for this title we’re hoping users don’t have to worry about that issue. We think the new engine will help to solve.

What did you learn from your players’ online behaviour in Dark Souls, and how have you reacted to it in the sequel?

Actually Dark Souls 1 was more of a P2P so we weren’t able to really capture very many stats in terms of player behaviours, so that’s why we were able to go back to player feedback. It’s not that we’re going to take in all player feedback and answer all of them, but we do take into consideration in how we want to balance Dark Souls 2.

How much of players equipment is carried over from Dark Souls 1 to Dark Souls II, and you’ve talked about online being a big focus – how will that affect the game?

We can’t give you very much information at this point, but there will be things that carry over from Dark Souls 1 to Dark Souls 2. There will be adjustments – there will be carry over, I guess [in terms of equipment - it has been confirmed saves won't carry over]. In terms of network, again, there will be follow-up information, but because this game is going to be server-based now, we hope to implement new aspects into the game that can be done only because it’s server-based. We want to utilise that as much as possible to deliver some new experiences to fans.

We’ve seen a grim reaper-type character design and there’s been a lot of speculation about the morality system. Can you tell us anything about that, and how enemies might play to that?

In terms of the design of the world and the enemies, we carry the same design concepts, but because for this game we wanted to implement variations of the types of deaths for the emotional takeback of the fans, depending on what we want to communicate and how we want to kill players, will determine what sort of enemies we create. Again, designs of the enemies and characters will depend on what we want players to feel.

We saw quite an elaborate set piece – the Dragon Altar – where players walked along a giant bridge which broke, sending them to a dramatic death. Is it hard to maintain that balance of fairness versus cheap deaths?

So as you mention, the balancing between those is extremely difficult. It’s something we always keep in mind. But one thing we do focus on is, no matter what kind of death we want the players to experience, we make sure that players understand the reasoning for dying. Killing players is obviously easy – you can make an enemy invincible and make them so strong that you die.

But I think it’s important that players understand the reasons for their deaths, and to make sure that they learn from their deaths, and that’s a fine balance, but we always keep in mind to make sure it’s fair, and to make sure there’s a reason to each of the situations in the game. That bridge incident is actually sort of a surprise feature, I guess – we want to express the emotions of “oh my god! What do I do now? Okay, no bridge – how do I get past this part?” And what’s behind that is, we want the players to think about what to do next and think of their own ways to conquer that area.

Obviously we don’t want to do it so every time you go on the bridge, you die no matter what – that’s not the case. We’ll leave hints and clues to allow players to anticipate what’s going to happen. If they try to cross the bridge, they’ll probably die, as you saw, but there’s emotional takeback that we want from each of the situations like the bridge that we’re trying to communicate. So hopefully players, when they play the game, will understand that everything has a certain amount of meaning in terms of deaths of successes that are present in the game. 

Batman: Arkham Origins has been announced and the key points are that it will examine the backstory of Arkham Asylum (as opposed to just Batman) and it's being developed by Warner Bros Montreal rather than Rocksteady.

So how have fans reacted? Cautious optimism but the main concern is that Warner Bros Montreal will be at the wheel for this outing:

Batman: Arkham Origins - Fan Reaction

Batman: Arkham City Community

"I have a feeling that we are going to get about two Arkham Origins series based games in the next four years possibly cause i think that Rocksteady is making Arkham World and they need some time to develop that game, basically these games are to satisfy us until Arkham World comes out" - JackORiley92

"I have no doubt it will play just like (if not better) than Arkham City. As I would think, all the core gameplay mechanics are just being copied over. It's all going to come down to the plot line and side mission's stories. Since it is coming out in Oct. they must have been working on it for sometime now (probably before or just right after Arkham City). If not, then they are rushing it and will have a flawed product" - NightlySuicide

"Maybe Arkham Origins is a test to see if they can make a good Batman game and if they can they will hopefully with Rocksteady still helping out tho." - Solaris

Comic Book Resources

"No thanks, WB Montreal. I'm more interested in the Arkham Origins Blackgate, the 2.5D Metroidvania game." - zexion_armando

"On one hand, I am excited for news of another Arkham series instalment... but on the other hand, no Rocksteady working on it? I wonder why... I hope the game will be good. I really hope so" - SpideyZERO

"Still will be a Day 1 purchase because I'm sure all the gameplay will be present but I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't a little worried. This is obvious a cash grab moment by Warner Bros. They should of asked Rocksteady to develop the sequel game and take their time with it and have it hit with the next generation of systems sometime in 2014. Or perhaps Rocksteady is developing the next Arkham game or another DC title for next generation. Regardless there was a ton of hype for Arkham City with the populace knowing about it for a long time, I don't know why they're just announcing it now with it coming out in about 6 months" - BloodOps

GameFAQS

"At the very least, this can be taken as a sign that Rocksteady is still working on their own, separate entry into the Arkham trilogy for a future release date, hopefully. I was concerned that they'd get sidetracked on putting this together for WB, and that we'd wind up waiting even longer for the AA series to reach its third act. Interesting, though, that there's no mention of the who Justice League tie-ins that were all over the original announcement. Maybe WB wised up and realized that there isn't much appeal for Batman fans in stuffing a bunch of other heroes into one of his games for the sake of 'brand synergy' (LEGO Batman notwithstanding, of course)" - Mon_Dieu_Mel

"I really hope this game is good... if not then I guess it'd still be able to hold me until Rocksteady's next game" - pokemongames

SuperHeroHype

"I mean the WB Games Montreal crew seems to have reverence for the franchise and all, but I can't help but feel suspicious of this potentially being an inferior game that's being rushed out so they can keep cashing in on the franchise while it's hot. Hopefully Dini and Rocksteady will return for a true sequel to Arkham City on the next gen consoles. Don't get me wrong though, I want this to turn out to be a good game. Open-world Gotham is what I've always wanted from the franchise, but making it Christmas Eve so everything's quiet in Gotham seems like a bit of a copout. We shall see" - BatLobsterRises

"I think it is beyond stupid for have Arkham in the title. Having it in the title of the first 2 games made sense from a story point of view. In this case, it makes no sense whatsoever why Arkham would be in the title other than because WB thinks the game somehow won't sell. I really fear that this game is mainly being made just to capitalize off Batman's popularity in the video games. My theory is that Rocksteady is working on a big Batman game that is a sequel to AC for the next-gen but needs more time on it so WB decided to release something this year they can make money out of while Rocksteady continues working on the game they're working on. This isn't necessarily a bad thing and doesn't automatically mean the game will suck but it is a red flag for obvious reasons and things like Arkham in the title, Rocksteady & Paul Dini not being involved, and the game being announced so late all points to this theory possibly being true" - Shikimaru

Batman: Arkham City remains for many one of the best games of this generation, so a sequel - or, in this case, a prequel - to the game is likely to excite many.

So we've collected all of the details surrounding Batman: Arkham Origins, what we know already and what that might mean for the game.

Most of this was garnered from GameInformer's early cover reveal details, but as more information appears we'll be sure to update this page with it all.

Batman: Arkham Origins Is Current Gen

Batman: Arkham Origins will release for PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Wii U.

Batman: Arkham Origins Release Date

The next Batman Arkham game is already set to release on 25 October 2013. This is likely ahead of the rumoured release date for next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

It Is Developed By WB Montreal

Rocksteady is not developing Batman: Arkham Origins, instead it is in development at WB Montreal. This studio was set up in March 2010, and it is likely around this time that development of the game began.

Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate Is Portable Version

Another version of Batman: Arkham Origins is in development called Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate. This is in development at Armature Studios, a studio formed from many Metroid Prime developers.

The game will launch for 3DS and PS Vita with the same release date as its home console version of the game.

Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate will be a 2.5D Metroid inspired exploration action game, and will take place after the events of Batman: Arkham Origins.

Batman: Arkham Origins' Visual Style

Batman: Arkham Origins will be built on the same engine that powered Batman: Arkham City. WB Montreal has been given full access to the same modified version of Unreal Engine.

Batman: Arkham Origins' Story

Batman: Arkham Origins is a prequel to Batman: Arkham City and Asylum. It will feature a young and inexperienced Batman as he meets some of his famous supervilliain enemies for the first time.

It will be set on the streets of Gotham City, rather than an enclosed version of it as was the case of Arkham City.

It will be set on Christmas Eve as 8 of the world's deadliest assassins come together to hunt down Batman. One of these assassin's is confirmed to be Deathstroke.

Batman will also meet a number of important characters that he will later go on to form important relationships with.

Think of any game you’ve played recently – any – and ask yourself if you’ll still be playing it nine years down the line. Chances are the answer will always be no; why would you want to play the same game for nine years, after all?

World Of Warcraft released in 2004 – nearly a decade ago – and yet still people are playing it. Numerous MMOs have since risen to take on Blizzard and failed, either resorting to free-to-play or closing down entirely.

It’s rare for any game to appeal to such a large group of gamers for such an extended amount of time, but WoW has. WoW does.

But why? What is so special about Blizzard’s MMO that has kept gamers hooked all these years? We ask a group of regular WoW players to find out exactly why World Of Warcraft has such unprecedented longevity.

Why Do Gamers Still Play WoW?

"It's constantly innovating and breaking down content,” says Rhea Monique (Ashelia), site director at hugely important World Of Warcraft website Wowhead.

Whether it’s “taking from other games, thinking of new features, or simply just adding tons of new content,” Rhea believes Blizzard knows how to adapt its MMO.

Regular content has always been important to MMOs, but where most struggle just to stay afloat, the heavy number of subscribers gives Blizzard a little extra room to provide its fans with the content it deserves.

But surely that can’t be it?

“I think the fact that it hasn't seemed to have aged,” says Allan Shepherd (Lopsidedbee), “the regular graphics updates and graphics style have given it a longevity that I don't think anyone anticipated.

"At a time when SWTOR is beginning to look a little aged, and LOTRO looks positively ancient it's amazing that it still feels so fresh.”

But Jennifer Allen (Naiki) thinks it’s about the compulsive nature of its questing system: “It's simple to play and very cathartic. I treat it as a form of comfort gaming, really. I tend to mostly play when I'm tired, ill or just in need of escaping from life for a bit.

"I know much of the world like the back of my hand now so I can "switch off" as I play. It's very easy to level up too, so I enjoy the instant gratification and feeling that I've achieved something in a short time."

That’s perhaps the most important point here: WoW’s gamers know its world, they know its characters, its towns, its lore, its enemies, its… well, everything.

There’s something to be said for a game that is just comfortable. Like slipping on a pair of slippers and settling down to watch your soaps, there’s a warming nature to existing within the World Of Warcraft.

Part of that is thanks to the visual design of WoW, but there’s something soothing about recognition. It’s the reason Call Of Duty fans buy every year’s iteration, or Grand Theft Auto fans can’t get enough of the open world crime game. Familiarity feels safe.

“You also cannot take away the importance of the emotional investiture people make in a game,” says Alexander Barahona (Warspite). “A decade is a long time to play a game and build a character and it’s very hard to put it out to pasture.

True enough. If you’ve spent years playing as ‘Hordeslayer’, you’re going to care much more about their adventures than any character created for a triple-A blockbuster. That digital avatar becomes a ‘him’, a ‘she’ or a ‘they’.

So it’s the stories you tell, then: Like when you fought your friend over a rare mount, the evening your undead rogue ganked Alliance for fun in Stranglethorn Vale or the time you sold a level 35 rare axe to a twink for 1000G.

“I loved getting server first Feat of Strengths back in Wrath of the Lich King,” proudly claims Rhea Monique, “and I think in general Blizzard has done a good job of rewarding players for their involvement in PvE with achievements."

Is WoW Getting Easier?

At the height of its number of subscriptions, World Of Warcraft was a game heavy on strategy. The balancing of gear and tactics was important to any raid or PvP match, but as the years have gone on it begins to feel easier.

Accessibility is an important part of any MMO, but many gamers have criticised the simplicity of some of the changes that have been implemented over the years – even going so far for some to even cancel their subscription altogether.

But what about those that have stuck around? Is the game easier and, if so, has it made WoW worse?

For Ian Burnip (Toneeiommi), who has only been playing World Of Warcraft since Cataclysm, the simplicity of the mechanics have helped him to get into the overwhelming MMO.

“It's good for me,” he tells us, “because it allowed me to get on top of what I was doing quickly. I know two 'vanilla' players personally. One still plays and likes how much easier it is now. The other doesn't.

“I can see why the original community might be alienated,” Ian adds, “as the things they struggled to do are easier, but the new players might not have stuck around if it was harder.”

Those WoW gamers who have stuck around since its launch, however, aren’t all pleased with Blizzard’s approach to streamlining content. Meshell Brown (Llehsem) is in two minds on the matter, lamenting the now-easy dungeons but appreciating the wider-appeal the game now has to gamers.

“The dungeons in the newest expansion are a walk in the park compared to some of the old ones. Although I realise this was done because of the negative reaction the harder dungeons got I still feel it was a bit of a cop out.”

Rhea Monique is only happy for WoW to become simpler, however: “I was a hardcore raider back in the day and in the top US guild. It was extremely hard. I devoted dozens of hours each week to the lifestyle. 

“I remember at first I was really sad as World of Warcraft became easier, but I quickly realised it had to if it wanted to remain popular.”

As WoW’s gamers grew up, however, its free time decreased. Rhea admits, telling us that “spending thirty hours a week in the depths of Naxxramas simply wasn’t feasible”.

Is It The Endgame That Keeps WoW Gamers Hooked?

If you’ve been playing WoW for years you’ve almost certainly dabbled in endgame content. Whether it’s raiding, gear grinding, PvP or painfully ticking off reputation dailies, there’s something out there for everyone to stick around long after reaching max level.

“I've been all over the place with this,” says Rhea. “PvE (raiding) always spoke to me, but PvP has been a big part of my involvement as well. For me it was always about Achievements.

“Nowadays the rewards are expanded. There's virtually something for everyone to grind out. From challenge mode rewards to battle pets, you can really tackle any aspect of the game and make your mark known.”

Alexander Barahona also dabbles in both PvE and PvP endgame, but admits to finding himself “to be well behind the curve” after not playing for a while.

“I appreciate that’s on me and I don’t begrudge it,” says Alexander, “in fact it’s nice to find an environment where it’s not spoon fed to you (even if gear is rather easy to come by)."

Jennifer Allen opts out of most endgame content, though: “When I started out, I did a fair bit of raiding and enjoyed it but I don't really have the time or enthusiasm to commit to an evening's raiding.

“I do miss the gear grinding,” she adds, “and the sense of camaraderie. As a level 90, I spend my time exploring for the sake of it and collecting Achievements or mastering professions. It suits me.”

Achievements are a big part of endgame for Meshell Brown, too, while Allan Shepherd and Ian Burnip both prefer gear-grinding in raids for “awesome looking stuff to transmogrify”.

The Secret To WoW’s Longevity

Despite all of this, however, there seems to be one truth that most WoW gamers appreciate – the social aspect of the game.

“It's everything to me,” says Allan Shepherd. “Four years ago, when I joined that first gaming guild I was a little anxious as to the prospect of talking to strangers online.”

But now Allan find he’s chatting to his guild-mates more than some of his family members, “I got married 18 months ago, and when I came to think about who I'd be inviting, there was no doubt that I wanted to invite the guys I spend 15 hours a week hanging out with.”

Meshell Brown believes the social aspect of WoW is why the game is so important. “I LOVE the social element of WoW,” she says. “Although I have tried many [MMOs] I always come back to WoW and I think that the fact that my friends play is a big part of that. All the people I have met through my guild in Warcraft I now also see on a social basis.”

It’s the “main reason” that Ian Burnip plays WoW over other MMOs, in fact: “When my friends have breaks or are on it less, I find I am too. I've only played brief bits of other MMOs, but the social side of WoW seems better - at least on my server. Everyone is fun, and there's a lot of "we're all in this together" type spirit.”

But how is World Of Warcraft’s social side any different – or better, even – than any other MMO?

“I think guilds in WoW are by far one of the more social elements,” claims Rhea Monique. “The only other game I can think of that really was social for me was Asheron's Call and EverQuest back in the day.”

Rhea adds that “the sheer volume of players in World of Warcraft easily makes it a lot more social.

“Plus Blizzard has been constantly trying to make it more social: features such as cross realm zones, LFR, and more let you meet a wider group of players and network with people off your server.”

It seems this is the reason so many play World Of Warcraft, then. It’s like the choice between Call Of Duty or Battlefield, you’ll invariably pick the one that most of your friends play.

Is World Of Warcraft Still Worth A Subscription Fee?

When the rest of the world seems to be adopting free-to-play as a viable alternative to MMOs, Blizzard has remained stoic in its insistence on charging for access to the game, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

According to our diehard WoW gamers, that’s not necessary. Blizzard proves its MMO is more than worthy of the monthly fee, whether it’s the constant content updates, regular patches or friendly, helpful (and quick) GMs.

In the face of free-to-play MMOs, World Of Warcraft has earned its fans’ devotion.

“When a game is free to download and free to play,” says Allan Shepherd, “you tend to get a lot of trolls, a lot of goldsellers, and a lack of commitment.”

Jennifer Allen agrees, stating that though she’d rather it was a little cheaper WoW “still offers better content than the free to play MMOs.”

Alexander Barahona finds free-to-play “nauseating”, and would “I would rather [WoW] stayed subscription and you had to earn titles, mounts, toys etc.”

Each and everyone prefer WoW’s subscription strategy over any other free-to-play alternative.

Simply put, World Of Warcraft might well be nine years old, yet it’s anything but old.

Sure it might be an entirely different beast from when it first began, but it still has millions of gamers keen on diving into Azeroth at every opportunity.

Whether it’s for future raids, PvP combat or simply gaming with friends – WoW still has it all and it looks like that’s going to continue for a very long time.

Also read our Thief reboot gameplay details to find out how it plays

What are the challenges you have faced in putting a pure stealth mechanic back into the game?

DWS: Even in the original Thief games, you had the mechanical eye to see further, so they already had some kind of aspect to them, right?

You're supposed to be the guy, Garrett is at the top of his game right, so you are very, very special. So if your question is related to, for example, let's say the focus, it’s part of the story as well.

Because Garrett always has this thing with the eye. We want to be true to some of the things that trademark the things you recognise from the character, that was a very important thing for us.

How will the combat vs action work out? Will you be freely able to maraurder through the levels if you want to?

DWS: This is the big question. Thief was always based on stealth, but even in the original Thief games you can be very aggressive. You can run around, knock people down and you can get some pretty nasty arrows too. Even though it was a Thief game he was still, even then, still playing very aggressively.

What we wanted to do was try to maintain that feeling of freedom, so in a straight up combat one on one mano-a-mano kind of thing, you’re at a disadvantage.

You’re against trained soldiers, this is your backup plan, this is the last thing you want to do when you get into a mess. In terms of how you can play, what we did when we did the analysis of the old games… trying to extract what was important for the Thief franchise, it was that we found certain patterns of players who played the game – and these are the ones we want to support.

For example; people like to play as ghosts. You can play our game completely without killing anyone, this is something that’s very important for us.

The objective is never to assassinate anybody, never to be aggressive, that’s not the main purpose of the game. But for some players, they find satisfaction in completely removing everybody from an entire playing field, and then afterwards you go like [claps hands together] ‘that was awesome, good job’ and you feel that satisfaction. And even when you start being aggressive, it’s always from the shadows.

One thing that’s very important is the shadow and light mechanic from the original Thief. We want to extract the feeling of empowerment from the shadow, when you control the sound you propagate around.

It's kind of nice to make sure you are always in control when you are in that space, it’s some of the things that the game mechanics and the franchise originality kind of funnels us into this combination, the core that we want to bring forward in this version of Thief.

SR: To make it short, we are working very hard to support how you want to play the game. So in the morning you are more aggressive, we can see it when you are using the mouse, keyboard and controller – the game will follow you. If you are more quiet and want nobody to see you, the game will answer perfectly.

It’s really a question of balancing. The line is thin between too easy and too hard and stuff like that. At the end of the day if its well done, you are going to enjoy the game a lot – because the game will support the mood you are in.

The mood are you in when doing a mission… you start a mission more aggressive but after that you have no more resources, alright please stay calm, stay quiet then – no more arrows so now go in the shadows.

DWS: It is a resource based game like the original Thief, you have to plan ahead. You have the BlackJack, with that one you can take anybody out without a cost.

Theoretically… you could kill anybody without them ever finding you, but how long can you stay in that strategy before you run out resources?

This is the same mentality behind the focus combat  that you saw today. All these things are completely optional – they are the players choice to use them. We are debating right now whether we add a button at the beginning of the game saying you cannot access these special overpowered… so players can brag about how awesome they were. 

What lessons have you learnt from the Deus Ex reboot?

SR: It’s a different team, because they are still working on some other product, so it’s a new team. But at the same time, my answer would be yes, because even if it’s a new team weve been able to see that how the type of problem they have, how they fixed it and like I said, the big lesson give us right to be wrong.

It’s a big task, especially with Thief because people are… hate or love this franchise, its really polarization. We have to be really solid, when we make a decision, we have to be able to explain why and to be sure it supports the DNA of the franchise.

At the conception it was just impossible to start and know which decisions are the right one. So we said okay, no panic, it will take time, but lets make it properly. Some time we are going to hit the wall, okay so lets learn about it and go in this direction. So this is a big lesson from them.

It’s not hazy. The people loving the franchise… I’m pretty sure in their mind, if we do something specifically… you won't forgive us. If we don’t have this feature [punches hand], we have to be careful. We did our homework, we are ready to give you information.

The game was first announced back in 2009, are you just making sure the core of the game…

SR: 2009 was the official announcement, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t start to work the day after on the product. It was also part of the strategy to help the recruitment team. It’s been a big challenge to find all the elements, because making a game is one thing.

It's not easy, but we are proficional but making a game really making sure its Thief, and not just another game, that one takes time.

Are there multiple ways to progress through levels?

DWS: The blackjack doesn’t kill anybody, it only makes them unconscious.

You can go through without knocking anybody out. You can get through this without ever being seen, or heard or ever causing any form of situation – we are bringing a whole new level of difficulty. This variation in the basic set up, but on top of it, yes there are other ways of bypassing opposition.

Is it tough to build levels around the three phases?

SR: It’s tough on the budget. [laughs]

DWS: I want this feature, I want this feature!

SR: Exactly, the team is really creative. Everybody wants to have the best escape, and sometimes okay… but can we recycle a couple of game mechanics? [laughs] It’s a good tool for the rhythm of the game.

DWS: The objective is to steal stuff, because that’s what you do, that’s your craft.

SR: This gameplay loop is a high level one. [Stands up and makes his way towards me] At the same time, you’re there and then, oh this iPad, I have my eye on it you know? So you can see it almost as an infiltration – pickpocket is the stealing phrase and after that I get the fuck out of there and I’m escaping.

It has been years since the last Thief game, do you think a dedicated first-person stealth game is still relevant today?

SR: I think the best proof is Dishonored. Dishonored proved that the interest is there. Obviously there is a lot of comparison, for me its amazing to see how Thief has been a good inspiration for Dishonored, because Thief is the godfather for that type of game. It is the roots. Definitely the timing for us is just perfect, because the door is wide open for us.

So it's perfect timing?

DWS: We played it ourselves and we think they did a really awesome job.

SR: People like you, I’m asking for your help… you played the original one you know, so you know that Dishonored has been inspired by Thief. But for a lot of players – let's say a teen or he’s 20 - and for a lot of people and they are going to see us and ‘oh ok, the inspiration is Dishonored’.

DWS: A lot of people heard about Thief but never played it, right? The Thief universe has a lot to offer.

Was it ever intended as a sequel or always a reboot?

SR: No. From the beginning it was 100 per cent sure that its to restart it, to reinvent it, to make sure that you are going to perceive us as part of the future and not part of the past.

It’s crystal clear since the beginning; we restart it but again, by respecting the DNA of the franchise. But no,no,no it’s not a sequel – Garrett is back, a bit like Chris Nolan did with the Batman for example. It’s Batman he still has the same mental problem with the bat and stuff like that, but his suit has more modern aspects and not just this thin Adam West … but at the same time everybody will tell you that this is Batman, there’s no problem, it respects the franchises – it emphasises what we are doing now.

Did you flirt with adding in more third person aspects?

DWS: One of the things we tested in the old days was a whole third person version of this game like Deadly Shadows had. But something that was really missing was that immersion when you’re pick-pocketing people when youre really up close, when you’re close to the wall… almost hugging the wall, just hiding in the shadows like ‘no,no,no don’t detect me! Don’t detect me!” this is something that the first person brings a lot more tension comes more of this ‘I'm really here, I'm really hiding.’ You get a little distracted in third-person and this is one of the reasons we kept it in first person.

SR: I like the takedowns, it’s a reward. You feel really powerful, but its quick so you are back in the universe. We worked very hard to make sure the camera transitions are smooth.

Thief is well known for its fantastic AI – how will this translate to this new iteration? Will your presence extend across the city?

SR: The City is kind of alive – we are going to see something similar with the NPC. The more you progress through the story if something happens the guards will say ‘is it him?’ Now in the city they understand ok that something is happening, but it's not anymore cat… is it him? maybe it is a fucking cat! We really want to make sure you feel you are a part of the story. This one is a big challenge.

DWS: In terms of the gameplay the AI has a lot more nuance. How would you expect humans to react, and how do we make sure the player sees and gets that feedback. And that’s a big task to get that right. If you see a dead body, you would expect him to pull his sword and sweep the area and make sure everything is clear.

This is going to pressure players that create disturbances to have to adapt to the search patterns of the NPC’s. When you’re in the shadows you have an advantage, you have an advantage to exploit NPCS. But when you’re out in the open they will be searching for you, instead of some cat or something in the alley. And this is where the nuances come in a little more with the cat and mouse gameplay with the NPC’s.

Considering the game has been in limbo for so many years, is Thief something that wouldn't be possible on current gen systems?

SR: The starting point, the ignition of this process was not relative to the tech. Let’s say it’s a board game, we going to have the same speech today about what we want the universe to pull you in and what type of feeling you should have. Next-gen is really interesting to us is for the immersion. Now if you check something there is no pixilated textures or something like that. Like Stephen Iger said this morning, you are almost be able to smell the city.

The dense city, the immersion, this is where the next generation is really great for this type of game. It’s not a question of having more polygons or big explosions, no no no. You are going to be Garrett in the city, and when you are going to see the hands peaking it will be your hands you know. This is where next gen helps us. We are going to be able to avoid the ‘loading, loading, loading’ – now it's no more loading, because next gen is there.”

The beautiful game is always changing. FIFA always sells gangbusters, and fans always want the game to be bigger, better and even more beautiful.

As EA’s mammoth sports franchise hurtles towards its inevitable next-gen installment, NowGamer has put together a list of all the potential new features for FIFA 14 which have been most frequently and loudly requested by FIFA fans on its official forum.

How many will make it into FIFA 14 – or any FIFA game ever – is debatable. But unlike ever-ballooning developer budgets, it costs nothing to dream.

Gameplay Changes:

• Defensive AI: Fans want to see automated defending removed, with auto-tackle, auto-commit, intercept, clearance and contain for the chop to help the game work more as a unit.

• Better human movement: Realistic inertia on player movement has often been called for by fans. Currently players can change direction very easily, almost as if they are weightless. Future improvements could give players more ‘weight’ and make shifting direction when defending, passing or clearing more consequential and fouls more frequent, like real football.

• More realistic stamina: Currently stamina doesn’t affect the power of shots or the accuracy of passes, just pace and injuries. Making this refined would create more awareness of fatigue and substitutes could have great impact.

• More  aerial freedom: More freedom in the air, with multiple players jostling for the same ball – not just two.

• Ball weight: The ball physics still feel light and zippy. Even making the ball sound louder and deeper when being kicked or hitting a post would, fans say, give a greater sense of weight to it.

• Ball boys: Would increase the pace of the game and increase game rhythm, though mostly they’d just be a neat, realistic touch.

• Real-time weather: Having storm clouds gather during a game or rain break out on the 75th minute could change the way a game plays and the ball travels at perhaps a critical point in the match.

Visual Changes:

• Better facial expressions: The power of PS4 and Xbox 720 should help to make better faces a possibility.

• Dirty Kits: Shirts and shorts should pick up mud and become dirty after sliding tackles and during wet conditions.

• Bandages/visible injuries: Players could need a bandage or plaster after a bad injury scuffle.

• Stretchers: Players might need to leave the pitch on a stretcher after a bad tackle, and paramedics/physios could run onto the pitch when a man is injured.

• Crowd bias: During cup finals, crowd noise would be evenly distributed, but during league games the crowds could be split less evenly to boo away players and/or cheer home strikers more loudly. Crowds also need to be improved graphically.
• Pitch damage: Grass could churn, puddles collect and pitches generally get messy, both during the course of individual games and across the season.

• Celebrations: Celebrations could become more customisable, such as the ability to add messages to tops underneath shirts (like Ballotelli’s ‘Why Always Me?’) or the option to wind up fans or punch the corner flag – even to undertake celebrations that could result in a yellow card.

• Real, licensed referees: The ability to receive a third yellow card from English refs notwithstanding.

New Game Modes/Additions:

• Two-player skill/training games. FIFA 13 introduced training mini-games during loading screens, but took away the ability to enjoy these with two players like the shooting/goalkeeping practice of earlier versions.

• Stadium creator: PES allows players to create their own stadia, so this is something many fans have been clamouring for in FIFA. The ability to create grounds’ shape, pitch size, pattern and colour – right down to net colours and style – would be a welcome addition to the series.

• More international teams: Include key omissions such as Wales, Ukraine, Ghana, Canada and Costa Rica.

• The return of the licensed Nou Camp

• The Champions League licence, if PES ever loses it.

Career Mode Changes:

• Friendlies: The ability to choose which teams to organise friendlies with in pre-season.

• Deeper managerial options: The chance to hire youth team and reserve coaches, install team infrastructure like ground upgrades or youth investment, scouting improvements or a new stadium.

• Reserve and youth games: Though players don’t want to play them, being able to put players into b-side matches and receive reports on their fitness and ability from these simulated games is something fans have requested.

So that’s what fans want in FIFA 14 and beyond, in a nutshell. What would you like to see make it into EA’s fine soccer sim in years to come? Let us know in the comments or tweet @NowGamer_Feed 

The owner of the leading GT fansite GT Planet and all-round Gran Turismo expert Jordan Greer has spoken to NowGamer about what should be changed or included in GT6.

Touching on PS3, PS4, tracks, gameplay and PS Vita integration, we've grilled the expert on everything fans want to see in the next Gran Turismo:

What improvements would you like to see made in GT6? What area of the game needs the most tweaking?

Greer: "I think the engine sounds need to see the most improvement in the next iteration of the Gran Turismo series.  Although more cars, tracks, and features will almost certainly be included in the next game, the sounds haven't evolved at the same rate as the graphics and driving physics.

"It's an area which many people are critical of, and I would have to agree with their complaints.  Good engine sounds can make a racing game incredibly immersive, and this is an aspect that's lacking in GT5.

In one of my recent interviews with Kazunori, I had a chance to ask him about this.  His opinion was that GT's engine sounds were "too real", and said they could do more to "design" the sound and make it "sexier".

"He was widely mocked for the "too real" comment, but I think most of the criticism was short-sighted, as he clearly acknowledged the issue and described how it can be fixed.  I'm confident we'll see (or hear) improvements in the next game."

If GT6 is on PS3, what can the game do that GT5 hasn't already? GT5 was already a huge and ambitious title when it released - where can it go on the same console?

"If GT6 is on the PS3, I don't think we'll see much improvement in graphics, and that's fine.  Instead, it gives Polyphony Digital a special opportunity to focus on offering a wider selection of content in terms of more cars, more tracks, and a refined single-player experience.  

"These improvements would all be viewed positively by fans and critics, and wouldn't require any additional power from the console."

Do you think GT fans want to see lots more cars added, or just a conversion of standard models into premium models?

"There are a lot of popular "Standard" model cars which definitely need to be introduced as "Premium", but I think it's time to start introducing more new cars into the series.

When I first started playing Gran Turismo, I loved the fact that it contained so many "real" cars - sedans, hatchbacks, coupes, etc. - which I saw in the real world, on the road, every day.  

"A lot of those cars, produced in the '90s or early '00s, are still in the game, but you don't see them as often on the road.  

"For newer generations to have that same experience, its very important for GT to contain a wide selection of contemporary, pedestrian automobiles - not just modern exotic cars."

What kind of integration with PS Vita would you like to see?

"Trading and collecting cars in Gran Turismo 5 has endured as one of the game's most popular features; GTPlanet's own "GT5 Marketplace" forum remains one of the busiest on the site.  I'd like to see Vita integration which makes it easier for players to buy, manage, and trade cars in their garage from anywhere.

"Polyphony Digital has also experimented with remote B-Spec racing, and I think they could implement a much more immersive remote racing experience with the Vita hardware."

Do you want GT6 to be an evolution of GT5 or is it time to change the game's core racing mechanics?

"I don't think there needs to be any radical changes, I'd just like to see Gran Turismo get back to its roots, and take full advantage of all its content.  

"In GT5, I often feel like I'm just collecting cars to be collecting them, not because I needed them to win a particular race.  That should change in GT6."

If the racing was changed, how should it be?

"I'd like to see more standing starts, and more competitive racing.  In GT5, it often seems the challenge is to catch up with AI drivers who already have a big lead on you - this can often make it feel like hot-lapping instead of racing.

"Instead, I'd like to start out head-to-head with another driver who is very fast, and battle it out over the course of the race.

"I would also like to see more consequences for bad driving, with severe penalties for damaging your car or causing accidents.  Other games like iRacing have really capitalized on the notion of consequences, and they completely change the way you feel about playing.

"If players knew they'd have to pay (with in-game credits, of course) to repair their car or if their on-track behavior would hurt their ability to earn a new license, buy faster cars, or access new tracks, it would help them learn and appreciate just how fun and exhilarating real racing can be."

What can GT learn from racing games that have released since GT5, such as Forza 4, GRID 2, Shift 2 and so on?

"Players love to customize their cars in racing games, and I think other series have done well to capitalize on that.  

"Forza's livery editor is one prime and often-cited example of car customization that players miss when they come back to Gran Turismo.

Tuning parts, engine upgrades, everything - they are all very important things which let players feel like they really do have ownership of the cars.  

"Few games in other genres can foster that sense of ownership, and I think it's very important for Polyphony Digital to put more emphasis on that aspect of gameplay in the future."

If GT6 released on PS4, what changes would you like to see? How might Sony's new console benefit the game? Would it be better to launch on PS4 instead?

"Personally, yes, I would prefer to see Gran Turismo 6 released on the PlayStation 4.

"The new console's extra horsepower should enable some breathtaking enhancements, like more cars on track at the same time, a more complex driving physics model, and more circuits which feature dynamic weather and daylight conditions.  

"These features, combined with a renovated single-player mode, would combine to make one incredible game...and I'm sure the improved graphics wouldn't hurt, either!"

Some people complained about B-Spec mode in GT5. How might it be improved and made more compelling?

"I'm probably not a good person to ask, as I've never personally been interested in B-Spec mode.  If I'm spending time playing Gran Turismo, I want to be the one driving!"

Do you want to see the EXP model introduced in GT5 kept or scrapped?

"I'd prefer to see it scrapped.  The experience points feel arbitrary and redundant in a game which has credits and driving licenses.

"Carefully managing your money (should you buy a new car or keep tuning your old one for that next tough race?) and working hard to earn licenses to enter new racing series (which in turn would offer more prize money) is what made the earlier games so much fun."

Karting was brought in in GT5. Is there any other kind of racing mode you think fans want to see next?

"Without question, that would be drag racing.  The quick nature of drag racing is perfectly suited to an online gaming environment - nobody is going to ram you off the track, and the races are short and sweet.  It will be a very popular feature if it returns to the series."

Are you a core gamer? Microsoft doesn’t want your money any more. You are not the target audience for Xbox 720 and you might as well scurry off back to a dark corner with a high-end PC and leave consoles to Kinect and TV streaming in the living room.

Okay, so that might be a slight exaggeration. But one thing is for sure: the battlegrounds of gaming are shifting once more, and the Xbox company is no longer content to serve the traditional gamer it’s built it’s reputation on, and it’s only going to get worse when Microsoft finally pulls the covers off its next-gen Xbox 720 console.

Although I want all games consoles to do well – the more they sell, the healthier our industry is – I also want consumers to be skeptical towards Xbox 720, at least in comparison to PS4. Why? Because Microsoft simply doesn’t deserve to win next-gen.

For starters, why would anyone buy an Xbox 720 – particularly on launch- when the Xbox 360 is hands-down the most unreliable console of all time, with the console’s failure rate estimates somewhere between 10-54%.  Considering most consumer electronics have a fail number below 5%, these estimates are simply astronomical and completely unacceptable.

While we’ll never know where the true number lies, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t suffered at least one Red Ring Of Death, while a former colleague I knew went through seven. Seven. Anecdotal, of course, but the point stands. The machine formed a reputation for being unreliable, and that will damage consumer confidence in the Xbox brand in future – and rightly so.

But it’s not just the reliability, but the attitude toward the console's design itself. Yes, Sony made a stupid mistake pitching the PS3 as a $600 beast, but the Xbox 360 launched with no Wi-Fi, wired controllers and no online play, unless you forked out extra.

Even today, in the face of PS Plus, the 360 still requires you to pay a subscription to use features like Netflix which are free-to-access everywhere else. It’s nickel and diming, and consumers shouldn’t be expected to put up with it.

The only reason they did so on 360 is because it got the games and the support when Sony wrecked the PS3’s first three years on the market. If PS4 does gaming better, Xbox 720 can’t afford to repeat these mistakes.

Even just looking at the games themselves, it seems Microsoft is moving away from the people that helped make the brand so powerful – the gaming enthusiasts.

Core gaming is out the window with Xbox 720 – or so the rumours suggest. Everything we’ve seen about the next-gen machine so far points to a console built to be sold as an all-in-one living room device with a compulsory Kinect slapped on.

Great. Why play Halo when you can play Dance Central on Kinect 2? That’s what core gamers want. Frivolous motion control tacked onto every last title.

Just look at Microsoft’s studio list. This excerpt, taken from Wikipedia, outlines the extent of the problem:

• Kids And Lifestyle Entertainment (Next Generation fitness project)
• Good Science Studio (Kinect Adventures, Kinect Fun Labs)
• Playful Learning (Next Generation family project)
• Soho Productions (Kinect Sesame Street TV)
• BigPark (JoyRide, Kinect Sports: Season Two)
• Rare (Kinect Sports)

Okay, so there’s still 343, Turn 10 and others, but that’s an awful lot of studios working purely on ‘non-core’ experiences. It’s a worrying sign. 

Speaking of non-core experiences, the latest rumour also says the Xbox 720’s controller will be built for ‘non-core’ gamers. This may turn out to be untrue, but getting rid of the Xbox 360 controller for a simplified ‘casual-friendly’ input method would be the final straw in many gamers’ eyes; one concession too many to the mainstream at the expense of ‘proper’ games.

I hate the words ‘core’ and ‘casual’. Some people play games a lot, some just buy the occasional fitness title or play a bit of FIFA with their mates. Some people spend their Friday nights conducting WOW raids and grinding in obscure JRPGs.

We’re all gamers, but it’s fair to say Microsoft’s current direction is geared more towards the former of these two (equally valid) tribes. And for me, and probably for you if you’re on NowGamer, that’s a bad thing.

One reason PS4 got such a warm reception is because it focused on the games, without the gimmicks.

Sure, it’s got a touchpad on the controller and you can tap into titles on your smartphone, but all anyone at the reveal talked about was good old fashioned gaming, with buttons, ranks and multiplayer. It struck a chord with a demographic too often ignored by a money and mainstream chasing Microsoft – much like Nintendo before it.

Thing is, if Xbox 720 is sold on a subscription, packs a TV tuner, lots of polished Kinect games and a few Halos here and there, it will do very well – probably even win next-gen, as a certain Mr Pachter predicted.

These things might turn out to be completely untrue, and I certainly hope these Xbox 720 rumours stay rumours - because the success of games consoles with a gaming focus is surely vital to the future of our industry.

But for those of us who just want to get down and play, at the moment it seems like the Xbox 720 will Wii itself and lose favour with those games consoles were invented for – gamers.

Lost Planet is a unique series in gaming.

The original was a title typical for Capcom at the time of its 2006 release - arcade gameplay, laughable dialogue, huge boss battles, ridiculous fun. Then the sequel was focused almost entirely on online multiplayer, centred around co-op and MMO style drops from [?] boxes.

Now, Spark Unlimited is being drafted in for the third in the series, which looks to be significantly changing the Lost Planet formula yet again.

Capcom producer Andrew Szymanski answers our Lost Planet 3 questions on the changes, multiplayer and what Spark Unlimited is bringing to the table…

Lost Planet is being developed by Western developers rather than internally – much like Capcom’s DmC Devil May Cry, which turned out very well. But that was a reboot, whereas Lost Planet is a sequel (well, a prequel). How will using Western developers affect Lost Planet 3?

Collaborating with Spark Unlimited in Los Angeles and bringing them together with our core creative team from Osaka allows for a joint creative process resulting in ideas and concepts that neither side would necessary come up with alone. This has been instrumental in developing the core concepts and execution for Lost Planet 3.

What does the change in developer allow you to do that you couldn’t before?

Spark has brought a lot of expertise to the table; particularly in the areas of setting, atmosphere, characterisation, dialogue, and cinematic implementation (motion capture and facial scanning etc). This expertise has allowed us to flesh out the world of EDN III more than we have in any other Lost Planet title. This has really paid off with the amazing cinematic sequences in the game. It truly brings you into the experience and make you care about the fate of the colonists.

Why create a prequel? What does setting the game before Lost Planet 1 allow you to do in terms of gameplay and narrative?

The decision to set Lost Planet 3 before LP felt very natural for us. Most importantly, the setting allows us to examine the history of EDN III and show how difficult it was for the initial colonists to eke out an existence in that foreboding environment as they built a new life for themselves. From a gameplay perspective we were able to introduce new features such as the Utility Rig that enables us to explore types of gameplay that are different than anything we have done in the series before.

Many of the elements look like precursors to what comes next in Lost Planet 1 + 2, like the Rigs being less technical than mechs, with drill arms and claws. Why did you decide to take this route? What bearing will it have on the gameplay?

That is correct. The Utility Rig vehicle is a precursor to the Vital Suits from previous Lost Planet titles; the idea behind the Utility Rig is that, as technology miniaturises over time, the ancestor of the Vital Suit would have been a much larger and utilitarian machine. The Utility Rig is not a weaponised vehicle; rather it is a construction machine that the main character Jim uses to perform his tasks on the planet, such as construction habitats and welding pipelines etc.  Of course he will have to use it to fight the many Akrid creatures that he comes into contact with over the course of the game as well.

This game sees a return to a story-focused adventure rather than the co-op focus. Why did you take that decision, and what can we look forward to in terms of the campaign?

We chose to make Lost Planet 3’s campaign a narrative-focused experience in order to truly tell the story of the past of EDN III, as well as of the people that shaped the history of the planet. We felt that having co-op gameplay in that narrative would not do justice to our world as we really wanted to focus on the main character, Jim, and the loneliness he feels he's out exploring the wilderness - having a clone of him alongside would not help in achieving that.

By the end of Lost Planet 3 the player will have experienced the beginnings of the conflict that will shape the future of the planet as it is later shown in Lost Planet 1 and 2.

Will there also be co-op? If so, how will it work?

Co-op play will be part of our multiplayer suite which features a number of robust cooperative and competitive game modes.

What do you have planned in terms of online multiplayer?

Well, I can't give exact details regarding multiplayer at this time but I will say that the team knows the importance of multiplayer to the Lost Planet franchise and we are working very hard to make sure that all of the elements that the players expect will be included in this installment as well. The pillars of the LP franchise are multiple human factions, giant robots, and Akrid creatures and all of these elements are represented in the multiplayer suite.

There looks to be several RPG elements to the game. How will these work exactly and why did you introduce them?

I wouldn't necessarily call them RPG elements; rather LP3 has an in-game economy that allows Jim to gather the Thermal Energy resource which he can take back to his base and trade for weapon upgrades, upgrades to the Utility Rig, and other items. This allows for the player to improve Jim’s arsenal as well as the functions of the Utility Rig and perform a certain amount of customisation in order to match their chosen play style.

Why do you think more and more games are turning to RPG elements this generation?

I think that pretty much anybody who plays games likes to see the growth of their character, both from the narrative perspective as well as in a functional gameplay manner. By including item purchasing, stat improvements, and various types of collectible power-ups, modern games allow the player to experience the growth of their character and feel as though they are becoming stronger as the game goes on, which is a great way to create attachment with the character on-screen.

What is Lost Planet 3 doing to attract new fans, and how is that being balanced against appealing to current fans?

One of the things that was very important to us from the beginning of the project was making sure that the controls would be familiar to anybody who plays modern shooters. To that end we've streamlined the control scheme making it very easy to pick up and play the game, but at the same time we've included many of the classic Lost Planet features, such as the grappling hook, data posts, and pilotable robots.

Fans of the Lost Planet franchise will also see various story and gameplay elements throughout the experience that create ties to other games in the franchise. These bits should incite the player to nod in recognition and chuckle a bit at the connections that we've made with Lost Planet 1 in particular.

Why didn’t you wait until next-gen to release Lost Planet?

Working on Lost Planet 3 has been close to a three-year journey so far, and the game was always targeted for current-gen systems. We feel that having released two installments in the franchise already this generation is a great way to wrap up for the current hardware.

Do you have any plans for next-gen development? Will we see Lost Planet on the next Xbox and PS4?

I'm afraid I can't comment on next-development, other than to say that we, at Capcom, are always excited about the release of new hardware and, as a publisher, Capcom are always thinking about what types of new and improved experiences that we can bring to the gaming public.