Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway - Hell lot of Media

Ubisoft has released a hell-lot of media for Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. These include new screenshots, artwork, special edition box pictures as well as packshots. Calm down, all of them are here, check them out one-by-one.

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Fallout 3 Developer Slams Diablo III’s Design

While everyone is gung-ho about Diablo III, Ashley Cheng, producer of Fallout 3 has criticised the game design and called it “conservative”.

I must say I am disappointed that Blizzard has stayed on the conservative side in terms of design with their updates to Diablo and Starcraft. Diablo will be interesting since World of Warcraft has a lot of Diablo-like qualities. I have no doubt, however, that they will be incredibly fun, addictive and polished games. Blizzard is the top of the class when it comes to game development - nobody does it better.

Oh no he didn’t!

Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway Demo Coming Soon

Speaking at Ubidays 08 with Videogamer.com, Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software has confirmed a demo for their upcoming FPS; Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. The release date for the demo is unsure, but the retail version is set to ship out in August 2008.

“We’ve had Brothers in Arms games before,” he said. “People know what the brand is about. In general we’ve got a reasonable amount of trust. There’s a lot of people who know that they want the game and they’re just tired of waiting and they want us to get it out as soon as possible so we’re focusing on that. But there are some other folks who might be new to us, they don’t know if they should trust us yet or maybe they haven’t played a Brothers in Arms game before. We’ll get around to a demo for them and we’ve got it in our plans for that.”

X-Blades: New Interface Details

Zuxxez has revealed additional info about X-Blades. In particular, about the game’s UI.

You all know that Ayumi, that charismatic heroine in the Anime spectacular “X-Blades”, has lots of real cool moves and combat techniques - but you can only reap the full benefit of all these skills if you can call them up fast and accurately with your mouse or controller. That’s why the developers invested a lot of time and effort in developing an interface that’s straightforward and good to look at too.

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Fallout 3 Not “Dumbed down” for consoles

In an interesting interview with Next-Gen, Bethesda Softworks’s Emil Pagliarulo (Fallout 3 lead designer) had a handful of things to say regarding the recent developer spree of dumbing down titles to appeal to a larger audience.

It’s funny. I look at Fallout when I play it every day, and I sometimes think that there’s a lot of old-school hardcore PC stuff in there too, and part of me thinks, “God, is this too inaccessible for console players?” There’s a lot of dialogue to read, a lot of just hacking computers and looking through things like “VAT.” I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s just the opposite. So I don’t feel like we’re dumbing down the franchise.

…I think we’re starting to find that there is a market for [hardcore "PC RPGs" on consoles]. People like myself and some people that work here actually grew up as hardcore PC guys, and now we’re older, we have kids, we don’t have that much time, so we’ve transitioned. We’re console players now.

You can also hear Emil Pagliarulo on the GameTheoryShow.com podcast.

Ben Cousins on Battlefield: Heroes

Ben Cousins was at the recent EA games showcase in london. Bit-tech.net had a chance to chat up with him regarding their TF2-esque “casual” multiplayer shooter; Battlefield: Heroes. Here’s a snip:

BT: But the game is multiplayer only? No singleplayer?

BC: There’s an offline training and tutorial bit where you can go in where you can shoot targets, try the vehicles and get used to the controls, but there’s no actual singleplayer gameplay. We’ve found that a lot of people play singleplayer Battlefield games like 1942 because they can’t find a server or they’re scared they’ll be killed by people who are a lot more skilled than they are.

A BETA of Battlefield: Heroes is scheduled to arrive in few days.

EA: “In-game Ads not “Silver Bullet”

Talks of In-game advertising reducing prices for retail games has been tossed around a lot lately. EA’s Battlefield 2142 was the first game to use dynamic in-game advertising module, but what about other titles? Is it possible to reduce the costs of games by placing ads in them? According to EA, No it’s not. Next-Gen had a chat over the phone with EA’s Shelby Cox regarding all these things. Here’s a snip:

“Advertising is not going to be that silver bullet to make everything okay,” she said. “We’re looking at a lot of different things to offset these rising dev costs. Next-gen dev costs are astronomical. We’re looking for any way to try and offset that, and in-game advertising is one of those things.”

Full interview after the jump. Read more

Tabula Rasa - State of Affairs

Official Tabula Rasa website has posted a state-of-affairs report regarding games’s current situation. The report tackles the recent financial speculations as well as additional content and Richard Garriott’s current involvement in the title. Snippet from the entry:
There has been a lot of talk about Tabula Rasa lately which doesn’t match the reality of the situation. I hope I’ve been able to shed some light on what is really going on. We have become a more flexible team and have put procedures in place in order to deliver more focused, timely content and fixes much faster than before. This has given us the ability to support our players in a much more timely fashion, which they seem to appreciate and we plan to continue.

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