E3 2005 Day 1
by Mike Thompson - 19th May 2005Hello from E3, Dear Readers! No, this is not a hoax... we actually have live coverage from the event this year in Los Angeles (as opposed to last year, when I wrote my review of the expo a month after I attended... hey, don't blame me, I'd just been hired a week before that). Unfortunately, I'm kinda stuck here on my own, so I've been run ragged over the past 14 hours and am at the point of passing out over my keyboard.
Because Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all decided to announce new consoles, the crowds here are completely insane and I've spent nearly as much time smacking people out of my way as I've spent looking at games. Today I spent most of my time hanging out in the South Hall of the L.A. Convention Center (with a couple of meetings over in the West Hall), and MY GOD is there some cool stuff on the horizon:
Conan: Age of Hyboria (Funcom)
We sat down with Gaute Godidger, the director of Conan, for a pre-alpha demonstration, having never heard of this title before the PR coordinator mentioned it to me and I responded with, "Oh, yeah! That game! I meant to ask you about that!" Conan, for those of you who don't know, was the literary creation of Robert Howard in the first half of the twentieth century and cut a swath through the Hyborian Age of Cimmeria. Funcom has adapted this series of stories into a cross-genre RPG game. Conan: Age of Hyboria is a title set in the world established by Howard's writings, and follows the players as they rise up to become heroes of this forgotten age of man.
The game is actually a single-player event for the first 20 levels or so for players. After players reach this level, they begin immersing themselves in the MMORPG version of the game, which they must now pay a subscription fee for (don't worry, the single-player part is actually quite free).
Mountable creatures will play key roles in the battle which occur in the game (come on, it's a game about Conan; of course there's going to be a massive supply of combat). There will be different types of mounts available, including (but not limited to) horses, camels, and things that look like dinosaurs (those can seat up to four different people at a time). Combat has three different versions: hand to hand, tactical, and siege. Unfortunately, we only got to look at the hand to hand combat, but that was fairly impressive just for the build we saw.
The game's graphics are simply amazing. I can say that no other MMORPG I've ever seen has ever had such impressive visuals. According to Gaute, the graphics were key in helping to create Conan's world, because, "it's dark, it's violent, but it's also very sensuous."
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Ah, now this is a game that I've been waiting for for quite some time. Dreamfall is the sequel to Funcom's masterful The Longest Journey, and continues the story that players began as April Ryan. This time April is back, but not as the lead character. That honor goes to Zoe Castillo, a college drop-out who is looking for something in her life to jump-start her motivation.
The game opens with Zoe laying on a bed, resting peacefully, and an internal monologue begins to catch players up to speed. It ends up that Zoe's in a coma, and we will get to play the previous few weeks of her life so that we can learn what happened to put her in such a state. Flashing backwards a few weeks, players encounter a much livelier Zoe sitting on her bed and watching the news until suddenly the image cuts out and she sees The Winter, the third world to appear in the series (the first two being the twin existences of technology-oriented Stark and magically-fueled Arcadia) on her television. A rather creepy looking girl appears in the middle of the image and tells Zoe to, "see her, find her." As Zoe starts to investigate the nature of these different realities, she finds her story interweaving with April and Kian, a religious fanatic who functions as a warrior and assassin.
Each character represents a different style of gameplay: Zoe tends to be more social and brings forth puzzle-oriented gameplay, Kian is more action-intense, and April's style of play is based around stealth. No matter which character you find yourself playing as across the game's 13 chapters, though, the theme of the game is about faith. "Kian lives by faith, April has lost her faith, and Zoe is searching for it."
Funcom has developed a new technology that they are hoping will revolutionize the adventure gaming genre: the Focus Field. The Focus Field will do away with the point-and-click orientation of classic adventure games; it is a beam of light that appears straight ahead of the character on the screen, highlighting anything that can be picked up/interacted with. This doesn't mean that using a mouse isn't possible... quite the opposite, in fact. There will be two different ways to play the game: via mouse/keyboard or solely with the mouse (the latter reduces combat a great deal in the game). The puzzles in the game are pretty logical, from what we've seen, up to and including the mini-games involved in Zoe's computer-hacking cellular phone. The one thing that had everyone curious and was never shown during the demo was the game's combat system. Let's just say that if the combat system is as innovative and well-done as everything else in the game, then Funcom won't have anything to worry about.
Upcoming Articles
Preview of Call of Cthulu
Preview of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Interview with Shane Hensley of NCsoft
Tour of Hip Games' booth
Preview of upcoming Eidos titles
Preview of Spider-Man Unlimited
Tour of Majesco's Booth
Stay tuned, there's more articles and more pictures on their way!
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