RipTen Videogame Blog » SDCC

New Starhawk Behind The Scenes Video Talks Backstory

Dave Oshry — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:01:17 +0000

In this latest Starhawk dev diary the team at Lightbox Interactive discusses how they created the universe and lead protagonist Emmett Graves.

For more on the influences on Starhawk be sure to check out our interview with Lightbox CEO Dylan Jobe.

BioWare Devs Hint at “Secret Feature X” in Mass Effect 3

Stephanie Gutowski — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:13:13 +0000

Our Twitter feeds are abuzz with vague references to BioWare’s much-guarded “Secret Feature X” for Mass Effect 3. Fan source @ME3News tweeted this morning:

Several #BioWare folks talking about a “Secret Feature X”. Confirmed not to be Multi-player. What do you think that it is? #MassEffect3

While their are virtually no details about this “Secret Feature X,” fans continue to speculate its nature– which seems to be unrelated to any kind of multi-player function. Preston Watamanuik, lead designer of the series, recently tweeted about this closely-guarded secret.

Writing the spec doc for Secret Feature X this morning. The easier it is to write a detailed spec the more confident I am in the design.

Mass Effect’s assistant producer Bill Buskell tweeted an equally-vague reference several days earlier.

With @PWatamaniuk back in the studio this week, our team was plugging away on Secret Feature X. Gameplay room was buzzing! #excited #ME3

With the rumor mills working around the clock and San Diego Comic Con just around the corner, BioWare will be hard-pressed to give us some answers. Stay tuned for continuing covering of Mass Effect 3, due out in March.

Do you have any sweet tips about this upcoming sci-fi juggernaut? Hit me up on Twitter @SigmaRue

RipTen Draws Entries (Horribly) for BioWare’s Fan Art Showcase – And So Can You!

Ripten Staff — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:45:05 +0000

We like to think of ourselves as artistically-inclined individuals, prone to random bouts of creativity and visual genius. So when BioWare issued this challenge, we knew we had to give it a shot.

BioWare wants its fans to dust off their sketchbooks and send them fanart from any of their games. They’ll select the pieces that they think best represent the fandom and will feature them in the BioWare art gallery at San Diego Comic Con this summer. The winning artists may also have their pieces judged for a chance to win some prizes.

Our passion for all things alien and dragon-y gave way to a collection of masterpieces, for the love of BioWare. We intend to send these off with the hopes that they may be hand-picked and featured in this showcase, but we’d love to see your finest art and include it in our tidal wave of excellence as well. We’re looking for the best of the best, like you see below. Show us your moves and we’ll send them to BioWare.

BEHOLD!

Aaron challenges artistic convention with his brilliantly abstract homage to the Citadel

Stephanie's interpretation of the Reaper invasion, inspired by Georgia Okeefe

Dave likes that part where Alistair uses the Omega 4 relay to kill the Archdemon.

I'm sure that Sam is... going through something right now.

I'm not sure if Dave actually played Mass Effect, but this is a masterful piece

I think Chris has a career ahead of him as a concept artist.

Damn it, Fenty. Stop trying so hard. You're making us look bad.

I think we’ve got this in the bag.

If you have any fancrap you’d like to submit along with us, post a link in reply or send it to Team@RipTen.com or just tweet it @RipTen and we’ll post them here.

The deadline is July 15, so hurry up and draw something!

Hands On With DC Universe Art Director Mike Daubert

Andrea Emmes — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:35:48 +0000

Comic Con has been known to drop some major announcements about certain games, and the big announcement for DC Online Universe seemed to be it’s 6 ½ minute cinematic trailer. I agree, it was extremely impressive and beautiful, but sadly it did not match up to the demo. The demo at the DCUO booth was PVP only. So, you could play other gamers that were checking out the game at the convention. Either way, running around as the joker (once again voiced brilliantly by Mark Hamill) is always fun. Check out the trailer below.

We had a chance to meet up with Art Director Mike Daubert, and hear what he had to say about the game.

MD: What we have here is DC Universe Online, it’s a massively multi-player action game. So, what you’ve got is you get to make your own character that is inspired by the DC characters, fully customizable, you get to pick a Hero or a Villain and you get to be the next Legend in the DC Universe itself. So what we’re showcasing here and the big announcement for us is you make your own Hero and Villain in the game, but what you get to do is you actually get to find sim cards, right, so you find like a Batman sim card or a Joker sim card and you take that sim card and you take that into the PVP match and you actually get to play as the iconic characters.

Mike Daubert, Studio Art Director and gamer Justin Fitzwater

AE: Really?

MD: Ya, so you get all the major iconics, like Lex Luthor and the Joker, and Batman and Robin. What we’ve got right now is Joker, Batman, Nightwing and Harley and we’ve got a PVP match going on. You’re fighting inside the Batcave right now. And what this is is a King of the Hill so you’re trying to hold the Batcomputer as long a you can against the heroes. (we’re playing as the Joker in the demo right now).

The DC Universe is an MMO, you’ve got your full progression, and a very robust character creation system. Jim Lee is the Executive Creative Director, so our character creation system is really built around creating a character that looks and feels like it belongs in a Jim Lee comic book. (I got Jim Lee’s autograph on a Batman Hush comic book!)

You pick your own movement type, you’ve got super speed, we’ve got flight and acrobatics, and you get to pick from nine different power types and as you go through the game with true progression , we actually let you customize the gear as you’re going along, so you keep your own color palettes…so like, if you find a pink helmet or something and you put it on, it actually matches your color palette. We think that’s pretty cool

(we got interrupted by a kid who wanted freebie stuff. Mike said, “It’s all about the schwag” And it is!!)

AE: Like all MMO’s there is a starting point where your character begins their progression. What is DCUO’s starting point?

MD: We have a very robust storyline that explains a lot, and has been written by Jeff Johns and Marv Wolfman, so it starts you out as a low end super hero that explains why all of a sudden all of the world has all these characters that have super powers. The story really is very robust so it really is getting to a point where all of the major iconic heroes are calling you and saying, “Listen, we can’t save the world without you”. You actually are a big part of the storyline itself. You are actually affecting the way the story is drawn out throughout the whole game.

AE: So I’m confused, in the game you can play as the this new super hero but also as the Joker?

MD: No, you can’t play the Joker but you make your own character, right? The only time you get to play the Joker is in the PVP matches where you actually find the sim cards. You can make a character inspired by the Joker. We actually have button in our Character Crate that says “Inspired by” and you get the same exact powers that Joker would have or Superman would have and it kinda looks like the Joker , but you make your own twist on it and to customize it to the way you want to.

AE: Very cool. So you can only play as the actual iconic super heros in a PvP match?

MD: Exactly, the rest of the time you will play as the hero you’ve created.

AE: Is this a subscription based MMO?

MD: It is subscription based, $14.99. The box for the PC is $49.99 and $59.99 for the PS3.

AE: So as you play live on the PlayStation will you be able to play with PC gamers, or is it separate?

MD: The PS3 and PC will be on separate servers. So you cannot play against each other. It really came down to balancing the game experience. We really wanted to make sure that both sides had as much fun within the realm, and so we kept them on separate servers. We’re getting ready for beta, we’ve got open beta registration right now, so hopefully in the next week or so we’ll start announcing our beta and we also have pre-order right now so if you order it right now, the only way you can play the Batman in the PVP is if you do pre-order.

(beta keys were given out at one of their panels at Comic Con)

AE: So as a designer, producing this game, how do you live up to the standard of DC Comics?

MD: That’s a great part about it. We’ve got Jim Lee as the creative executive/creative director, with Marv and Jeff. They’re really looking over us and really making sure that we’re staying close to the idea itself and making sure that we’re representing the heroes, the iconic heroes and the iconic villains and the environments they way you expect to for all the comic book lovers.

AE: Cool, let’s go back to the PVP area. How many players can play in each match?

MD: So, right now, this is a 2 on 2 and we’ve got up to a 12 person PVP and then the rest of the world is open PVE for us. It’s a complete open world. We have Metropolis and Gotham at launch and we’ve got some smaller areas, adventure zones, that the true die hards are gonna love, like Oolong Island, one the comic book fans will recognize and we’re also doing smaller ones, we have raids that will actually be in the Batcave and Arkham Asylum. So we’re really taking advantage of the DC license and making sure that we’re delivering the experience that the comic book fans wanna see.

AE: I’ve noticed you’ve got some hard core gamers here now in the booth wondering when you’re going to launch.

MD:We’ve been doing this for almost 6 years and every year that we come out (Comic Con), they’re like, “wait a minute, why aren’t you guys launched?” And really we’ve taken our time to make sure that we doing this right because we want to make sure that we deliver the experience that the comic book fans are going to want.

It really came down to making the gameplay first and then just building this huge world that is the DC Universe.

I’ve only been with Sony for four years, only working on this, but SOE is famous for MMO’s, we’ve done them before—EverQuest, Galaxies, we’ve got the Clone Wars Adventures which is coming out, which is a great IP as well. We know how to do MMO’s and we’re hoping this one’s gonna be a big delivery. We really feel like we’re, right now, at a point where we’re revolutionizing the way MMO’s are played. Because we’re not calling it an MMO, it’s a Massive Multi-player Online ACTION game. Because it is way faster paced than any MMO that’s ever been out there.

AE: I actually got my first start with MMO’s with EverQuest and loved it. How is the load time for zoning going to be?

MD: Hopefully, seamless. We really are trying to get in on them…I mean the PS3 is strong enough and powerful enough that we don’t want to you sitting there having a load screen for ten minutes or having to jump on a boat and having to float somewhere to go to another zone. We really want you guys in on the action (he says as he snaps his fingers) and making it as fast as possible.

MMO players are always, hamburger in one hand, a Mountain Dew in the other and you’re like ‘autorun, autorun’, you know? That’s not this. This is really a faster paced, action—we’re always saying that within five minutes of the game, you’re in action, you’re in combat. That’s what makes a hero. A hero doesn’t go over, you know and collect a pie or pick daisies. A hero wants to get in there, a villain wants to feel villainous and that’s what we’re trying to really deliver to the fans.

AE: Do you have a definite release date for DCUO?

MD: November 2, 2010. It is definite.

Ok, so I’m looking forward to using the beta key I got from the panel at Comic Con. It was too hard to get a real idea of the true action packed game play that Mike was describing just from the PvP demo. Yet, from this interview and all of the panel discussions I’ve seen and of course the movie-like trailer, I’m still pretty excited about DC Universe Online. How about you!?

The Best Gaming Cosplay of Comic Con 2010

Stephanie Gutowski — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:47:53 +0000

We all know the real reason Comic Con is so successful: cosplayers. If you’re looking for anime/steampunk/movie costumes, then you’re in the wrong place. After all, we’re a gaming site. Gotta stick to those guns.

So, without further ado, Dave Oshry and I bring you our favorites from Comic Con 2010!!

Sagat and Chun-Li probably hate you.

Sonic and Tales luring a baby.

Yeah. They're huge.

Fierce Grey Warden is fierce.

Pretty Ayane is pretty.

Fem-Squall. I'm ok with this.

I'm also ok with Asian Jean Grey. This is Linda Le and she's amazing.

It doesn't get much more awesome than this.

Modern Warfare kid. Seriously. I asked.

You probably shouldn't mess with War Machine.

... Hadouken? Yeah. Hadouken.

This Deadpool cosplayer never broke character. I was impressed.

Lightning from FFXIII, sad about something.

Kingdom Hearts 2, with twins. Wait, what?!

Max Payne Movie Will “Make You Feel Like You ARE Max Payne”

Dan Landis — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:49:20 +0000

The cast and director of the upcoming game-to-film adaptation of Max Payne gave a little Q&A at the San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend. Marky Mark discussed how he was really looking to kick ass again, and the director, John Moore, expressed how he intended to break the mold of videogame movies and make sure Max Payne doesn’t suck.

John Moore had the following to say in regards to making gamers happy:

“Here’s the funny thing about video games and movies — the minute you take that controller out of the player’s hands, you better deliver something of equal value. Ya gotta give them something so exciting and kick-ass and we thought the way to do that is to be highly subjective and make you feel like you are Max Payne.”

I’m not entirely sure how he intends to do that — is the movie shot from 3 feet behind Marky Mark except during cutscenes? As I said before, however, the trailer does have me excited for the movie. Of course, I’m a Marky Mark fan, so maybe I’m just biased. Speaking of Marky Mark, here’s what the actor said regarding his role as the titular Max Payne:

“I read the script — after Invincible and The Happening and Lovely Bones, I wanted to kick some ass again and I got an opportunity to do it in a way where I think I did more than I did in The Departed: movies like Four Brothers and Fear.”

They also apparently talked about a new camera the used called “The Phantom” that takes up to 1,000 frames per second (which is almost as fast as Crysis runs on my killer gaming PC). Bullet-time was a huge part of what made Max Payne (the game) what it is, but the difficulty they faced was doing slo-mo in a way that didn’t just look like The Matrix or a John Woo flick.

Wish I could be at Comic-Con myself, but at least the lucky bastards at Geeks of Doom keep me (and thus, you) informed.