THQ: Red Faction Armageddon Doubles Guerilla's Destruction Much has been made about Red Faction: Armageddon's environment choice. Guerilla was open-world on the surface of Mars, while Armageddon is under the surface. We had a chance to speak to Chad Greene at GamesCom, about how destruction has been affected and we were surprised by his answers. When comparing Guerilla to Armageddon he said: "I'd say there's least double [the amount of destruction] from what it was in Guerilla. There's a ton. You've got to think about how on the surface of Mars, all you had were buildings on one plane, the ground. Now it's all around you and it's compacted in. I mean everything's coming down around you from 360 degrees." Definitely great news - there's nothing better than a game having a ton of destruction.
Je krijgt nu gebouwen die weer bovenop andere gebouwen zullen vallen, gewoon NOG indrukwekkendere destructies, heeeeerlijk!!!! De grotten zullen ook wel heel diep zijn, en grote open ruimtes waar je dus big-ass gebouwen zult zien. Ben erg benieuwd, en gelukkig zitten er niet alleen maar beesten in, poeh!!!!!
Ben er wel blij mee, Guerrilla moest ik afhaken in Dust wegens in herhaling vallen en afwezigheid van verhaal. Hoop en verwacht dat ze nu niet weer die fout maken. Dan wordt het een hele goede game.
Volition's senior associate producer Dan Sutton on why Armageddon their biggest game yet. Red Faction is now established as a third-person shooter– what benefit does presenting the game in third-person bring over a first-person perspective? For us, the largest determining factor for making Red Faction a third-person game is the Geo Mod 2.0 engine. Red Faction is all about letting the player completely shape his or her world through the destruction and the repairing of their nenvironment. By pulling back the camera, we are able to give the player a better view to assess their environment and know, tactically, how to approach a battle. On Red Faction: Guerrilla, we found - through usability testing - that players were getting constantly frustrated by playing the game as an FPS. Players were dying through cascading destruction and didn’t understand why. It was a hard choice for us to make knowing the history of the franchise, but we knew it was the right one. We want to give the player a choice of how they handle each csituation and pulling back the camera allows for them to see more of the world. Destructible terrain and physics-based play are the cornerstone of Red Faction – what are the challenges in accurately modelling these elements of the game? How does that affect the design of Armageddon? Our artists have to be architects...literally. Buildings have to be built in a way that they will fall realistically. Each building has to undergo an intense amount of testing and tweaking to ensure that the physics system is behaving correctly. Designers then have to make sure that every weapon in our game does a correct amount of damage buildings to evoke the realism that our fans expects to see. What can you tell us about the new weapons in Red Faction Armageddon? Will we see old favourites return? The sledgehammer will return. Actually, a lot of weapons will return as well, but they’ve been upgraded and renamed. In the story, it’s been 50 years since Red Faction: Guerilla, and technology has advanced drastically. What you are going to see is a significant increase in the amount of destruction-based weapons. We’ve created the magnet gun. The magnet gun is simple. It takes your first target and sends it flying into your second target. It sounds simple until you realize that your entire world is your weapon. You can throw chunks of buildings into enemies, enemies into buildings, buildings into buildings, and so on. The singularity cannon fires a projectile that turns into a black hole. Fire this weapon into a building and watch it implode structures and enemies. The Nanoforge has also improved dramatically. Darius can now use the Nanoforge’s repair function to rebuild any man-made structure in the game. If you’re in an intense battle, you can blow a hole into a nearby cargo container, get inside and then resurrect cover by repairing the container with you in it. Regenerate your health and then burst back into battle. Once you play Armageddon, it will become apparent that repair is not a gimmick and can give you a quick tactical advantage on the battlefield. Are you surprised that more games haven’t included physics-based destruction with the power of current-gen hardware? Not really - and I’m not saying that in a pretentious way. Pure physics-based destruction is complicated. It took us about four years to lay the framework for the destructible environments you see in Red Faction: Guerilla and now Red Faction: Armageddon. We had to invest a lot of time and money into a system that was very risky at that point in time. It is also very expensive from a memory standpoint. When we start to build a level, we have to account for the destruction simulation time that must occur with every building and prop placed in a level. Our designers and level artists have to be extremely creative in how they build levels since they start with a memory disadvantage. In Red Faction: Armageddon we’re pushing the visuals much farther than Red Faction: Guerilla. We’re taking the players onto the surface and into the caves of Mars with ice, magma, natural, and alien environments. Our programmers have come up with some amazing techniques that allow us to have beautiful, distinct environments and a completely destructible world. There’s going to be a Red Faction TV movie – how did that affect development on Armageddon? Are you hoping to do more cross-media extensions? The great thing about Red Faction: Origins (the SyFy Red Faction TV movie) and Red Faction: Armageddon is the collaboration between Volition, THQ and SyFy. The same writers who worked on the story for Armageddon are working on the story for Origins. We’ve developed this 200-page document that is the Red Faction world bible, which traces back to the days of Capek and the first Red Faction. We’re making sure we are being true to the franchise in everything we do. One of the big things Danny Bilson, THQ's Vice President of core games, is pushing for is great transmedia. It encourages us as developers to see that THQ only wants to release high quality cross-media extensions for our Red Faction and Saints Row series. We’ve done certain pieces in the past that haven’t met our quality standards and we have thrown them away. We want “Red Faction” to mean quality. We want to continue to do cross-media the right way. What are the difficulties in directing gameplay – especially with everything that happens in Red faction – in an open world? Are you ever tempted to return to linear gameplay? It’s funny you ask that because we’ve definitely changed up the world in Red Faction: Armageddon. Red Faction: Guerrilla had huge, expansive environments which fit the story and style of the game. In Red Faction: Armageddon, there’s been a battle on the surface and a large, cataclysmic event has forced civilization underground. You will be travelling between the surface and the underground cave systems of Mars. We’ve really been focused on telling an amazing story in Red Faction: Armageddon. We’ve wanted to travel back to the roots of the series and give it a sense of urgency that you can really only telling in focused gameplay. Darius Mason is searching for survivors and rising up against a new oppressor. Now before anyone panics, Red Faction: Armageddon does not take place in a constrained linear environment. We are giving the players plenty of ways to collect upgrades, salvage, and collectables. There will be great replayability. What we’ve mostly managed to get rid of is the tedious driving back-and-forth between worlds. Can you tell us anything about the reported new IP you’re working on? I think all we’ve been allowed to say right now is that we’re collaborating with a high-powered creative talent in the entertainment industry. It’s going to be a big name and we can’t wait to give everyone more details on this project! This is definitely going to be the most ambitious project Volition has ever taken on! What do you think will be the primary goals of the next generation of consoles? What new technology do you see embraced and what, if any do you see falling by the wayside? What kind of gains do you expect in sheer processing grunt and what effect if any do you see that having on the future of gaming? There are the obvious goals – more computer processing power, better GPUs, and more hard drive space. What interests me would be seeing how large digital distribution will play in the next generations of consoles. Steam is huge on the PC. Xbox Live and PSN have started offering downloads of full retail games, but will publishers allow day-and-date releases on these networks? The problem right now is that the hard drive capacity is currently too small to allow for digital distribution to take over. The new consoles would need to deliver terabytes rather than gigabytes of space. Motion-control will continue to get bigger and better. 3D Gaming will get larger – especially if they can find ways to ditch 3D glasses. I think the winner will be the company that can bring together the most forms of media in the most convenient way. Who would have though at the beginning of the current generation of consoles that players could use their Xbox or Playstation to not only play games, but watch Hulu and Netflix, check their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and instantly stream HD movies. What game from another developer are you most looking forward to in the next 12 months, and why? Halo: Reach. I know I’m one of the millions of people looking forward to this game, but Bungie continues to be among the leaders in innovation in the FPS genre. Halo 3 brought a lot of innovations through its co-op play, Bungie.net, Forge, and Theater mode and I can’t wait to see what Reach will bring the gaming community. Do you feel the potential of the current generation of consoles has already hit a ceiling, or do you feel there is a lot more to come? I really don’t believe we’ve hit the ceiling yet. I mean, just look at what’s been shown at E3 and Comic-Con this year. There are some visually stunning projects coming out in the next few years. In terms of disk space, an upgrade would be nice, but we’ve got some amazing engineers that are just beginning to find ways to harness and improve the power of the current consoles. We’ve also seen Microsoft and Sony improve their XDKs significantly over the last couple years to help lengthen the life of the current consoles. What is the biggest issue facing the games industry right now? How do developers find ways to make quality AAA games for cheap? The budgets for games have increased to the size of large movie budgets. It’s hard to compete in a market where one flop can tank an entire company. The world is seeing a resurgence in innovative Japanese gaming after a long period of the west taking point. Which do you see as the primary spearhead - East or West - and why? That’s a tough question because I don’t think innovation in Japanese gaming was really as bad as some developers said it was. I think you’re seeing quality games coming from both sectors. One of the main problems for the West consumers are that a lot of Japanese games are not localized in the U.S. and don’t get stateside because of localization and marketing costs.
Red Faction Armageddon Hits in May, Saints Row 3 Next Fall THQ today detailed their release plans for a half-dozen games, including Red Faction Armageddon which is now planned for a May 2011 release day. MX vs. ATV Alive is meant to hit during the spring of 2011, while Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is set for a summer 2011 release. Saints Row 3 and a new WWE game are both showing a release for fall 2011. Finally a new UFC release is slated for the winter of 2012. "THQ's creative organization is delivering a strong pipeline of core game franchises scheduled for release over the next several years, positioning THQ for significant net sales, earnings and cash flow growth," THQ President and CEO Brian Farrell said. "We continue to execute on our plan to deliver great games, market them aggressively and release them in the most advantageous windows." Thanks to the updates release schedule for Armageddon, THQ now expects to bring in an extra $25 million in non-GAAP net sales in fiscal 2011.
Eindelijk iets nieuws!!!! Trailert time En de release is ineens weer Maart nu?!!! http://www.gamersyde.com/news_red_faction_armageddon_trailer-10414_en.html
Ok, ik zal deze keer proberen niet te janken dat het geen open world meer is. Dus... Ziet er niet slecht uit! Op sommige locaties lijkt het me wel moeilijk om ervoor te zorgen dat je niks op je hoofd krijgt.. allemaal erg krap.
Hé, die box-art is mooi zeg! Wel één van de mooiste die ik in tijden heb gezien. Nu hopen dat het spel leuk is.
Echt? Ik vind het juist 3x niks, vind het nergens op slaan. Het is wel eens wat anders dan normaal maar vind het nog altijd weinig voor stellen.
Yup, vooral door de MP achievements (win 250 MP matches). Daarom heb ik em ook niet 1000/1000. Wel alle SP achievements; de enige achievements die ertoe doen. Maar ook die duren nog wel even (een aantal staan heel hoog op mijn TA Ratio lijstje) [SPOILER1] [/SPOILER1]
THQ has announced that Red Faction: Armageddon will release on May 31, 2011. If you don't live in North America, you'll have to wait a teensy bit longer for Armageddon's international release date of June 3.
Goh best laat zeg, ze hadden toch eerst gezegd in maart en nu ineens juni? Maar het is geen ramp, genoeg tijd om allerlei andere games eindelijk eens uit te spelen.
qua destruction zit het wel weer goed dus Hoop op een SP demo voor deze, ben wel benieuwd. De vorige vond ik tof maar de missies waren wat afgezaagd. Een strakkere SP erin met meer variatie lijkt me precies wat het spel nodig heeft. Het hoeft van mij niet open-world, dat werkt maar bij weinig spellen echt goed
