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What is Chris Roberts’ Next Video Game Project?

By
Adam Shaftoe
– September 10, 2012Posted in: The Daily Shaft, Video Games

Behold the mystery hallway of Chris Roberts' "Cloud Imperium" project

If you read this blog, chances are good that you know Chris Roberts’ name. As the creator of the much loved Wing Commander series as well as Strike Commander, StarLancer, and Freelancer, Roberts was once the Don of video game design and storytelling. He elevated the video game to a truly cinematic experience complete with branching story lines and eventually full motion video cut scenes. When Bioshock was even less than a glimmer in the eyes of System Shock, Roberts mastered building true consequences into his games. Then he just faded away, leaving the space sim genre without its finest consigliere for much of the twenty-first century.

Well, not so much faded away as changed careers. About ten years ago, Roberts stepped back from his role at Digital Anvil, the very game studio he created in 1996, to work on film production in Hollywood. In his own words, Roberts had “become frustrated with the limits of the technology at the time…” Now it seems that he is ready to emerge with a new project. In a statement released on his faux-password protected website robertsspaceindustries.com, Roberts has begun teasing out the details of his new labour.

I’m here to tell you that I have been working on something for just under a year, something that embraces everything that my past games stood for but takes it to the next level.

I hope you’ll be as excited by it as I am.

My new endeavor is still in its early stages but I invite you to take the journey with me.

If you register below you’ll become an insider that will not only give you early access to the game’s website and forums, but you will also get the opportunity for rewards and privileges that no one else will get. It’s my way of showing how important your early involvement and support is.

The full announcement will be at 10am Eastern Standard Time (UTC -5) on the 10th day of the 10th month of this year.

My name is Chris Roberts.

And if you would indulge me I would like to create a world for you.

So what sort of world should we expect? In all likelihood a space combat simulator, or possibly a space/ground flight hybrid.

Roberts’ sign off “I would like to create a world for you” is a derivation of the old Origin Systems tagline, “We create worlds.” For those who don’t know, Roberts was in Origin’s employ when he created Wing Commander and its contemporary flight-sim companion piece Strike Commander.

A poll found on the RSI website asks, “Do you use cockpits?” which, again, strongly hints at the nature of the game Roberts has in mind.

The “Time Capsule” section of the RSI website presents a piece of fiction presumably meant to give the back-story of Roberts’ new game. Therein the year is 2075 and Doctor Scott Childress has completed work on “the first self-sustaining quantum drive engine, capable of achieving 1/100th the speed of light.” The story goes on to frame this discovery as something which will allow for meaningful exploration of the solar system.

If Roberts is working within his own existing mythos, and not something completely new, then chances are pretty good that this game will have more in common with StarLancer than it will Wing Commander. It may even be a chapter within the StarLancer universe itself; as StarLancer was set in the year 2160 and saw two rival supra-nations on Earth competing for colonial holdings within the Sol system. While Freelancer was an apt spiritual successor to StarLancer, it offered no player controlled resolution to the aforementioned war between the Western Alliance and the Eastern Coalition. Therefore this game could be something intended to fill said long dormant demand. But given Roberts prolonged absence from the gaming world, I’m inclined to believe his return would be with something more grandiose than a sequel. My best case scenario would be a game offering the air/space combat of Battlecruiser with the trade and combat mechanics of Wing Commander: Privateer while set in a world similar to StarLancer.

Anybody with the wisdom to know the answer to the ultimate question can gain access to the RSI website and register for updates on the game, access to forums, free access to “a very special equipment package” limited to “golden ticket” holders upon the game’s release, and, potentially, beta access when that time comes.

The golden ticket itself quotes a 24 month development cycle. No word on if this timeline includes the year Roberts has already worked on the game. Either way, if Roberts is mobilizing his fan base this early on, then he must have something quite ambitious up his sleeve.


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The Daily Shaft: Wing Commander Saga Seeks to Bring Back the Magic

By
Adam Shaftoe
– March 20, 2012Posted in: The Daily Shaft, Video Games

It’s been sixteen years since Wing Commander: Prophecy became the last entry in Chris Roberts’ award winning space opera/combat series. Two years later the sub-genre as a whole sang its swan song with Volition’s masterpiece Freespace 2. Since then space combat simulations have become something of a dying breed. Notwithstanding StarLancer, a product of Chris Roberts’ brother Erin, attempts to replicate the Wing Commander magic have been few, far between, and generally unimpressive. On March 22, 2012 all of that stands to change.

The game is called Wing Commander Saga, and if it lives up to the hype, it stands positioned to breathe fresh life into Wing Commander’s mythology and space combat as a whole. Oh, and before I forget, it is going to be completely and totally free. More on that in a moment though.

Development on Wing Commander Saga began in 2002. Since then the all volunteer production team has been working with the Freespace 2 engine to produce original art, music, sound effects, ships, and a brand new story set within the timeline of Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger. Even a cursory look at the release trailer suggests that this team has not been labouring in vain.

WCS will feature two fully formed campaigns. The first, WCS: Prologue, introduces players to the story’s protagonist: a wet behind the ears Second Lieutenant named David “Sandman” Markham. Freshly drawn out of officer candidate school, Markham is sent to an aging carrier in an unimportant sector as his first deep space assignment. The main campaign, called The Darkest Hour, sees Markham transferred to the front lines. Once aboard the TCS Hermes, he participates in the final days of humanity’s valiant but faltering battle against the unstoppable Kilrathi war machine.

Tolwyn, one of the project’s co-founders, has been very clear in stating that The Darkest Hour does not subvert the events of Wing Commander 3. Working from canon established in the Wing Commander novels, a successful play through of The Darkest Hour will set the stage for Colonel Christopher Blair to lead his famous raid on Kilrah, thus saving humanity from extinction. Tolwyn has also spoken on WCS relationship with EA/Origin/Chris Robers vis-a-vis intellectual property.

We are not officially or unofficially sanctioned or endorsed by Chris Roberts, Origin, or EA. We are thankful to them for permitting us to make Saga- as manifested by them taking no action to shut us down but allowing us to develop it, just as they have done with other projects like Standoff and Privateer: Gemini Gold- but they have in no way, shape, or form sanctioned our project, nor have they done anything to make it official. They have not contacted us and we have not discussed it with them. Once again, we are thankful that they are permitting us to do this, but no endorsement of Saga by these entities should be implied from that fact.

What then can would-be pilots expect from this experience? Quite a lot from the looks of things. Save for the FMV cut scenes featuring Mark Hamill and aging porn stars, this game looks to be grander in scope than Wing Commander 3.

Over nine hours of voice dialogue.

Approximately 70 cut scenes for a total of about 90 minutes of pre-rendered footage (not counting in-flight communications and command briefings).

Over 60 voice actors, some of whom are actual professionals.

221 voice acting roles.

55 missions.

Achievements (mission performance is evaluated and rewarded)

90 models created for Saga.

Download size of 3-4GB with an installation size of 8-9 GB

With recent attempts at reinvigorating this particular gaming niche receiving luke-warm critical reactions, Sol Exodus I’m looking at you, it will be interesting to see what sort of reception WCS receives. The ten year wait comes to an end on March 22nd.

Head over to Wing Commander Saga’s website for detailed development history, screenshots, and more.


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The Daily Shaft: Why I’m Not Buying Syndicate, and Neither Should You.

By
Adam Shaftoe
– February 22, 2012Posted in: Criticism, The Daily Shaft, Video Games

This issue is one of art and philosophy. No, not the banal philosophy of EA turning an isometric third person strategy game into a bland first person shooter, though I’d be lying if I denied objecting to that on principle. What we’re dealing with here is a broader philosophical argument. Indulge me a moment and I shall explain.

The crux of this discussion comes from French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire looked at the state of artistic culture in mid-19th century Paris and saw a problem. The established order placed the highest possible value on art that imitated the forms and subject matter of the renaissance. To be recognized within Paris’ legitimate artistic community, was to be a devout neo-classicist. This entrenched establishment held portraits, still life, and landscapes in the lowest possible regard; despite the fact that realist and impressionist art often carried a message that went deeper than the historical and mythological subjects of neo-classical art. I won’t bore you with further details therein, except to say that Baudelaire feared that a fixation on the past would hurt the future.

In Baudelaire’s mind, if the artistic community didn’t embrace contemporary tastes and fashions, the flavour of those moments would be lost. Were all of humanity’s artistic phases lined up along some great visual timeline, there would be nothing to account for the 19th century save for its renaissance obsession. The natural question becomes, where does a culture go from there? How does it break a tedious cycle of decadence? Of course the larger forces of the industrial revolution, capitalism, and technological innovation would reshape art in ways that Baudelaire couldn’t begin to imagine. However, his point remains valid. In dwelling on the past we lose the flavour of the moment. Thus do we return to Syndicate.

Syndicate by Bullfrog Games, not to be confused with its contemporary of the same name, was released in 1993 on the PC. It was a dark, cyberpunk world that was in many ways the bastard child of Philip K. Dick, Paul Verhoeven, William Gibson and Ronald Reagan. In Syndicate, nations gave way to corporations as the dominant forces in the world. The player, a newly made executive, controlled a task force of four cybernetically enhanced agents. These employees, often people appropriated off the street, would undertake various wetwork assignments for the corporation. These agents were not people. They had no last names or official designations. They were human resources to be augmented and equipped to suit the will of the company. This was a game that made the ideology of 1997’s Grand Theft Auto look gentle by comparison.

Nine years after Neuromancer, six years after Robocop, and one year after George Bush I, Syndicate was very much a product of its time. At the tail end Reaganomics’ hangover and at the dawn of a world with only one superpower, there was anxiety about what would come next. The idea that a corporation would become more powerful than a government was less an inevitability and more the fodder of conspiracy kooks. Add to it this new scary thing called the internet that was bringing together all the world’s computers in the finest fashion of Skynet, and the early 90s was the perfect environment for a dark corporate dystopia.

Skip ahead twenty years and it’s a different planet; a world where bankrupt governments, corporate personhood and nanotechnology are all actual things. We look back at Syndicate and Robocop’s Omni Consumer Products with nostalgia, wondering if they were more prescient than their creators could have imagined. And if it ended there, with critical inquiry, I wouldn’t have a problem. But when mainstream video game culture only wants to invest in “proven” properties, we can fall into Baudelaire’s paradox. Rather than using digital mediums to capture the feeling of this moment in history, we’re retreading where we were twenty or thirty years ago. In other words, what is there in Syndicate’s current iteration that is unique to the Winter of 2012 that wasn’t already covered in 1993? Why set the game in 2069 when its politics are happening right now? I want to believe that allegory drives this game, but if that were the case why bother branding it as Syndicate?

This doesn’t necessarily mean that every remake will fit into this paradigm. 2K Games’ XCOM, when it gets released, eventually, has promised a story that will feature a gay scientist pressed into service within XCOM amid the notoriously gay hostile environment of 1950s America. In that sense XCOM will say more about 2012-13 than it will the time in which it is set. Whether or not it turns out to be a decent game remains to be seen (probably not though).

So much like the artists of the mid 19th century, who turned from the Paris Salon to private dealers and independent art shows, I encourage you, the gamers of the world, to turn walk away from this title. If you want a true Syndicate experience, go watch Robocop and then spend a weekend playing the original game. It’s available for cheap on gog.com. Already done that? Then take the sixty dollars you would have spent on Syndicate and spread it around between some indie titles. Find something that seems different and roll the dice. At worst you blow ten bucks and a few hours of your life, at best you find something that speaks to you and the time in which you live.


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The Saturday Shaft: Syndicate’s Theme Song Sounds A Little….

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 21, 2012Posted in: Music, The Daily Shaft, Video Games

Yeah, I’m writing on the weekend. The fact that I’m not drenched in Zerg blood by this point on a Saturday afternoon should give you some indication of the very serious nature of today’s post. I mean, as posts go, they don’t get much more poignant than this one. So here it is.

Several months ago EA announced they were making a first person shooter remake of Bullfrog’s cyberpunk classic Syndicate. The gaming community responded with much snark and incredulity. Who wants a FPS remake of an isometric strategy game? Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. No, this post is on the Manhattan Project’s order of magnitude of importance.

EA’s new trailer for Syndicate features a theme song composed by Flux Pavilion. As video game music goes, it’s not a bad tune. The song works with the classic Syndicate riff, adding in a bit of a post-apocalyptic synth vibe. But then I noticed something else. Throughout the song, and especially at 2:30 in, it sounds a little similar to another song. I’m not suggesting that the two are carbon copies of each other. I’m asserting that the songs share some tonal qualities that will make me think about Fashion Television each time I hear the new Syndicate theme. Yeah, that’s right. I think bits of Syndicate sound like Animotion’s 1984 single Obsession. Here, have a listen.

Remember how I compared the importance of this post to the Manhattan Project? I might have over sold things a bit.

Still, am I crazy or is anybody else hearing a few common qualities between the two songs? Also, how weird is that Obsession music video?


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Shaftoe’s Rants: Dragon Age Rage

By
Adam Shaftoe
– August 4, 2011Posted in: Game Reviews, Rants

The Short Version: When tech support advises hacking the game to get around digital rights management, it’s time to take a long hard look at modern copy protection methods.

The Long Version: I love video games, but I think I’ve finally reached a bit of a tipping point.  Monday afternoon my copy of Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition went mental and decided that I wasn’t allowed to use the downloadable content that came bundled with the title.  While the core game still worked, I could no longer continue my quest as the save game file was written with functional DLC.  Setting aside the fact that I had already invested twenty hours into this particular campaign, the situation angered me as I’m not one to appreciate machines telling me what I can and can’t do with things that I have paid for (incidentally the same reason why I will never trade my PC for a Mac).

Shaftoe Rage Level = 1

My rage only grew when the EA/Bioware support page said that this was an “ongoing issue” and the company appreciated my patience while they tried to solve the problem.  They wanted patience despite the fact that no information was given on when the issue started or how long it was expected to continue.  Paitence? Patience!  I’m a gamer, that means my patience has about a fourteen second half-life.  Unsatisfied with the “ongoing issue” explanation, I called EA/Bioware support to ask for more details about the problem.  Wherein, one of their support people proved that humans can in fact be less helpful a hastily arranged stack of bricks in diagnosing technical issues.

Support Drone: “At this time I can’t give you any additional information.  You’ll just have to wait until we fix it, we appreciate your understanding.”

Me: “I appreciate that this isn’t something that you, personally, can fix, but your answer leaves me less than satisfied.  Please put me through to your supervisor.”

Shaftoe Rage Level = 2

Having worked in a call center after university, I know that when you ask for a supervisor, you’re not actually getting a supervisor.  What happens is that you get sent to an “escalation” team that is full of people who say they are supervisors.  The only benefit is that if they can’t fix the problem, they are usually authorized to offer some sort of compensation.  In my case, I got a 20% discount off the purchase of my next EA title.  Too bad that discount won’t apply to any purchases made through Steam or Impulse.

Shaftoe Rage Level = 3

At about this point my girlfriend, who is not a gamer but I don’t hold that against her, took notice of my fuming about the living room.  “What you’re saying,” she began after I explained the genesis of my fury, “Is that something is broken with Bioware and you can’t play the game you paid for because of it?”

““That’s right.”

““This isn’t like that Playstation Network thing? Is it?”

““No, this is a single player game that I want to play all by my anti-social self.”

““Well, that’s just stupid.”

Finally, some validation.

Shaftoe Rage Level = 2

The following day I made another call to EA/Bioware support and got hold of a lovely lady named Catharine.  Upon reviewing the details of my grievance, Catharine guided me through a little hack that restored Dragon Age’s DLC to functionality. Moreover, the DLC now works regardless of if I am signed in with my in-game EA account.  All I needed to do was open a file in notepad and change a bunch of 1’s to 0’s.  There wasn’t even any crypto.

Perhaps it’s an oversimplification of a complex issue, but if tech people are guiding legitimate end users through soft hacks of their product’s security measures then it’s time to re-evaluate the purpose and function, or lack thereof, of digital rights management.

In my mind, DRM was created to make pirating software more troublesome than actually purchasing the product in question. Despite the best efforts of digital rights managers, any nine year old with an ounce of tech savvy can download and crack any video game or application that is on the market.  For those who want to steal software, DRM is something to laugh at on message boards.  Given such a market, actually paying for a product isn’t merely adherence to laws that the public rejects out of a Robin Hood-esque sense of entitlement, it has transformed into a personal covenant with the company in question.  When I give my money to a video game developer, I’m making a choice to support everything that goes into their product.  As a paying gamer I now find my loyalty rewarded with wonky security measures that hamstring my gaming experience.  No wonder PC gaming is dying a slow death.  Who wants to put up with all this hassle when they can drop a DVD into a console system?

Perhaps it is time for software companies to abandon this oddly evolved attitude of paternalism in the name of protecting intellectual property.  I don’t begrudge EA/Bioware a right to safeguard their work but when hacks are the only way to make a legitimately obtained piece of software work the way it was designed to, then it’s time to throw out the playbook and come up with something new.  Like I said, DRM was designed to make pirating more troublesome than purchasing.  I offer this experience as proof that the opposite is now true.

The next issue would be for Bioware to stop using DLC as a backhanded justification for releasing three-quarters of a game while tacking on an extra 50%-100% of the cover price over the lifespan of the title for anybody who wants to experience the entire game.  But that’s a rant for another day.

Oh and for posterity’s sake, here are the directions that EA/Bioware support gave me to get around the DRM with Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition.

1. Go into My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\Settings

2. Make a backup copy of the file “addins.xml”,

3. open addins.xml in notepad, or any XML editor. (I used Notepad++)

4. Wherever it says RequiresAuthorization=”1″, change that to RequiresAuthorization=”0″. Image: http://i54.tinypic.com/vqjxg2.png afterwards: http://pastebin.com/CDXtnJBX

And then restart the game and check if the all of the DLC appeared to work or not.


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