By Jim Rossignol on December 16th, 2008 at 9:54 am.
Oh, it’s trailer time! A bunch of stuff was shown off at the Spike VGAs including the first trailer for Terminator Salvation, which is set to be released alongside the film next may. It’s been co-developed by GRIN (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Ballistics) and Terminator IP-owners The Halcyon company. The game, like the film, features the actual future war between Jon Conner’s resistance and the machines.
16/12/2008 at 09:59 Ian says:
The first line just made me think of I Am Legend.
Looks like another movie license generic-’em-up but I’m hoping to be proven wrong as always.
16/12/2008 at 10:07 Angel Dust says:
Meh, looks a bit too Gears Of War-esque, that is big budget action spectacular! Note I actually like GoW but I don’t think that is the right feel for a Terminator game.
Then again my view of a Terminator game is forever defined by Bethesda’s, yes that Bethesda, much under-rated Future Shock and Skynet games.
16/12/2008 at 10:08 Heliocentric says:
The war is ridiculous, the terminators wiped the floor with the conventional military forces. But a few resistance fighters can fight back? Non-sense, I’m not saying terminator’s story should be taken seriously but its so elegant in other ways. And then utterly ham fisted.
But yes, ultimately so is every video game which casts you as a bullet soaking Everyman. I remember the pathetic huddled masses in the visions of the future, fighting a globally networked super computer with factories building millions of nigh invincible robots. If this game doesn’t end with finding out the AI was just messing with you as a simulation of a rebellion I’ll be sorely disappointed.
16/12/2008 at 10:12 phil says:
Looks a lot like Resistance: Fall of Man and a half million other post apocalyse shooters, nice partical effects, good music, will probably be an endless trudge from way point to way point interspaced with rides on the backs of lazer mounted SUVs.
16/12/2008 at 10:12 Optimaximal says:
Looks awful – as good as I feel The Conner Chronicles are, they aren’t the same as the original movies and the new movie is going to do nothing to change that.
This game simply looks like they took GRAW and mixed in a bit of Quake Wars & Frontlines
16/12/2008 at 10:13 Pod says:
At least this trailer had some form of in-game footage in it.
I still don’t understand how people get excited by such trailers. I must be wrong in the head or something.
16/12/2008 at 10:13 Max says:
Looks like it’s using GRIN’s Bionic Commando engine?
I doubt this’ll be worth a shit.
16/12/2008 at 10:15 aldo_14 says:
What conventional military forces?
16/12/2008 at 10:17 Bobsy says:
Notable facts about the Sarah Conner Chronicles:
1) The music is done by sexy Bear McCreary, who you may remember from Battlestar Galactica, and is sexy and called Bear.
2) Summer Glau.
16/12/2008 at 10:22 simon says:
I’m genuinely curious about the predominance amongst PC users (apparently the most mature and intelligent of gamers) of shooters. Especially post-apocalyptic ones. I may have to go back to uni and do a thesis of some sort.
16/12/2008 at 10:24 MeestaNob! says:
SUMMER GLAU!
MMMmmmmmMMMMmmmmmMMMMmmmMMMMmmmm
16/12/2008 at 10:34 Schmung says:
Someone needs to remake Future Shock. It was quite incredibly awesome, specially the multiplayer. Sadly, this looks a more than a little generic, but we can but hope.
Also, yes, the Glau-inator is awesome.
16/12/2008 at 10:35 Gap Gen says:
Brutal Legend also featured on these awards, but yeah, I dunno. How much you like that trailer relies heavily on how much you like Jack Black.
16/12/2008 at 10:36 Gap Gen says:
Oh, and does anyone remember that last Terminator game? The Battlefield 1942-style one?
16/12/2008 at 10:42 AndrewC says:
The World Premiere ident video lady is extremely pretty. And finds gamers attractive.
16/12/2008 at 10:50 Wisq says:
Heliocentric: I guess the idea is that the conventional military makes for easy, centralised targets. But yeah, it’s a little silly.
Frankly, rather than making you a “bullet soaking Everyman”, they have the perfect opportunity to actually explain your near-invincibility if they were to cast you as a reprogrammed Terminator instead. But I guess it would be hard to empathise with the main character if you were just a machine following orders from your new masters to kill your old ones.
Mind you, if you were one of the future machines, sent back to help the resistance, you might actually have traces of a real personality (a la “Glau-inator”) — and as a powerful singleton, it would also explain why you have so much of an impact on the war effort.
phil: I think you got that last part backwards. Something about the idea of mounting an SUV on a laser (rather than vice versa) makes me chuckle, though.
Optimaximal: I’ve not been able to find any information as to whether the movie has anything to do with the Sarah Connor Chronicles. My guess is that they’re back on the original Terminator timeline, and they’re going to keep Chronicles as a timeline split. So yeah, this presumably isn’t going to affect Chronicles at all.
16/12/2008 at 10:59 Larington says:
@Simon: Actually, I’m studying a games development degree at Swansea Metropolitan University (Sigh – I prefer its name when I started there – Swansea Institute), two of the lecturers got together and did a study of the types of games that were pitched for final year projects and there was a predominance of at least 17 in every 20 games falling somewhere into these categories:
Hack & Slash or First Person Shooter
Fantasy or Futuristic
Its no wonder current day, near history & near future games still get eaten up like candy (IE I’d rather another potentially wonderful GTA than another Gears). As for the pre-dominance of H&S or FPS, umm, that one I’m not so sure about, maybe its just easier to stick with design ideas that folks know work, rather than trying to be genuinely creative like say, 2D Boy have.
Anyway, back on topic, it would be real nice if developers could stop copying the over the right shoulder third person shooter gameplay every bloody opportunity they get. – Has no one else noticed that this is fundamentally flawed in the sense that it makes it extremely difficult to look around the left sides of walls, yet alone making it impossibly hard to get the first shot off before they do?
16/12/2008 at 11:00 Ian says:
Could be wrong but I don’t think Sarah Connor Chronicles are considered canon.
16/12/2008 at 11:11 Larington says:
Damnit, what idiot decided the delete key goes back a page.
Try again.
I’m not so sure about this whole resistance thing myself, granted conventional militaries have issues with guerilla warfare themselves. That aside though, if the AI has no issues nuking major population and military centres, then surely theres nothing to stop it from doing exactly the same to a relatively small resistance cell unless it has some undefined reason for sending ground troops in to do the dirty work, which itself has never been explained.
Meanwhile, I don’t remember any discussion on the potential issue of radiation levels being sky high (Limited supplies of anti-rad drugs?) following a form of armageddon occuring and the basements used by resistance cells are unlikely to be hardened against a nuclear attack, nor are they likely to have sufficient supplies to outlast a nuclear winter.
Enough holes to drive a truck through?
16/12/2008 at 11:17 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:
Sarah Connor Chronicles is not canon.
Also Summer Glau is an over-rated brick-faced twit.
16/12/2008 at 11:17 clive dunn says:
Even after the Robots have enslaved us all we’ll still grumble about dodgy AI
16/12/2008 at 11:24 Digit says:
Did anyone else think it actually looked ok until the large headless laser robot at the end? Man… reminds me of Deep Rising *shudder*. :/
16/12/2008 at 11:54 Mogs says:
Getting a game done in time to coincide with a film release, almost without exception, equals fail.
16/12/2008 at 11:57 Ian says:
Fuck science and/or logic.
Terminator is fun.
16/12/2008 at 12:02 Excalibur says:
The gameplay looks exactly like Gears of War.
16/12/2008 at 12:03 Heliocentric says:
Mogs i disagree. Rushing a game is bad. Planning to spend little time can be great. See all those 1 day games.
16/12/2008 at 12:06 James T says:
Hey, you know what’s awesomer than the Terminator theme? That “bwaaaaum…. bwaaaaaum…” leitmotif whenever a Terminator’s walking after someone. I think that sound alone is what still kept me watching a couple of episodes into ‘Chronicles’ season 2 (as soon as Shirley Manson appeared, the show leapt down the… *sigh*… urinal).
16/12/2008 at 12:12 Malagate says:
Ahh good ol edit function, I get to change the entire silly post as I grasped the wrong end of the stick before!
Yeah the plot holes are massive, it does make the machines look quite useless actually if the only way they could defeat the military of before was to nuke all of them, and then still get pwned by the remanants of the militaries in the form of Resistance fighters with crap equipment, training and presumably radiation poisoning. Turns out the unstoppable robots weren’t so tough after all eh?
16/12/2008 at 12:13 teo says:
“The gameplay looks exactly like Gears of War.”
You could tell from that trailer??
16/12/2008 at 12:26 Larington says:
@ Teo – Yep, you can see the over-the-shoulder perspective, throwing yourself against cover and shooting over/around said cover stuff that the Gears of War games are based on. Only briefly here and there, but its definately in there.
16/12/2008 at 12:31 Heliocentric says:
I dont mind over the shoulder camera, as long as they give a change shoulder button like splinter cell had.
really felt natural popping your gun out behind cover like that.
16/12/2008 at 12:35 Skurmedel says:
GRIN also doing work on Bionic Commando. I just hope this will be better than their GRAW port to PC.
16/12/2008 at 12:50 Tei says:
Now that you think about it… wait.
John Connor was on a prisioner camp. So maybe the machines where saving humans to make experiments onreplicate the human body (both to make better machines, and to build cyborgs to use to hunt the remain humans). Something got wrong (maybe John Connor was able to inyect a virus on the cental AI, that has spread to all other machines, but are active only on a few ones), and this was able for John Connor to fight back, and from the extermination camp start a war, that almost killed the core AI, but then… the core AI was so desperate, to use a time machine to kill his mother.
What I don’t understand is that video.. wheres is the nuclear winter on this video???
16/12/2008 at 12:52 monchberter says:
*Cue endless Governator voice spam.*
16/12/2008 at 12:57 monchberter says:
To all those not convinced about pesky humans making a dent on the unstoppable machine foe, i can only quote you this:
“Phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range.”
16/12/2008 at 13:08 PHeMoX says:
The game, like the film, features the actual future war between Jon Conner’s resistance and the machines.
Biggest mistake they could ever make script-wise.
16/12/2008 at 13:45 NineteenSeventyNine says:
“I just hope this will be better than their GRAW port to PC.”
GRAW on PC wasn’t a port, it was a different game to the console version.
16/12/2008 at 14:04 Mogs says:
GRAW (well GRAW 2) was great on PC.
16/12/2008 at 14:15 Radiant says:
You do know Gears of War wasn’t the first game to do over the shoulder shooting right?
Right??
How can you people hate on a game just from the bloody trailer is beyond me.
16/12/2008 at 14:20 Radiant says:
Forget GRAW 1 or 2]; go pic up Ghost Recon [the Red Storm made original] + the expansions Desert Siege and Island Thunder and get it fully patched to the latest version.
It’s one of the finest tactical shooters ever made for the pc.
16/12/2008 at 14:31 AbyssUK says:
Somebody else liked future shock and skynet! My god I loved them so much! So very awesome both of them, the multiplayer was superb fun! I know this game won’t touch them for class but I can dream!
16/12/2008 at 15:09 dhex says:
future shock was totally boss.
16/12/2008 at 15:12 A Delicate Balance says:
I love the terminator music – when I saw this story was on RPS, I went to the loo before watchin the vid. While I was walking there and back, I was humming the main theme.
Terminator 2 is one of my favourite movies and in the action Genre ranks along with Aliens (I guess I like strong female leads!) right at the top. I also enjoy watching Terminator and, although T3 was relatively bollocks in comparison to the other two, it was still a bit of a laugh and enjoyable enough to watch, even if it missed the grittyness of the previous films sorely.
I’ve been watching the Sarah Conner Chronicles since the first episode. To start with I was feeling it was far too American high-school audience-oriented but I think it’s developed a lot as it’s gone on and I’m actually starting to believe this is the same John connor that will one day lead the war against the machines and not just “Claire’s friend from Hero’s Season 1″.
I still find Lena Hadley a little too soft to be Sarah and that (naturally, since it’s on US TV) the show still isn’t as gritty and believable as the first two films, but that it’s an achievement to have made what I think is a viable TV series out of the movies.
When I heard a little while back that there was going to be a new trilogy, with Christian Bale, no less and that it would focus on the War with the Machines, some of my favourite scenes from the first films, partly because you only get a glimpse of them during the main storyline in the “present”.
If they get it right (in the films) it could be awesome – a modern sci-fi realisation of the War using the potential of CGI (don’t complain about it – it’s proper use in T2 was a large part of what made that film so excellent). The glimpses that were possible, but technically challenging in the other films, could now be turned into engrossing, full-fledged movies with today’s technology.
Where Star Wars went wrong with it’s new Trilogy (for many people) was forgetting it’s original fans had grown up, sure, but also using tip-top modern CG effects in a trilogy of prequels so it gave the impression of being futher in the future not the past.
T4, however, is in the future and we would expect to see a lot more CG, because we’re dealing with large numbers of robots, flying vehicles, lasers, futuristic scenery, etc. The key will be making the use of that CG feel real, because one of the best bits out Terminator was that, although it was a little jerky at points, the skeletal Terminator seemed palpable – even T2′s T1000 basically felt real, even though you knew it was a CG effect.
Of course, should the film be a successful concept, there’s then several more layers of “ifs” before one could say if the game will be a successful concept. From the footage here, it doesn’t actually look that impressive, but I suppose a large part of that will depend on what they have to work with in the film, since it’s a licence.
I’ll keep my eyes on this one – a good Terminator game could be great (like a good Star Wars game), but to live up to the film Franchise is a tough call.
16/12/2008 at 15:34 Skurmedel says:
It was a port, that became a different game (and hence it suckiness.) No matter how they made it, it was supposed to be the PC equivalent of the console version, which in my eyes is a port. And you are sidestepping the fact that the end result was poor.
16/12/2008 at 15:36 Larington says:
Yeah, Gears wasn’t the first to do it, but it seems to be the one thats triggered a mass exodus to over the shoulder shooting, prior to that it was pretty rare.
16/12/2008 at 15:38 Erlam says:
“The war is ridiculous, the terminators wiped the floor with the conventional military forces. But a few resistance fighters can fight back? Non-sense, I’m not saying terminator’s story should be taken seriously but its so elegant in other ways.”
Yeah, that’s never happened…
16/12/2008 at 15:41 El Stevo says:
What do robots do? What motivates them besides wiping out humans? What do they do in their leisure time? I mean, what’s the point in wiping out the human race if they’re not actually going to do anything or enjoy existing? What do they do when the humans are gone?
Maybe fighting is what they do for fun, and THAT’S why the resistance has been allowed to exist
16/12/2008 at 16:02 jonfitt says:
Gah! I hate that “oooh our camera’s all glitchy because it’s too xtreme” effect.
Skynet and Future Shock were great at the time; I hope this is half as good. From the trailer it does look like it should be called Actuators of War.
The Terminator films were never meant to have the Trekkie lens applied to their story. The whole “future war” was just good enough to be a “this is bad, you don’t want it” thing to give them an excuse for “Robot = Bad”. The future war scenes are small vignettes and full of holes.
Don’t think to hard about it.
16/12/2008 at 16:03 Tei says:
@El Stevo: To quote wikipedia[1]: “However, Skynet became self-aware thus alarming its creators at its newfound abilities. When the human operators attempted to shut down the system, Skynet defined all humans as its new enemy and decided to terminate all humans to protect its existence. Every nuclear missile in the United States under Skynet’s control was launched at their preset targets and in the resulting counterattack of other nations’ nuclear arsenals, three billion humans were killed in minutes as a result of the nuclear exchange.”
It seems is “Protect his existence”.
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(Terminator)
16/12/2008 at 16:05 James T says:
The network is built to protect humanity, it realises humanity’s greatest threat is itself, so it starts eliminating that threat. And that’s why real-life superintelligent AIs are built to obey Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics!
16/12/2008 at 16:28 Pags says:
My network’s SSID is Skynet. It’s pretty unnerving sometimes.
Also, if this has multiplayer I can forsee a million people shouting things like “YOU’VE GOT TO GET TO DA CHOWPA” over voice chat. Governator voice spam :(
16/12/2008 at 16:28 Optimaximal says:
Larington, I went to SIHE… Got out just before they could pollute my degree certificate with ‘Swansea Metropolitan University’.
Who did the study? James & Mike?
16/12/2008 at 16:37 phil says:
@Wisq – It all depends on the size of the lazer – imagine using a reconditioned Landrover as your iron sight, now that would be a BFG.
16/12/2008 at 16:40 Dexton says:
The old Bethesda terminator game was awesome, think it was the first shooter I played with mouse look. In a time dominated by Doom 2 clones, the open world design was quite breathtaking.
16/12/2008 at 16:47 jonfitt says:
and it had vehicles you could get in and out of. That was the first time I’d seen that in any fps.
16/12/2008 at 17:11 El Stevo says:
@Tei
So when humanity is gone Skynet will have nothing left to do.
16/12/2008 at 17:36 Nick says:
Future Shock was great, I have no idea if the same people were on the project, but fallout 3′s scenery had a lot of similarities to the vastness of FS’s terrain (and no, I don’t just mean they are both post apocalyptic..).
Plus you could shoot the moon and it said “ouch”, eventually fallout out of the sky, best game EVAR1!
16/12/2008 at 18:29 yhancik says:
@Pags :
I beat you, my provider’s name is Skynet !
16/12/2008 at 18:39 ETPC says:
Am I the only who cares that SPIKE TV is now a source of information about games?
What have we become :/
16/12/2008 at 19:17 James T says:
Is it them responsible for those fucking stupid ‘WORLD PREMIERE’ bits at the start of these clips? Painful.
If the vast sea of mental degenerates posting on game fora are any indication (not to mention just plain demographics), it’s no surprise that garbage like ‘Spike TV’ is making inroads. Water doesn’t go uphill!
16/12/2008 at 19:23 Dracko says:
RPS more like WHINEPMS
16/12/2008 at 19:25 Tei says:
@El Stevo: The way is described in the mythos, I think this AI has a “animal” intelligence. He acts are direct primary reactions, withouth seconds troughts, anything. After the crysis is solved, and all the humanity is wiped, anything can come to this new ego. But the mythos as not direction about that after. It just give information about how this AI react to these humans that are still tryiing to kill the AI.
Welll…seems humans and machines are stuck on a arms race, to hunt each another. Part of this arms race is the time machine, the T1, T2, T3… and the last versions. Something that the machine create to match whatever john connor can get from his hat.
No-related random link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film)
16/12/2008 at 19:44 N says:
FutureShock:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p62hA4GUw8
SkyNET:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W3rYIjxIDc&feature=related
16/12/2008 at 20:18 roryok says:
YOUR ENTIRE LIFE….
HAS BEEN LIVED FOR THIS MOMENT….
I know its technically right, but it seems like bad grammar
BUT THE MOMENT AFTER THAT YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN LIVED FOR….
WILL BE THE LIVED-FOR-IEST MOMENT OF ALL MOMENT KIND….
16/12/2008 at 21:35 Dan says:
Looks alright. Plot’s the key.
16/12/2008 at 22:06 Erlam says:
Why the fuck would you make the game third-person? Here’s a chance to have the person playing be a key role in the Resistance, to feel/experience what that universe is like, and he/she will spend it staring at the back of their own head.
Sigh.
16/12/2008 at 23:16 Radiant says:
Anyone who uses the word ‘mythos’ and isn’t talking about a sandwich is IMMEDIATELY disregarded.
16/12/2008 at 23:27 Dizet Sma says:
Is this a Fallout 3 mod? [Ducks the incoming shoes]
17/12/2008 at 01:30 redrain85 says:
Don’t really care for either the movie or the game, since I have a sinking feeling they’re both going to suck. (Sarah Connor Chronicles ain’t bad, though!)
But my question is, do we know this is coming out for PC? There was only a brief mention of it when news of the game was first announced. Since then, nothing. Only that it will be coming out on “next generation consoles”.
God, I hate that term “next gen”. It’s such an over-used marketing phrase. It’s also incorrect. As soon as the 360 and PS3 were released, they were no longer “next gen”. They became “current gen”.
17/12/2008 at 13:52 roryok says:
You backwards talking FIEND! This looks great and The Sarah Connor Testicles is a pile of bumcake.