One of 2009’s more interesting FPS projects is Assault On Dark Athena, which is both a remake of the original Chronicles Of Riddick and also its sequel. The titular Dark Athena section follows on from the first game, and takes place aboard some kind of crazy spacelane pirating merc ship, onto which the begoggled space murderer finds his way. I was lucky enough to preview this for PC Gamer UK recently, and I was fairly impressed with what I saw. GameTrailers meanwhile have managed to get even more exclusive access to the game, with a huge, two-part developer walkthrough. I’ve embedded the two videos beyond the jump for your perusal.
The second one of these spends quite a lot of time looking at the character modelling and conversations, demonstrating that Starbreeze haven’t given up on the more open-ended hub system we saw in the first game.
Thanks, GameTrailers. Love you!
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This game is looking awesome, I’m not going to view all those movies though as it might spoil too much. :)
Huge FOV is huge.
And I still have to play the original one (my computer won’t run the new one anyway). Too many games for a slow player like meeeee.
I never did finish Escape from Butcher Bay. Maybe this time around I will.
That looks awesome.
Do want. I haven’t played the original but after having seen the comments on here and a Let’s Play I think I will have a look-see.
Looks awesome, I just wish the guy in the first video could learn how to walk straight. Not that hard and horribly annoying to watch. I felt like I was watching my parents play a video game and not quite understand what was going on.
I just watched that throat-rip finish and now I can’t swallow properly
As i have never done anything noteworthy myself, i’ll settle for boasting with the fact that one of my friends work at Starbreeze.
Wohoo!
That’s nothing, one of my friends is Vin Diesel.
The above may or may not be true. I look forward to this though, as I never played the original and feel dirty for having such a gap in my gaming history.
That’s nothing, I once killed a prison guard by snapping his neck.
We have tons more coming as well.
“begoggled space murderer”
Oh Jim, take me now
Peripheral vision is the way of the future. I still haven’t played the original game, so I’m glad they’re including it (and remaking it) with the new one, because this looks great.
The intro cutscene for Dark Athena is on g4tv by the way: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/692580/Exclusive-Cinematic-Intro-of-The-Chronicles-of-Riddick-Assault-on-Dark-Athena.html
I like!
Butcher bay was freakin awesome, can’t wait for this one.
Hopin’ for moar developer commentary too, that rocked.
Murders are cooler in space.
tis up now
I’m always perplexed by why studios hire good actors and then give them rubbish dialogue. One does not cancel out the other.
i’m amazingly excited about this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So how does this inclusion of the original game work? Like, you get two installers, one does game 1, one does game 2?
i love the old part and this is looking on par, maybe it’s gonna be even better ! now let’s hear about multiplayer !
@Erlam
i reckon it’s just a choice in the menu since AoDA was supposed to be an extra level but grew into a full game
I played the original and it was good. I normally hate sneaking in games but it was reasonably intuitive, and fun.
Hopefully they want go to far off the wall, like with the story in the rubbish movie, keep it grounded in reality, no sudden super powers.
Looking *very* hot. Can’t wait to slip into badass vin’s shoes and kick some sci-fi butt.
“Jones’n to replay the original…” Shame.
I’m definitely going to pick this up for PC, but I’m disappointed by the large number of extraneous third-person cutscenes. I can understand (though I still think that it is unnecessary and self-defeating) taking you out of perspective for a long dramatic scene between characters or introducing an important gameplay element, but it’s annoying and frustrating to get yanked out of character for a two-second scene everytime you touch a keypad or acquire a new weapon.
Also, one-second third-person cutscene everytime I climb onto a crate. Jesus.
So, like, that dialogue is better than most RPGs’.
Just putting that out there.
Aw jeez, they’ve still got those swirling blood vessels on the edges of the night-vision… It interferes with my ACTUAL retinopathy! (and it’s an impressive simulation of it…) Maybe I’ll be able to mod it out, heh.
Fantastic. The original is probably the only predominantly 1st person game I’ve played in which switches to 3rd person actually work. Why? Because it’s telling a Riddick story. It’s not a “the player character is an empty vessel” style game, like Half Life or Bethesda’s RPGs. It’s specifically Riddick, played by Vin Diesel, and both perspective make sense in the narrative.
It’s also the most enjoyable stealth I’ve played, because it makes you feel dangerous, and immensely powerful and threatening – just as the Riddick character should do. It doesn’t make you feel weak and vulnerable like every other stealth game.
Can’t wait for the remake!
Looks fantastic and are those Maori influenced tatoos on Jaylor? Since I’m a Kiwi that’s a cool touch.
Vin’s voice and the setting’s aesthetics are enough to remind me that I am playing as Riddick. I may be overly principled, but I abhor these kinds of perspective breaks.
There’s a cutscene that shows a crane picking up a crate and moving it somewhere else. The camera just flew through the room, showing the player what had changed and where he would have to go next. It’s like Metroid Prime all over again. I hate that crap. It’s devoid of class.
Absolutely enjoyed the first. Just thinking about all the different levels of the actual prison, the intimidating characters – with voiced, multi-option dialogue – and challenging, immersive first-person stealth and combat… Seems like ten years in the future in comparison to 2008’s measly consolized cru.
This. Looks. Awesome.
DO want.
Wow, the voice acting from the marine character was superb, wish we’d had it more like that in Fallout 3…
hah “show your face you … I love colorful language in a game. Reminds me of Kingpin. “So whats up?”
You’re missing four other videos.
“Fairly impressed”
Not very glowing praise :P
Should it be? I’m happy for there to be positions in between 100% ZOMGAWESOME and 100% SUCKZ ROFLMAOGAY.
One of the reasons Riddick has so much love is due to quality in spite of what it is, rather than failing to meet super-high expectations. But that doesn’t make it super-fantastico-awesome, just very good. See?
EfBB was one of the most enjoyable FPSs of recent years. I’ve played it to completion several times, each time being as fun as the first. The first-person combat has never been equaled, and the stealth is as engaging as it ever was in the Thief series, although with a lovely emphasis on brutal kills to amuse the psychotic bones in each of us!
Any word on likely system specs?
Both the original and this are on my “to get and play” list. That baby’s getting pretty big. I don’t know how many more games my shelf can handle…
Melee combat’s notched up, everything’s shinier/grittier, and everything that made EFBB innovative and fun seems to be kept in.
Wow. Makes me want to play EFBB all over again, now.
Now this game is something I’m looking forward to. Having never gotten a hold of the first one, I’m going to make sure I get ahold of this version.
looks good, nice voice acting even with captain mumbles in the lead and drops in april? ok!
semi-serious question: since the entire game revolves around knife violence (double action hooked knife violence at that) will this be an issue in the uk? i know your politicians have a boner for sharp shiny things.
Any game that opens with you killing people with a hairpin sounds profoundly British to me anyway.
This is the franchise after all that gave us death by tea cup.
British censorship laws don’t tend to be all that fussy. It’s the Germans and Aussies I’d worry about.
Anyways, as long as they followed the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” principle, the game is guaranteed to be great. The first game was fantastic, coming as close to a movie as games ever do.
whats with the trailers lately ? they used to show the game, now they just show some almost still or very short footage while the dev starts talking about things i dont care about during 3/4 of video, are we supposed to get hyped by gameplay we havent seen ? are we supposed to take the dev’s word for it? whats the point of this ?
i want my 5 minutes back
Were you not watching or something?
Did you check out the other four videos?