Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The first full trailer for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim proved something of a talking point today. Thus, the usually scattered nodes of the RPS Hivemind elected to watch these two and a half minutes of in-game dragon-bothering footage together, and see what thoughts fell from our raddled brains as it happened. Opinions proved a little divided, it transpired… Some were excited! Some were merely intrigued! Some were convinced there was little to be excited about! Here’s how it happened, chronologically. More or less.
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Earlier this month our dramatic Deus Ex: Human Revolution info blowout comprised of a new trailer, Alec and I having a chat about its atmosphere, setting and construction, I interviewed lead narrative writer Mary DeMarle and Alec broke apart the tutorial level like a handful of Twiglets. As of today I can finally talk about the first level proper, and I want to describe what Eidos Montreal has done with action, stealth and those curious new dialogue battles. Fear not, ladies and gents. I’ll be avoiding spoilers as best I can.
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Below, Alec and Quinns continue their post-mortem of the year’s most exciting hands-on event to date. Now past the game’s intro, the discussion below covers the first chunk of the game proper, and includes exploration, a motorbike and the revelation that protagonist Adam Jensen is not, in fact, Captain Herobot.
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Edit: Below: it’s below! And it looks amayayayayayazing. Get a move on and watch it, Dragon-Born.

Bethesda has a clock, a magic clock of ultra-teasing. They’ve put it over here. When it runs out – in about ten minutes from now which is now – you’ll be able to see the first-ever in-game footage from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Hopefully embeddable versions will be along soon afterwards, but in the meantime, head over there and stare, stare like you’ve never stared before, then stop staring and hopefully start dribbling a little bit when the trailer itself arrives.

It’s below!

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It is with some nervousness that I attempt to share news of the release of hardcore flight sim DCS: A-10C Warthog. It sounds and looks like a pretty remarkable achievement, but as I tend to start weeping uncontrollably if you put me on anything more complex than Crimson Skies or Stunt Island I may not be best placed to successfully identify the major lures of this beast. That said, it does include a ‘game’ mode as an alternative to exacting simmery, so perhaps I’d not be completely out of my depth.
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ArenaNet are revealing more and more of the shape-shifting Norn characters in Guild Wars 2, including a video, which you can see below. And oof, this look good, particularly in stuff like the incidental character animations and the environments. The bit panning across wooded valleys is just breath-taking.
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Oh yes, while I am stealing videos from Blues‘ YouTube channel, we should probably link to the latest Prototype 2 teaser. It looks like Prototype! Only it is introduced by Penny Arcade for some reason? I am missing something here, aren’t I? The game isn’t out until 2012, so don’t hold your breath. I mean if you do hold your breath and you are still alive by 2012, then OKAY, because that would be some feat.
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Via beautiful Blues, we get another Crysis 2 trailer. Yes, this is turning into Far Cry 2, where the number of trailers reaches a crazy saturation point before launch. Anyway, this one is about Jacob Hargreave, the man with the nanosuit obsession. It’s detailing some of the story, which was written by Richard Morgan and Peter Watts. Watts, incidentally, it is a genuinely excellent SF author, and is worth looking up.
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If there’s one arena-shooter you should play this morning, I’d say it should be Battlepaint. It’s not an original concept – you shoot bads and they pop into paint splatters – but the implementation is great fun, and I love the various additional effects, such as your shooter-craft smearing the paint as you whizz about in the arena. It supports one or two players, and it’s worth a look.

And there’s the hat-trick of top class indie releases! IGF Student Showcase winner and dark sci-fi adventure game Gemini Rue (previously Boryokudan Rue) will be released today, and a demo has just come out allowing you to sample its rainy, future-noir flavour. The game proper is available from the Wadjet Eye site and the demo is being hosted over on Gamefront here. I’ll be posting some impressions the moment I dig myself out from under this pile of games. At this point I can’t even tell where I end and the games begin. Watch Gemini Rue’s badass trailer (again), plus pt. 1 of a walkthrough of the demo (new!) and read a brief plot synopsis after the jump.
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Din’s Curse, Torchlight’s seedier, even-more-indie counterpart when it comes to capitalising on the fact that Blizzard have decided to develop Diablo 3 using only their left hands (my personal guess), has just received an expansion. In Din’s Curse: Demon War begins with the demon city of Kravel being invaded by crazed zombies. You’d think that would be a good thing, wouldn’t you? No! No! You’d be wrong. This causes the demons to go on a retaliatory rampage which it’s up to you to stop. Expect demons, a new Demon Hunter class, lots more quests and, by the sounds of things, a more dynamic game- NPCs now interact with the world more, and there are many more “world modifiers”. Hmm. Last year’s Din’s Curse demo is still up on their site and well worth checking out, and you can buy both the game and the expansion here with a 30 day money-back guarantee. Some guy’s footage of Din’s Curse follows. Is it any more professional if I tell you his name is viper34j2004? Probably not.
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