Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Open World Whirl: A Planetside 2 Trailer

By Craig Pearson on March 30th, 2012 at 5:00 pm.

SHUT UP, TAKE MONEY ETC
If the Planetside 2 GDC presentation was a novel, then the video that Sony Online have just released is the abridged audiobook. If you didn’t have the time to watch the 30 minutes of off-screen recordings we snuck up, then SOE have a decimated 3 minute trailer for your enjoyment, showing off the bits of the world, the vehicles and the combat that appeared at GDC.

Still no release date, but if you close your eyes you can just pretend. Come dream with me.

I love the casual way he says: “team up with a few hundred of your closest friends.” He’s really popular!

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29 Comments »

  1. 30/03/2012 at 17:20 bit_crusherrr says:

    GOTY

  2. 30/03/2012 at 17:30 BrightCandle says:

    Looking good. Just don’t mess up with DRM and micropayments!

  3. 30/03/2012 at 17:31 slight says:

    Must … resist … pedantry …

    Wouldn’t it be 27 minutes if it were decimated? ;)

  4. 30/03/2012 at 18:01 Squire says:

    Holy bums I Hate MP because of the caveats made over SP, this is exactly like SP, I love it! Eat my goal!

  5. 30/03/2012 at 18:02 jimmm25 says:

    ‘Team up with a few hundred of your closest friends’
    I just had horrible images of facebook integration.

    • 30/03/2012 at 18:06 Squire says:

      Imagine going out on a night out to a pub with 300 people, just getting the drinks in would cause fatalities for god sake. Standing around awkwardly with the giant group of people, mainly because you haven’t spoke to them in person in 7 years.

  7. 30/03/2012 at 18:24 aircool says:

    Stupid US date system.

    TR FTW!!!!

  8. 30/03/2012 at 18:46 cronach says:

    “You will get vehicles such as: Anti-Tank Tank, Anti-Infantry Tank, AA Tank, Tank Tank, Panzer Tank, Tank Scampi, Tank Salad…”

  9. 30/03/2012 at 19:37 Brise Bonbons says:

    Um. What’s up with 2:18 in the video, where a guy getting shot by an MBT main gun simply falls over? I’m sure physics are still WIP and all, but that looked sort of silly.

    Honestly though, it brings up one of my main concerns for the game: Whether the guns will feel good. I can’t help but be skeptical about the quality of shooting in a game that handles hundreds of players at once. This feeling isn’t helped by the small-arms combat looking unfortunately bullet-spongy.

    Fingers crossed on this one, even if time constraints will likely prevent me from burrowing into the hardest parts of the core either way.

    • 30/03/2012 at 20:57 Kryhavok says:

      Registered just to agree with you. Gunplay will make or break this game, and right now it looks underwhelming. Here’s to hoping there’s some serious improvements coming in Beta.

    • 30/03/2012 at 21:35 Wetworks says:

      The shooting in the first Planetside was pretty basic and it was still a blast. It was the sense of immersion and freedom you felt, scale of the battles, and persistence of the world that made it so epic. As long as they keep the feeling alive and improve the shooting a bit this is a sure fire hit.

      Shooting isn’t as important because this isn’t some mindless deathmatch that resets every 20 minutes.

      • 31/03/2012 at 11:26 YourMessageHere says:

        Got to disagree. I didn’t play Planetside for long, because I just couldn’t – the guns were so lightweight and ineffective, dealing absolutely minimal damage – very bullet-spongey, no satisfaction, not fun. I mean, you have a huge game world, so naturally sniping’s got to be good, right? No. There were two sniper rifles and they were both dreadful, the heavy one doing one-shot-kills only to people in the very lightest armour (which no-one but new starters ever used), plus no locational damage and no noticeable effect on heavy armour or vehicles.

        To me, since this isn’t something that resets every 20 minutes, that makes the shooting all the more important. What I do matters more. That means that if I’m going to shoot at someone, I want them to be in serious danger. I want to feel that getting the drop on someone is going to give me a real advantage I can use to make tangible progress; if the guns are weak and everyone’s a giant sac of hitpoints, surprise is virtually no advantage at all.

        • 31/03/2012 at 15:01 Wetworks says:

          Part of the ineffectiveness of the guns was to prevent a lot of 1 shot kills and insta gibbs. When you have hundreds of players all fighting over a base you have to take measures to ensure that people don’t just die instantly. It’s not fun having to spend 5 minutes running back to a base just to get 1 shot by a sniper 1 mile away.

          As a result the players are more bullet spongy than your typical fps, which is something I actually prefer. I like to have the option of pulling out of the battle to heal myself back to full rather than just having to die and respawn.

          By the shooting isn’t as important as your typical deathmatch mp I mean that the visceral feeling of shooting in a deathmatch is the only kind of game play you can do. So the shooting has to feel good and be tight to be enjoyable.

          Planetside on the other hand offers much more variety on how to have fun. For instance,

          1. You could be an engineer and spend most of your time setting up mines, turrets, sensors, and other defenses to help out your side.
          2. You could be an infiltrator and try to backhack empty towers/bases, or blow enemies up with boomers.
          3. You could be an ANT driver and help resupply the bases with energy during an intense battle.
          4. You could be a galaxy pilot and hotdrop soldiers into enemy bases.
          5. You could be a medic and just heal other players.
          6. Many more ways to have fun than just being an infantry grunt.

  10. 30/03/2012 at 19:56 povu says:

    Godrays make everything better.

  11. 30/03/2012 at 20:16 Shockeh says:

    Planetside was so nearly incredible. It was like SOE, generally totally inept, stumbled onto something glorious, and if only they’d ever quite got the lag under control, or the feeling that sometimes you were firing peashooters and somethings instant death-rays, they’d have dominated totally.

    Somehow, the proximity to greatness makes the possibility of failure all the more soul destroying. Please don’t mess this up, SOE. Make us proud.

  12. 30/03/2012 at 21:39 marcusfell says:

    “Sorry, this content is unavailible for your device.”

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  13. 31/03/2012 at 03:48 Shoelip says:

    This music is annoying me. I listen to it and start humming the original Planetside themes, and then suddenly a note is missing, and then another… and… It’s… Erg. Why couldn’t they just make a different song?

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