Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Could it really be that Relic are at last working on some manner of follow-up to their very well-received and very well-realised World War II RTS Company of Heroes? It could, claims PC Gamer’s print edition, claims Kotaku, claims VG247. I cannot verify this, but on this slowest of slow news days I shall report it nonetheless. There are no details because this is mere rumour, but though PCG are in the habit of eating live babies they aren’t generally in the habit of being scurrilous, so let’s hope they’re on the money here.
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Bloodhound-nosed Lewie P gets in touch to say he had a bit of an interesting encounter with a PopCap fellow, via the medium of Twitter. One that rather strongly suggested that the company might be gearing up for Peggle 2. Lead designer at PopCap, Adam Orth, sent out a tweet asking for an Art Director “for the Peggle franchise”. Lewie retweeted this, and then said on his own account, “Imagine Peggle 2″. To which Orth replied, “I am.” Which he has since deleted. Rather tellingly. However, Lewie had already retweeted it. So yes, an awful lot of he said/she said. Except without the shes. We’re going to contact PopCap to see if we can get an answer out of them. But in the meantime, let’s all just assume it’s true so hard that it has to happen.

Absolutely nothing has been confirmed about GTA V, beyond there being a trailer on the 2nd November. But that’s not stopping the speculation machine from grinding its mighty gears. And the most convincing rumours seem to be coming from Kotaku.

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Telltale have been keeping pretty tight-lipped about one of their 893 current development projects, Fables. At E3 all they were showing was a cryptic poster of a wolf, and queries about it were met with grins and silence. And all that’s been said is that it’s based on the DC comic that re-imagines fairytales in grim and gruesome ways. So it’s interesting to learn that the creator of the source comic, Bill Willingham, may be working on the game. (Willingham has had brief previous games experience when offering a mission to City Of Heroes.) The news comes from comics site, Bleeding Cool, who very confidently report that this will be officially announced on Saturday during ComicCon. They say that the deal is still being signed, but that Willingham has told friends that he’s happy with the studio, and that “they get it”. We expect more details will be revealed over the weekend.

How much do you think you’d pay for Star Wars: The Old Republic? Signs point toward BioWare/EA opting for an old-school subscription model, as well as charging for a boxed copy of the game to start – so very 2007. So, perhaps £30 for the game and £8-£10 a month thereafter? You’d be happy with that? Well, some rumours revealed by NeoGAF, as posted on BetaCake, seem to suggest you could opt to pay an awful lot more for a special edition. A special edition with an awful lot of stuff.

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While there are rumours flying around about Valve’s DOTA 2 project being the first in-house game to embrace the free-to-play model recently made possible on Steam, there seems to be (scant) evidence that another title could be beat it to the accolade: Team Fortress 2.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun has received word that David “Elite” Braben’s much vaunted next game, The Outsider, was apparently cancelled yesterday.

Edit: David Braben has confirmed to us that development on The Outsider has ceased, explaining that it was due a “change [in] priorities” with regards to unannounced projects, telling us that he is “very sad” about the resulting redundancies. The full quote is below.

Edit edit: Braben has since claimed to Develop that, “There is still publisher interest in the project, and we haven’t cancelled it.” So it’s all a bit confusing. We’re currently trying to establish what “changed priorities” actually means, and have got back in touch with Braben for clarification.

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BioWare have just tweeted a barcode. Scanning it, it reveals the numbers 001101010011010100101110001110000011010000110101. Decoding that we’re left with 55.845, which is, as you’ll all be shouting at your monitor, the atomic weight of iron. And iron makes steel. And steel is a word in “Shattered Steel”. And Shattered Steel is a 1996 BioWare game about battling mechs. And BioWare are announcing a new game this Saturday. Any other thoughts? (Alec is the genius behind this, but give me the glory anyway.) And now there’s more…

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Mediocre subscription MMOs don’t die, they just go free-to-play. And so it seems that after the high-profile collapse of Realtime Worlds, following the release of MMO flop APB, the game is looking likely to re-emerge some time toward the end of this year. GI.biz reports that the K2 Network, owners of F2P service GamersFirst, is paying around £1.5 million for the intellectual property. This is currently unconfirmed, and K2 declined to respond to GI’s newshound sniffing, so maybe this could go the way of the Codies rumour from last week, or September’s erroneous Epic gossip. Call me cynical. But if it’s happening, it’ll be a way for fans of the game to re-enter its world, without the completely daft gametime-purchasing system + micro-transactions that accompanied the game’s launch.

Update: There’s now no mention of “BioWare” on the ads, instead just “Montreal”. Which could well be EA Montreal, of course. Who, the story now becomes, look likely to be making a military FPS.

The best kinds of PC rumours are the ones based on job adverts. Which is why VG247′s ears pricked up at the sound of BioWare posting for a concept artist to work on a “Military-genre Franchise”. Another ad asks for a Lead “Designer for Military-genre FPS”. So what could BioWare be creating?

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Intriguing rumours are circulating thanks to the big K: Gearbox are said to be finishing off Duke Nukem Forever. It’s even claimed that a playable demo of the game will appear later this year. Take 2, George Broussard, and Gearbox have all declined to comment, but Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has offered some hope by saying that he might be able to reveal more about the situation at PAX in September. Interesting times.