Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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.

Valve hired IceFrog, a developer of Warcraft III mod Defence of the Ancients a while back, and since then there have been persistent rumours that they might be making the mod as a full game. This then seemed far more likely with the surprise announcement of Alien Swarm a couple of weeks back, having hired the mod team who made that too. And now a tweet from voice actor Jon St. John seems to confirm the existence of a DotA project.

Jon St. John is the gravel-voiced man behind those Evil Dead-nicking Duke Nukem remarks. If voice actors are being hired on the DotA project, then you have to wonder at the scale of the project. Perhaps Valve will be moved to reveal some news by the leak… Ah ha ha ha.

This may be a hoax, I’ve no idea. But it’s a holiday here today, so that’s the right sort of day for posting suspect things. Thanks to @PaT2090 for linking us to what was allegedly briefly appearing on Ellis Savannah’s Facebook page (L4D’s Ellis, of course). An apparently intro screen for Half-Life 2: Episode 3. See it in full below.

It’s a fake. Of course it is. It’s ages old, too. But, see, all your rude-faced people calling me names – I haven’t seen every image of everything on the internet, and so, you know, can be fallible. I’m sorry to break my non-omnipotence to you this way, but there it is.

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Well, if only. Legions of squeaky-voiced footballers showing their crass tattoos to each other and trying to force their (allegedly) botoxed faces into threatening scowls… Someone mod that for me. Please. What is happening is that the Creative Assembly, best known for making splendid strategy games with colons in the title, are trying their hand at making a sports game. Back of the net…
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Rumblings in the Call of Duty world. Or the World Of Call Of Duty, as seems inevitable at this point when so many teams appear to be invested in the franchise. You may have heard back in November that Activision had apparently added a third development team onto CoD making duty, alongside Treyarch and the main bods, Infinity Ward. It now seems, according to rumours reported by VG247, that those main bods may not be the people responsible for Modern Warfare 3. Which becomes an interesting story when you realise it frees the team up to potentially work on a new project.

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Here’s a fun, ridiculous, and undoubtedly dubious rumour: murmurings suggest that Blizzard’s secret project might be a new Redneck Rampage game.

The story comes from IncGamers, who report that Blizzard have recently bought the rights to the Redneck trademarks, and extrapolate from this. And as unlikely as it seems, they do go on to point out that an original Redneck Rampage developer now work for Blizzard. Hmmmmm.

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While we’re being all mainstreamy this morning, it’s worth nodding over at BlizzPlanet’s canny sniffing around the Blizzard haunches. We already know they’ve a mystery MMO in the works as well as Starcraft II and Diablo III, but if this direct quote is gen-ooo-ayne, it seems the king o’polish has a fifth game up their sleeve…
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We asked Valve to comment on the rumour, and received a succinct reply:

Can it really be true that Google are about to buy Valve? So goes the rumour that’s currently setting the internet alight. A rumour we look on with dubiously raised eyebrows and possible scorn. Yeah, right. Very happy to be proved wrong. But we’ll see.

The Inquirer cite “well placed sources”, who say the purchase will happen any moment now. All other stories link back to that one. The Inquirer seems pretty confident, but then also pretty vague. But it does sound like a special kind of nonsense. Never mind that it’s a little early in the morning US time for a deal to be happening. It’s currently 4.30am in Seattle, where both companies reside.

Last year we had the following exchange with Valve boss/owner Gabe Newell:

RPS: I have a friend (an idiot) who is determined that in six months Valve will be owned by either Microsoft or EA…

Gabe: Tell him that I’m not interested in buying either one of them.

Rumours of Portal 2 have been floating around ever since Portal lead, Kim Swift, made a sideways mention of it back in February, right at the end of this interview. Now that dust is stirred up once again with the Kotaku-spotted job advert, asking for a voice actor to play Aperture Science’s late boss, Cave Johnson.

The ad, on the subs-only Breakdown Express, contains a pretty detailed biog of the self-made billionaire, stressing that applicants will need good comic timing and dramatic skill for the role. It’s below the jump for those wishing to avoid spoilerific fun.

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Those vague rumours and wispy mistruths that spread across the internet every day… well, they’re the great, aren’t they? Today’s whispered perhapsment: New Diablo 3 under development rumblings.

The reason I like this rumour so much is because it’s so impossibly vague, and yet here I am writing it to fan the flames. Why? Because I believe that once a consensus is reached it’s very hard to stop it from being true. I mean, Clinton’s not resigned, Obama claims victory, and the media goes along with it before the votes are counted. So it’s true, isn’t it? Let’s all keep stating that Diablo 3 is definitely being developed, and one day Blizzard will just discover they’ve been unwittingly making the game for months. This is Science, people. The rumour’s source:

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I had it in my head that this had been properly confirmed ayyyyyyyyyges back, but apparently it’s still stranded in rumourland. Furthermore, it’s a rumour that seemingly had yet to reach everyone’s ears, as evidenced by the internets suddenly talking about Bioshock creators Irrational 2k Boston reportedly working on a new X-COM game as though it’s some sort of ‘news.’ Still, might as well give you fine folks a chance to talk it over here.

2K – the publishery bit – picked up the X-COM rights last year, so it’s pretty much a dead cert to happen at some point, so the mystery remains which dev will make it. That Ken Levine has handed over Bioshock 2 development to a different 2K team further supports educated guesstimation that he’s off working on a super-exciting project like this.
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