Rock, Paper, Shotgun

After the gaming industry went on a dubstep-and-Dew-fueled vacation to E3 last week, it’s now back to business as usual. By “business,” I of course mean layoffs, and goodness gracious, figurative business is booming. However, literal business – the part where people make money – isn’t faring so well because, well, layoffs. This time, the sobering specter took its scythe to Hitman developer IO Interactive, reducing its workforce by “almost half”. Yeesh. The plan to get things back on track? Er, make more Hitman. Which is to say, make nothing but Hitman.

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The real world saga of Final Fantasy XIV’s original disastrous and lurching launch, that is. But it looks like this sorry tale might be in for a happy ending. A Realm Reborn is the MMO’s relaunch, and Square Enix have gone hell for leather to completely rework the game into a state more acceptable to their audience. Almost everything has been redone in some way, from the game world to the PvP and PvE content, to the very server model that the game rests on. It’s a complete reboot, or rebirthing, if that sounds better. No, it really doesn’t, does it? Anyway, the game has certainly impressed a lot of folk at E3, and you have a chance to be impressed if you get onto the beta.

That beta has just entered the cross-platform stage, which means PS3 owners can now join their PC chums in the game world. So that’s nice. Holding hands and stuff. Tear-jerking trailer below, for good measure.
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Spike TV got to see Thief (no, just Thief now, branding fans) in motion, too. You can see their encounter with it below, as you refresh yourself with delicious Doritos and Mountain Dew. I am contractually obliged to mention that our kid Adam has already played the game, and you can read about his experiences over here.

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I was prepared to act dumb, pretending that I hadn’t been able to make out the gruff witterings of a silly voiceover. Probably just rats. I’d even turn a blind eye to the live action robbery and harrowing arrowing that accompanied the sounds. Nothing to see there. Despite a pleasing shot at the end, which brings back delightful memories of the original games’ beautifully stylised mission briefings, the latest Thief trailer isn’t really worth watching, although you can do so below. It’s worth drawing attention to the trailer because of what it isn’t. Not a jot of the technically superb and far more stealth-friendly in-game footage that I’ve seen with my own eyes is shown, and that is a shame.

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Activate the windshield wiper augment on your cybernetic eye implants, everyone. It’s time to smear away some tears. As was written in the stars (fun fact: RPS has been held aloft by celestial bodies since the dawn of time, aka 1873), Square Enix fully revealed Deus Ex: The Fall today. And now, the sadness: it is siiiiiiiiighhh an FPS siiiiiiiiiighhh exclusively for siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh mobile and tabletsiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. But hey, these things have a way of migrating over to PC occasionally, so I got in touch with Square Enix about the possibility. Unfortunately, they did not spare my brittle, nanomachine-free flesh feelings.

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This whole industry is bonkers. Launch trailers are released days ahead of launches, there are trailers for trailers to announce release dates, and pre-order packages for games that are barely off the whiteboard. So perhaps I’m becoming inured to it all when I barely bat a beautiful eyelid at an “announcement trailer” for Square’s Murdered: Soul Suspect, for which there was a teaser trailer in February.

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Final Fantasy’s naming scheme broke down the moment Square decided to make a second one, but that was only the beginning. Now we’re having a second go at a realm that’s a distant relative of a different realm that wasn’t supposed to be reborn 43845952 installments ago. The series has taken a long, strange road to get to this exceedingly confusing point, and the first version of Final Fantasy XIV was one of its lowest dips. To its credit, Square Enix quickly came to understand that after nobody bought it, and they’ve been hard at work on a complete revamp ever since. But were they able to salvage FFXIV’s best bits (a hyper-flexible class system, lavish story scenes, lovably fluffy horse birds) and reforge them into a sharp, sleek modern MMO? Sounds like we’ll finally (XXXVII Delta: Advent Crystal Cerberus Thunder Core) find out in August.

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After ages and ages of (oddly fitting) silence, Eidos Montreal’s Thief reboot finally saw fit to break cover last month, shadows still coiled tight about it like a snake ready to strike. And yet, something seemed ever so slightly off. Adam remarked, among other things, that the demo he saw seemed a bit too scripted, and as it turns out, there may well have been a very problematic reason for that. According to a large, rather troubling report from Polygon, development troubles have left Square Enix with a half-finished game and some tough decisions to make going forward.

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As yesterday’s trailer revealed, there’ll be no more Stephen Russell in Thief: and there was much anti-rejoicing. While the Thief/Looking Glass community is predictably and somewhat understandably up in arms about Garrett’s larynx replacement operation (the inevitable petition is here, if you want to fruitlessly sign it), I imagine the game’s sailed too far across the development ocean for Eidos Montreal to want to turn their ship around at this point. They have at least attempted to justify their ditching of the guy who’s stoutly been with us for three Thief games previously, arguing that it’s because they wanted to mo-cap and voice record one actor simultaneously.
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