Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Last time out, Syndicate was showing off its guns and I don’t remember seeing a single flamethrower, which made me grumble in a manner befitting a madman denied the ability to burn the flesh off his enemies. The latest piece of video advertainment is all about the power of technology, which allows agents to persuade their opponents to commit suicide and attack their allies, among other ethically questionable activities. It’s certainly far more interesting than the guns. The removal of chips from peoples’ skulls to gain experience is described as a “critical mission objective”, which is something the same mad part of me that wants a flamethrower approves of heartily. Watch between the tiny gaps in your cybernetically augmented HUD below.

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UPDATE: Turns out there is a trailer, too. (Below.)

This has to be one of the weirdest asset releases we’ve seen lately: a batch of screenshots in which the protagonist of Syndicate is having a good look at the gun that he’s carrying. That’s what it’s about: admiring the shooting cylinder. Conveniently it features most of the guns you’ll be toting in the game. So big. So gunny! Mmm. Full gallery below!
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There has already been a short trailer showing the chip-fipping, face-slamming action of the Syndicate reboot, this being the boot that may stamp on the face of your gaming past forever. This longer video shows an actual play session on the same map, jumping between agents’ viewpoints to confuse me but otherwise giving a fairly good idea of how things will play out. There will be lots of violence, death and use of cover. Strategy? Well, you’ll have to wait for team-mates before opening certain doors and really tough men will absorb thousands of bullets so you’ll need to heal one another during those fights. Oh, just look at it.

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A reasonable number of folk around these parts are, I think it’s safe to sweepingly generalise, a little nonplussed that Starbreeze’s Syndicate remake is going down the mostly linear manshooter path. All along, though, we’ve been told the game’s four-player co-op mode would entail a more direct nod to the strategicish Bullfrog original. Is that, could that be, true? Time to find out.
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Okay, here it is: the first Syndicate trailer. Heavy on the dubstep and men in trenchcoats. Gosh, this makes me realise that the original Syndicate came out in the era before there were generally trailers for games.
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I’ll tell you: according to Gamasutra, it’s coming out in February of 2012. The 21st in the North America and the 24th in Europlace. That’s relatively soon! Yes it is. Also, there’s now a website for the game over here. It’s not much of a website, but it does say this: “AT THE FRONT LINE OF THIS WAR ARE THE AGENTS, THE SYNDICATE’S BIO-ENGINEERED AND CHIP-AUGMENTED ENFORCERS. THEY CAN BREACH ANYTHING IN THE WIRED DATAVERSE INCLUDING THEIR ENEMIES, THEIR WEAPONS AND THE ENVIRONMENT THAT SURROUNDS THEM, MAKING THEM THE MOST EFFICIENT AND DEADLY TECHNOLOGICAL WEAPONS IN THE WORLD. TAKE ON THE ROLE OF MILES KILO, EUROCORP’S LATEST PROTOTYPE AGENT, AND EMBARK ON A BRUTAL ACTION ADVENTURE OF CORRUPTION AND REVENGE.”

Miles Kilo. That’s his name. That’s your name. You are him.

Syndicate will reportedly be a 4-player co-op FPS, developed by Starbreeze. This thread on NeoGAF has some images and info which are apparently leaked from the Swedish edition of Game Reactor which is out next week. This what we know: “Chip Enhanced Gameplay: Slow down time, see through walls, and breach your enemy and everything digital in the world with Dart vision – A neural DART6 chip implant that allows you to interface directly with the Dataverse,” “4-Player Online Co-op: Assemble your Syndicate for global domination. A 4-player, online co-op experience like no other, with chip enhanced gameplay and 9 missions re-imagined from the original Syndicate,” “Visceral FPS Experience: Utilize an upgradable arsenal of futuristic weapons, armor and gear to annihilate your enemies and harvest their chip technology for personal advancement and sinister corporate greed,” “Sci-Fi Fiction: Immerse yourself in the world of Syndicate 2069, with a world-class sci-fi story experience, written by bestselling author Richard Morgan.”

Men will get shot from a first-person perspective. Yep.

Speaking of games that are back from the dead in FPS form, here’s the latest on Syndicate. It would seem improbably in the extreme that Starbreeze, the guys behind the Riddick games and The Darkness, would do anything other than a shooter, but this “Inside Starbreeze” piece at 1up seems to confirm it. This quote attributed to “a source” seems to say that the game – which is Codenamed “Project Redlime” until EA choose to reveal it – sits firmly within Starbreeze’s shooter evolution heritage. There’s more from Starbreeze’s Johan Kristiansson following it.

“RedLime was meant to be the step up from Darkness, where we sort of took all the mistakes we did with Darkness and do them right.”

That could only mean one thing.

The alleged Syndicate alleged reboot allegedly being allegedly made by Riddick developers Starbreeze remains only alleged, but more and more alleged signs point to its alleged development. Latest of these is a chuck of script which has found its way to Siliconera. If this is real, Eurocorp returns – but the plot will concern a resistance movement against it, perhaps a la the original game’s expansion, American Revolt.
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The Darkness, aka “that game from the Riddick guys where you could spend half an hour watching TV with your in-game girlfriend.” An action game with a heart of – ahahahah – darkness and a bunch of great ideas and atmosphere, even if it perhaps didn’t attain Modern Classic status. Happening at perhaps the apex of the big publishers’ “nah, fuggedaboutit” dismissal of our sacred boxes, the PC lost out. It doesn’t this time – 2K just announced the Darkness II, and we’re getting it!

Someone who isn’t getting it, however, is original developer Starbreeze.
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