Gotta get me one of them soulcatcher chips. You never know when you're going to need the minds of dead soldiers, though I didn't know that empty beer bottles had minds.

Ok, bad joke, but Interplay needs a new writer. This is Mystery Science Fiction Theatre bad.

"It is the year 2032. The entire world is at peace for the first time. Together, the human race is moving to become a true world civilization. Humanity had forgotten war and put away its weapons �until the bombings started. A cabal of Old World magnates - the once powerful financiers, the despots and Presidents, the death-loving military men - are all working together to destabilize the planet and return Earth to its fractured, hate-ridden war economy past."

Heh -- c'mon Interplay.

Wow, this sounds like one big crappy game...

Actually, it sounds like Interplay saw how successful Sacrifice was and decided to try to create another game to capitalize on it. "3rd person RTS" and "Soulcatcher chips" both sound a lot like "You loved it in Sacrifice, now come and buy the crappy Me-Too version!".

Why is it that in a world that is without wars or weapons we still have a bunch of warriors with weapons? (or should I call them Cabalites?)

At least now I know not to get rid of my stash of antipersonel...er...I mean deer hunting equipment when the world becomes a utopian paradise in just 31 more years.

Uhm, aren't all RTS's 3rd Person? I mean, if you aren't on the field, but you're looking at the players on the field, then isn't that 3rd person?

I'm confused.

I know 2nd person games are when you looking over your friend's shoulder and telling him how he _should_ be playing the game.

"Uhm, aren't all RTS's 3rd Person?"

Hehe, well, yeah, you're right there. It's the whole "3rd person action elements" that got me thinking about Sacrifice. In Sacrifice you aren't just some godlike general who hovers above the battlefield. Your persona is actually down there (in a 3rd person perspective) casting spells, summoning critters, etc... It sounds to me like this Hostile Waters (a prophetic name for the upcoming reviews) is trying to capture the same feeling that Sacrifice has.

What happened to Incoming Forces? I haven't heard about it for a long time...

And didn't Hostile Waters begin like, a year ago, or so? It's supposed to be based upon the new Incoming engine...

Y'know, this sounds like a "supercarrier" game that I read about in CGW like 5 years ago. The idea was that you had this giant floating factory, and manufactured all of your units from it. It sounded lame then. It sounds even lamer now. Is that good English? lame, lamer, lamest?

If someone wants to download some Hostile Waters movie trailers that show gameplay, here are some links.

ftp://ftp2.interplay.com/pub/movies/hostile01.mpg
ftp://ftp2.interplay.com/pub/movies/hostile03.mpg
ftp://ftp2.interplay.com/pub/movies/hostile07.mpg

Those are 17, 10, and 17 megs in size respectively.

Thanks for reprinting that hilarious press release! They've got a hot contender for Most Inane Backstory of 2001. Really, who writes this stuff? Hostile Waters isn't made by an Interplay studio, is it?

No, it's UK-based Rage. Makers of the wonderfully deep (ahem) Incoming, Expendable and Darklight Conflict. ...and if you believe the deep part, I've got this bridge I'm selling. :)

--Dave

"They've got a hot contender for Most Inane Backstory of 2001."

No kidding. Let's hope that they spend more time on gameplay than they did on coming up with that backstory.

Dave, I can't even remember Expendable. What was it? Darklight Conflict I remember as having some whizbang graphics but not much else.

Expendable is a third person shooter that plays a lot like Contra. There was a PC demo of the game, but I'm not sure we ever got a domestic release on the PC. It used all the whiz bang graphic effects like bump mapping (as all Rage titles do). Voodoo Extreme talked it up like mad as they do all flashy games.

It's available on Dreamcast and considered average at best by most. It's a decent shooter, which is about all Rage has ever made. Decent shooters. I kinda liked Darklight Conflict...though it didn't really bring anything new to space shooters other than prettier graphics.

If you have a fast connection... download the demo here. It's purty...

http://www.avault.com/pcrl/demo_temp.asp?game=expendable

--Dave

Hey all,

I actually know the main scripting fellow behind Hostile Waters: British comic-book writer Warren Ellis. Though, he's actually really good, and I'm kinda surprised at the, well, less-than-stellar copy attached to the Press Release. Either he just cranked it out while he was "on the loo" or maybe some other goon wrote it.

Anyhow, if people are interested in seeing his work elsewhere, just hit up www.warrenellis.com.

Just trying to put some perspective on this hackneyed backstory, since I've gone drinking with the guy and all.

-Thierry

Hi Scooter. I can believe that a PR writer might wreck another writer's otherwise acceptable plot, so I'll keep an open mind about it. Dreamcatcher's press releases about their adventure games can be pretty amusing. Maybe a "Don't judge a game by its press release" maxim is in order.

Hey Mark,

As I said, since I know the guy, I was just asking for a bit of fairness and a break. I know for sure he's not a hack, and if he did write it, I'll chalk it up to him putting down too much Scotch before he hit the keys. =)

Since I have more time nowadays, I've been flirting with being more active on both UseNet and forums like this. And so here I am.

-Thierry/Scoot/whatever

Scooter, are you finished with college now?

If you know the guy, email him and ask him to drop by and explain to us just how a backstory for a game gets created. Is it really as simple as a bottle of scotch and a session in front of the computer? How much influence do the developers have in the story process?

Back when I was beta-testing for Epic Megagames (before they dropped the Megagames), they had a little scrolling shooter called Highway Hunter that they got from some Russian development house.

They had some totally lame backstory. It probably was some bad translation of some bad copy. Anyway, back then we posted our impressions on a Compuserve message board. I went off on this thing. It was probably one of my best rants ever. In the rant I fired off three backstories that I thought were better than the one provided, and I think I was drunk at the time. (Perhaps that's why the whole episode is somewhat hazy).

A couple of days later, I get an email from the game's American producer saying they'd love to use my backstory. Could I write up something that includes this element of my first story and that element of my third and email it to him?

Here's what I came up with.

The game was reviewed in CGW (this was back when they had a monthly page of short shareware reviews) and here are the appropriate excerpts of that review.

I don't think the Russians ever knew or cared what I wrote for their game.

Dean

Hi Scooter! Is this Antaeus guy the same one that did the comic art with your name misspelled a few issues back?

Hey, nice backstory Dean! I want to know what happens next!

Chuck Miller now works at Gamepower, if you're ever inclined to track him down for some reason.

See? It worked.

What happens next is a whole lot of things come at your car, and some of them you shoot, and some of them you run over so you can shoot more things. The car can slow down a little bit, but it can never stop.

Eventually you kill something really big and then this screen comes up that says, "Congratulations! You've saved the Earth!"

Like I said in my backstory rant, you've basically got to say who you are, who they are, and why you hate each other enough to unleash [arcane magiks/advanced technological breakthroughs] in order to kill each other.

Did you ever wonder why in fantasy stories the most powerful forces are always incredibly old, whereas in science fiction they're incredibly new?

"Did you ever wonder why in fantasy stories the most powerful forces are always incredibly old, whereas in science fiction they're incredibly new?"

No, but that's interesting. Is it some kind of timeloop in effect?

I'm guessing that in fantasy we've been cast out of the Garden, so to speak, and anything that dates back to then is purer and more powerful.

For sci-fi we're continually on the upswing, going from beasts towards gods, so newer is better.

Big post time:

Mark: One last semester to go. Coasting by Cal with a whopping 2.6 GPA. Again, I'll have to shift my finals-taking scheudle around to accomodate E3. Whee. I got one last semester left to seriously make myself a deviant of some sort.

As for backstory stuff, I've asked him about this personally, and here goes, from my memory: basically, the producers approached him because they like his comic work, and gave him a basic idea. He took that idea, fleshed it out, and then banged out a script for all the stuff in-between the game missions. He did this while they were still developing engine stuff. So, I guess you can say it's a combination of meeting with the people you're writing for, to get the gist of things, and then pounding on the keyboard after downing some Scotch, to flesh it all out. Or something.

Kazz: Yea, kinda. Warren writes Transmet, and Darick Robertson is the artists. Anyhow, Warren had a bloody brainfart when it came to plinking my name down on the script. I've chatised him several times over Guinnesses and other assorted alcohols. As to how I got myself in, as he puts it, "Thierry's a journalist I know. After seeing Mimi get in the book, he naturally bitched and whined about not being in it himself. So I reinvented him as the Demon Whoremonger Of Rangoon. I will now never see him as anything else. More importantly, neither will you."

-Thierry

A 2.6? Scooter, you've got to get them to implement a game minor! You'd ace those courses!

It's that Billy Shakes! I love the man's work, and will watch performances of Titus, Lear, Othello, the Henry VI series, and whatnot, but the profs are simultaneously evil and mean! Worse than those orcs that trouble every other fantasy game out there!

It'd be nice to have a game minor. Or a major in goofing-off in general. I amaze myself in how I can find ways to utterly waste time while not being productive sometimes.

-Thierry