Sega/High Voltage Software ain't giving up. After the less than stellar The Conduit, they decided to improve on it and make a sequel. Now that's good sportsmanship- unlike many other sore loser developers who cancel their love affair with the Wii the moment their 'new games with waggle tacked on' bombs in sales.
Lots of new info for fans of the first one, and expect a big, big list of improvements over the first game, which can be found here. I'll pull some of them out for this blog, so:
- Team says the first game had the player doing "the same thing over and over and over again"
- Want to do more with level design, gameplay design
- Embracing sci-fi element
- Game will have some "big vistas and multi-tiered areas"
- Multiple paths, team wants the game "to feel bigger and give players the sense that there's more going on"
- Game has an airborne chase scene, take control of a ship's rear gun emplacement, shoot pursuers (one enemy type is jet pack-equipped soldiers)
- More NPCs, Ford can interact with them
- Some freedom in terms of which stage you'll take on next
- More alien growth in the city than in the first game, Drudge and Trust still fighting there
- "The AI in particular has been a big focus for us. We really want the enemies to come across as intelligent. In the first game, they just sit there waiting for you to show up. This time, we want it to feel like a living environment, like everyone was doing something before you got there."
- Interactive elements in the environment (stuff moves, objects break, enemy knocks over soda machine for cover)
- Regarding the AsE(that floating sphere in the first game): "…more puzzles and hacking minigames. It's also a bit more of a detective tool now, we're trying to put a lot more conspiracy objects and secrets in the environments to give you more reasons to use the ASE. Once you've scanned an object, you'll be able to learn more about it in the game's new data log. So it really plays into us trying to tell a deeper story."
- 12 players online
On my wishlist right now? A longer story mode, better graphics (come on, after seeing what Metroid Other M can do there's practically no excuse), and actual workable online. Hopefully that shows up in the final product.
