The GameShadow Blog

Codemasters has revealed it will be bringing sequels to three of its major releases from this year.

2010 will see follow-ups to DIRT 2, Ashes Cricket 2009 and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

All three titles enjoyed major sales success and flourished at a time when other publishers decided to push their titles into the first and second quarters of 2010.

Square Enix and Gas Powered Games have formed a strategic partnership and announced that work has begun on Supreme Commander 2.

This deal marks the first step towards Square Enix increasing western development efforts aimed for the global markets, having previously worked exclusively with Japanese development companies.

The original Supreme Commander was one of the big real time strategy titles of 2007 and was followed up in the same year with Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance,  both published by THQ and developed by Gas Powered Games.

Electronic Arts has announced a deal with Universal Pictures to produce a movie based on their action shooter game, Army of Two.

Production on the movie will begin in 2009 and is the second movie-based project from Electronic Arts, with The Sims movie expected next year.

The computer games giant has also hinted at a sequel to Army of Two (no Army of Two 2 jokes please), as well as for Battlefield: Bad Company and Dead Space.

Update: Also confirmed that the Barbarian will be the only returning class in Diablo III.

MTV is carrying word from Lead Diablo Designer Jay Wilson that Blizzard has more planned in the Diablo series after Diablo III - no more decade long waits.

“It’s not just ‘Diablo III’ — we’ve got plans beyond,” said Wilson. “Diablo III” ends the trilogy, [but] fans needn’t worry — it’s not the final curtain for Diablo.”

Well, colour me shocked.

Yes, Elite IV is still on the cards.

Braben was heard discussing the under wraps project at Develop not too long ago. Here’s what we know:

- It’s ‘very, very deep and dark’

- There were originally to be two versions of the game: online and offline. Whether this still stands is unclear.

- Braben considers the game’s undefined central mechanic to have ‘no current competition’.

- Limited resources and at least one trip back to the drawing board at Frontier has lead to the game’s protracted development

- Console versions are being considered

And that’s about it.

David Braben was one of the two programmers behind the original Elite. Following a falling out with partner Ian Bell, he founded Frontier Developments in Cambridge in the early 90s where he developed both Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters.

I’d like to pick up for a moment on that ‘no current competition’ remark. Braben comments that games like Eve aren’t competition for Elite IV, and that no other game currently uses his central mechanic.

Now, for one thing, Eve Online strikes me as pretty much the epitomy of what a new Elite game would be: Eve is Elite Online, so the fact that Braben is slightly defensive on the topic may be put down to his team having missed the boat.

Of course, we might interpret it as meaning that as an Elite game, of course there’s no competition - as brands go, it’s a pretty strong one.

Either way, this ‘central mechanic’ must be something pretty special and pretty new to live up to the hype.

Time (and a lot of it, I suspect) will tell.

So, the big news is that Diablo III’s definitely on the way, and is a good way into its dev cycle. The surprising news is that Blizzard released a lot of details of the weekend.

You can grab a huge 20 min gameplay trailer right here, while there’s a flashier but less informative cinematic trailer here.

There’s info all over the place, so rather than completely rehash it here, I’ll point you to some of the best spots. Essentially, however…

- It’s definitely still Diablo

- It’s 3D, and sports a brand new engine, but is viewed from the same top down perspective

- In the context of today’s co-op infatuated climate, Blizzard is building on the hugely successful online modes of the previous games to make co-op the core experience

- It’s set 20 years after the last game, and story telling will be a stronger element

- It’s around the same length as Diablo II

- The same level of one-click approachability is promised

- Five classes will be present, both new and old, including the Barbarian and Witch Doctor

You can check a swift preview over at 1up, there’s a more in depth piece on the game design at Joystiq, and IGN has a decent interview with Rob Pardo.

Edit: Loads of game details here.

Edit: This just in, it’s been confirmed. That really was the world’s worst kept secret.

GamesIndustry.biz is running a story around Blizzard’s big event in Paris this weekend, reporting that the mega-dev is to announce a major new project.

If it’s not Diablo III I’ll eat my hat. And, as if that weren’t confident enough a claim, other sites are claiming industry insiders have tipped the wink on the announcement already.

So there you go. Confirmation this weekend.

As a point of fact, it’s worth noting that Diablo was originally an external project at Condor, an independent studio. The company was bought by Blizzard shortly before Diablo’s release, and renamed Blizzard North, the game going on to define the company. However, following Diablo II’s release, relations ebtween Blizzard North and parent company Vivendi turned sour, and the best part of thirty staff, including the franchise creators, left to form other studios (including Flagship, developer of Diablo-esque Hellgate: London). The studio was closed down soon after.

So what that means is that Diablo III could turn out to be a very different game, and the complications and loss of the original series team must have played a large part in the third game’s delay. It’ll be an interesting one.

Cliffy B of Epic has said in an interview with German site Game Reactor that if Gears 2 fares well, we’re certain to see a third, and then a fourth.

“If Gears of War 2 is a success then naturally we’ll look at a third. The same applies if number three sells well, then we’ll have to consider a fourth.”

Exciting news there.

In a word, it’s CoD4 +1.

Yes, CoD5 will take the common sequel route of dishing out a souped up version of the last game, complete with all the features you wanted the first time around, developed by a different team.

The game will be developed by Treyarch - the team behind CoD3 - rather than series creator Infinity Ward, and will be set in the Pacific theatre. It will use the CoD4 engine, and arrive on PC, 360, PS3 and Wii (the latter being a stripped down version that supports the Zapper, but still recognisably the same game).

Essentially, the game is a check list of all the things the new generation of console gamers thinks it wants:

- Co-op

- Vehicle combat

- Squad-based multiplayer

- Gritter singleplayer

- Co-op (you can never have too much co-op, apparently)

Now, I love my co-op, and it’s still not used to good effect in enough games, but something tells me the reason it’s arriving in CoDland is more to do with the back of the box than anything else - and wasn’t Battlefield 1942 doing all these things better, five years ago?

Next-Gen is running a story with Yves Guillemot - chief exec of Ubisoft - concerning the challenge level we can expect to see in BGE2.

“We think the game was probably a little too difficult for the general gamers at that time. We’re going to make it more accessible and make sure that it’s really done for the new generation that’s come into videogames.”

To balance that with some good news, apparently it’s going to be the ‘future of games’, and it certainly looks from the trailer as if BGE2 might be setting its sights considerably further afield than the original.

On a serious note, the promise of the game being ‘more casual’ does, of course, strike fear into my gaming heart - the original was pretty damn easy, and the thought of dumbing down is understandably abhorent.

However, on a little more reflection, I’m not sure this is a bad thing. The point is, BGE1 was never challenging in the Quake IV sense - it was more about the experience - so the fact that the sequel is further seeking to draw in a more mainstream audience is really only in keeping with the series’ ethos.

At the end of the the day, BGE is one of very few games we can hold up high and say ‘Not all games are about explosions and tits. Some of them are about love, and nature and characterisation.’ The fact that a game like that is going to be approachable for the non-gaming massive can’t be a bad thing.

Perhaps when Fox tries to claim Jade has inter-species sex with a talking pig, they’ll actually play the game and realise what’s really going on.

Yes.

According to this JeuxVideo piece, BGE2 has been in pre-production for around a year now, with Michael Ancel and a team of around ten working on the project.

Michael Ancel is the creator of Rayman and the original BGE and, following poor sales of the first game, has since worked on an aborted sequel, and a variety of other projects.

And that’s that - we’d all love to know more, but the official nod is enough. The project’s future still hangs in the balance - it will be up to Ubisoft to confirm that it wishes to ramp up production and finance full development. Given the game’s dodgy history, I guess there’s every chance things could still go tits up.

Still, it’s nice to be proved right. Oh, and to get a sequel to one of the great adventure games. That too. I suppose.

Shacknews is reporting the early details of the next in Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise: multiple instruments and song creation.

Guitar Hero was a series originally developed by Harmonix which went on to revolutionise music and party gaming. When the developer fell out with publisher Activision, the team moved on to join forces with EA and MTV in producing Rock Band, a logical progression of the design which allows for drums and vocals in addition to bass and lead guitar. It’s coming out shortly and it’s really rather good.

Activision, on the other hand, has held on to the Guitar Hero brand, with the third installation plus a DS version developed by a new team. They’ve been well enough received, if not setting the world alight - and how could they in Rock Band’s shadow?

So, predictably enough, Guitar Hero IV will catch up with Rock Band in the multiple instrument stakes, while the amazing new feature mooted turns out to be a song creation tool. Which, incidentally, is something the free PC game Frets on Fire has offered for many years.

So, good on you Activision. Contender for the most Cynical Sequel of the Year Award?