Just a quick reminder that DEAD SPACE goes on sale tomorrow in America for PS3 and XBOX.
Us Euros, and PC owners, will have to wait another week—by which time No Known Survivors will have wrapped up, too. It’s a good time to be a space zombie killer on the loose.
[ Dead Space / Videogames / On Sale ]
I’m not going to post every link that comes up, because every gaming mag and site around will be reviewing it, and that would get a bit dull. But this one’s pretty special: issue #71 of Xbox World 360 magazine, out now in the UK, has the exclusive first review of DEAD SPACE.
The verdict? 91%, and special praise for the “film-worthy” script. Nice!
[ Dead Space / Videogames ]
So it would seem there’s a bit of confusion over something I apparently said to PSW magazine about DEAD SPACE:
But don’t you dare go skipping any cut scenes in Dead Space.
“You’d be a fool to do that,” Johnson told PSW magazine. “If you want to find out the mysteries of the game, you need to listen to the dialogue. But more than that, you actually need to listen to it so you can complete the game.”
Now, this interview was conducted back in April, at the Sci-Fi- London event, so the fact that I have no actual memory of saying it (especially the last part) is neither here nor there. I do remember the guy from PSW, and he was a nice chap, so I’m willing to trust it isn’t a misquote.
However, it is being taken out of context, and I know this for one simple reason: there are no cut scenes in DEAD SPACE. Not one. Everything takes place in real game time. You can listen to audio logs, or watch video logs, while you’re running around dismembering necromorphs to your heart’s content if you want to. Or you can stop and listen/watch as you find them. But they don’t remove control from the player and they don’t stop the action.
So there’s really no need to skip them at all, and if you do, well, you’re only really getting half the game. Which is probably the context in which I actually said the above. Hey ho.
[ Dead Space / Videogames / Interviews ]
So I’m pretty sure this hasn’t been officially announced yet, but the cover to the first volume of WOLVERINE: PRODIGAL SON is now on Amazon.
(Except, um, it’s in black and white for some reason. I’ve seen the cover colours myself, so I know this isn’t final art, but I also know Amazon often requires covers many months in advance. I therefore assume this is just an old mockup done specifically for them. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon enough.) [The final coloured cover is now up for all to see, so I’ve altered the image here.]
What’s more interesting is there’s now an official release date of April 7th 2009, and all this means it is, of course, available for preorder from Amazon US (or Amazon UK if you’re over here, naturally).
Speaking of release dates, DEAD SPACE has been brought forward by a week (again!) and will now ship on the 14th October in America.
There’s no official word on whether the European release will be moved forward too, but the expectation is that it’ll follow over here on the 17th October.
[ Dead Space / Wolverine / Videogames / Pre-order ]
EA has just launched No Known Survivors, a DEAD SPACE website that will be updated weekly throughout the run-up to the game’s launch. It’s designed to take you “behind the scenes in-game” with logs, files and animations that give you insight into the Ishimura and its crew as they approach their untimely fate.
I mention NKS here because I wrote a few scripts for it. The implementation has changed quite a bit from the site’s original inception—for the better, I might add—so I don’t know how much of my stuff is still there, though I’ve already found at least one (I’d link to it, but the whole site is in Flash… It’s the medical logs of “Jane Gauthier”). Either way, it’s a pretty cool idea.
[ADDENDUM: Some of the PR I’ve seen quoted around the web implies it’s not changed much after all, and in fact most of what will appear on the site is stuff I wrote. I guess we’ll see in the weeks to come.]
[ Dead Space / Animation / Videogames ]
There’s a new interview with me about DEAD SPACE up at Comic Book Resources today, talking about how we dealt with the comic being ‘in sync’ with the game, the challenge of making people care about a comic where most of the characters are doomed from the start, and so on. Click here to read it.
Obviously, I’m talking here mostly about the comics—but interviewer Brian LeTendre (moonlighting from Secret Identity) also interrogated DEAD SPACE producer and story guru Chuck Beaver at the same time, to ask more about the game and its story. That one should be live soon, and I’ll link to it when it’s up. [EDIT: It’s there now.]
[ Dead Space / Videogames / Interviews ]
Witness the extraordinary work of DEAD SPACE producer Chuck Beaver, who hand made the “Isaac Suit” for EA’s booth at San Diego:
Awesome stuff. (And spare a thought for poor model Jay, who upon donning the helmet found himself blind and breathing his own exhalations. Yum.)
Anyway, San Diego was great. Thanks to everyone who came out to see Ben and I for DEAD SPACE, or Chris and I for WASTELAND. Apologies to anyone who missed me—I was running back and forth between both booths all weekend, and as they were practically at opposite ends of the convention centre, it often took me a full ten minutes to get from one to the other.
One particular highlight was Chuck BB, artist of BLACK METAL (one of 2007’s best books) and our special guest illustrator for WASTELAND #20, winning an Eisner. Nice!
A reminder: this Saturday (i.e. August 2nd) I’ll be appearing at Travelling Man’s Manchester store, signing WASTELAND and anything else shoved in front of me, from 2pm till 4pm. If you’re in the area, do pop in and say hi.
[ Dead Space / Wasteland / Videogames / Appearances ]
I’m away for a family get-together this weekend, so let’s have a news round-up before I go:
THREE DAYS IN HOLLYWOOD
As reported by Variety, Jennifer Garner has signed a first-look deal at Warner Bros and one of the movies on her slate is THREE DAYS IN EUROPE—starring Garner and Hugh Jackman (!). Yes, I’m quite happy about this; no, it doesn’t mean a movie will actually get made any time soon. But here’s hoping, because that’s some pretty awesome casting.
SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD
Over on the DEAD SPACE blog, Senior Producer and game story guru Chuck Beaver appears to have let the cat out of the bag on one of those left-field projects I mentioned at the start of the year:
We did a master timeline so the Comic and Animated Feature could see the events, referencing and riffing on whatever sounded cool. Antony Johnston did the writing for the Comics and the game dialogue, so the consistency was locked up there (plus we bought him coffee during WonderCon).
Yes, it’s true; Chuck bought me far too many Grande Lattes at WonderCon.
No, wait, that’s not it… Oh, yes; I also wrote the dialogue script for the game. Which was exceedingly cool.
(You may think it’s not much to shout about, but remember all those hundreds of pages of script unaccounted for in my Q1 roundup? Yeah. There’s a lot of story and dialogue in DEAD SPACE.)
DEAD CITIES
Still with DEAD SPACE, I’ll be attending Sci-Fi London 2008 alongside EA’s Glen Schofield, the game’s Executive Producer and all-round walking injury. No idea what the schedule is yet, but I know there’s a press event or two involved, and talk of a signing at Forbidden Planet. More details when I have them.
NO TORI US*
You may have seen the blitz of news stories concerning COMIC BOOK TATTOO, the Tori Amos-themed anthology to be published this summer through Image, with a veritable plethora of quality creators contributing. Sadly, despite previous news (and my name being in the PR) I won’t be a part of the book after all. I wanted to, as I’ve been a Tori fan all the way back from CRUCIFY, but circumstances beyond my control threw a spanner in the works, and it wasn’t to be. You should buy CBT anyway, of course, because it looks bloody ace.
*Sorry.
[ Dead Space / Videogames / Three Days In Europe / Movies / Anthologies ]
Do you play videogames? Of course you do. Who doesn’t, these days?
Which is rather the point of a new feature starting on PC Gameworld, The Future Evolution of Games, to which I was asked to contribute. It’s a big feature asking what, exactly, will games be like in five or ten years’ time? How will they work? What will we play them with, or on? And so on.
There are seven other panelists besides me, all of them far more knowledgable about the reality of the games industry than I am. Which is fine, because it means I can ramble on about interactivity, high concepts and other such pet topics of mine without getting in anybody’s way.
The feature is going to run in parts over the next couple of weeks, starting tomorrow. But if you can’t wait, there’s also a direct link to my responses in full.
[ Videogames / Links / Musings ]
Archives
RSS Feed
