Gaming News - Page 1679

Many people dream of a career in making huge games like Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, but an ex-Ubisoft developer dispels the fantasy and reveals the true reality of AAA games development, and it's not so pretty.

I've often wondered what it's like working with hundreds of other developers on massive projects. In a recent blog post, an ex-Ubisoft games architect known simply as Maxime answers many of these questions and shares why he left his cushy, well-paying job at one of the most renown studios in the world so he could go indie. The result is a truly eye-opening story about the inherently flawed nature of big-budget games development.

According to Maxime, big projects are inherently unfulfilling because no one feels like they're making an real impact on a game. When there's a huge team of people, the work itself is reduced to repetitive gruntwork, severely cutting off that personal pride you feel in your creations. There's also an incredible breakdown of communication, meaning most of your team members will be ignored, regardless if they have great ideas or not. Over time, motivation wanes and the roaring inferno of passion you once felt dies down do a flickering flame...until you quit, or come to terms with your reality. Maxime compares AAA games development to an assembly line on a factory: soulless, rote, and never-ending.

Rocket League hasn't quite release on the Xbox One just yet, which means it might not be the success that developer Psyonix wants it to be. In order to attract as many new players as possible, they're bringing some exclusive Sunset Overdrive themed stuff into the game.

It might not be much, but they've added in an Overcharge boost which is surprisingly delightful sounding, and the Fizzie car topper, shown above. "In short, Rocket League would naturally fit with the world of Sunset Overdrive," says Marcus Smith, the creative director for Sunset Overdrive. One might be about a hipster zombie apocalypse and the other about vehicle-borne soccer (everyone not in NA), they're both whimsical and quite entertaining with their particular styles.

The Sunset Overdrive flair is the latest exclusive content to appear for the Xbox One, following on the footsteps of Halo and Gears of War themed exclusive in-game items.

The sheer, calculated terror of being hunted by a sleek and cunning Xenomorph in Alien Isolation proved that Creative Assembly is at the top of the survival genre. But what if the devs applied that macabre mastery over to a new IP like, say, Jurassic Park?

In a recent NeoGAF post, forum user lowhighkang_LHK pitched a deliciously devious premise: Creative Assembly should make a Jurassic Park survival game. The user goes on to justify just how brilliant the game could be, weaving in other games like the brutality of Dino Crisis on the original PlayStation to illustrate certain points. Just about everyone on the site agrees, and if enough people talk about it, maybe Creative Assembly will catch wind of the hype.

Just think about the already-existing parallels between the Xenomorph and Jurassic Park's velociraptors: both are extremely intelligent, and will adapt to their environments while learning from mistakes. Both are ruthless and animalistic, inspiring a kind of innate fear that only true predators can.

A new trailer from Bethesda shows us an inside look into some of the features that'll be in the upcoming Thieves Guild DLC pack for Elder Scrolls Online.

And it's definitely good to be bad. Larceny never looked so lucrative, and who knew that you could get away with so much. But then again, pick-pocketing even has it's challenges in the Elder Scrolls universe too. And in this expansion you'll have a new zone, new story-based content and a 12-player mode, presumably to test your pick-pocketing and robbery skills against others.

The news release makes it sound like such a glorious occupation, "As their newest recruit, you'll sneak along rooftops, steal from the shadows, and recover lost treasures to help to restore the guild's reputation." As if you'll quickly become the anti-hero. But of course, let's have you decide how great it is. The new features of the upcoming DLC are listed below.

The PC specification requirements for Tom Clancy's The Division seemed to have leaked to the Internet thanks to Ubisoft Russia. And the kicker is that they don't seen ti require much, even at the recommended specs.

So essentially you need a PC that has a discreet GPU in order to play it, and it should likely perform somewhat well. And we've seen that there are a fantastic array of options to change, meaning it could scale up and down the range of available hardware. Once we get our hands-on it and start testing, we'll take a look at just how good this beta can look. Specs needed are below.

Minimum Specifications

IO Interactive's lead render programmer Jonas Meyer will be hosting a talk at this year's GDC in March focusing on Hitman's DirectX 12-powered renderer. Though there've been whispers here and there about the upcoming stealth game supporting Microsoft's new API, this is the only positive proof we know of.

The talk -- named "Advanced Graphics Techniques Tutorial Day: Rendering Hitman with DirectX 12" -- is said to offer a deep look into how the renderer works and how it's used with Hitman specifically. The goal: teaching the audience "how to write a fast and efficient DirectX 12 / Vulkan engine, and how to use the new [hardware] features to implement new graphics techniques", indicating Vulkan support could be in the mix, too.

Cloud Imperium Games has released a unique behind the scenes look at Gillian Anderson in her role as Captain McLaren in Star Citizen.

It's kind of exciting to see her in a role that's different than what we might usually see her in. And even in the mostly sterile and bland production environment she brings her character alive in some pretty fascinating ways. And really, it's great to watch her covered in dots acting very serious.

Chris Roberts has recruited some of the very best actors in the business, reaching out to the A-list to hopefully make the single-player campaign of Star Citizen into more than just the typical AAA experience. There's already plenty of criticism concerning whether or not it'll ever be completed, though Alpha 2.1 has at least provided a great glimpse into what to expect in the future.

Finally Nintendo has released a video showing us how the cool Wolf Link amiibo is going to work with the new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess coming out on the Wii U.

We already knew that the figure would unlock exclusive content, thanks to the listing on Amazon, but now we know how it works and we get to take a quick glimpse at the exclusive "Cave of Shadow" area.

That dungeon gives players access to a series of challenges that require you to use Wolf Link and Midna's abilities to defeat an increasingly larger wave of enemies. Once the challenge is completed, your results are recorded in the amiibo and you can go back to try to beat your previous record.

New details concerning upcoming free content for Star Wars Battlefront seem to have emerged via a video from EA Brazil. According to the video, we can expect a lot of new content.

Among that content should be a new map set on Tatooine, a few new outfits for Luke Skywalker and his sister Leia and even some new game modes that have been heavily requested by fans; private matches. There'll also be daily challenges and even community events hosted by EA themselves.

Star Wars Battlefront was a little light on content when it originally released, which was off-putting to fans who wanted, and expected, a wider variety of maps, weapons and game modes to keep things interesting in the long run. Even a few months after it was released, there was hardly anyone playing, which speaks to the lack of interesting content. It just got old really quickly, despite being the first Star Wars game in some time.

With EA's Star Wars: Battlefront reboot being soulless and hollow, gamers have often thought about how different things would be if Free Radical's Battlefront III sequel hadn't been cancelled. Now we can sate some of our curiosity as a prototype for the scrapped shooter has been leaked online, showing off some key features of a game that never was.

New info on the Battlefront III prototype was originally shared on a Reddit thread, and users have successfully booted up the leaked files to reveal what looks to be authentic gameplay.

The build can only be played on special modded and developer Xbox 360 hardware, however, so you'll need some specific gear to try it out.