We all know today is the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. For those that enjoy the series this is a landmark day. But, even for gamers who couldn’t care less about the game, it’s still an important release. The franchise has set ridiculous records for several years and it’s expected this one will be no different. Year-to-date, Halo 4 has the biggest sales record, $220 million in 24 hours. Players committed 31.4 million hours in the first five days. Big numbers, but not as big Halo 3 or Halo Reach in their day. What are the odds I’ll be opening next week’s VGQH with similar stats from CoD: BlOps2? We’ll see, in the meantime, news:
As you’d expect, more information is still coming about Grand Theft Auto V. This flurry will probably keep going another week or so, then die down until January or February when they get a lock on the release date and start hyping again. We’ve already seen that players will be taking the roles of three separate characters, but Dan Houser of Rockstar has let slip a little bit of what that means. Apparently players will be seeing the story from the perspectives of both the hero and the villain. But who’s who? According to Houser, “It felt like it was going to be a real narrative strength: you get to play the protagonist and the antagonist in the same story.”
He also made a good point about why the game is set in America again, instead of a different country, “You could make a great game set in Amsterdam. Would it be GTA? I don’t know. We haven’t done it, so I can’t really offer a comment or an opinion on it. We’ve avoided it because we think that part of the experience of GTA is its engagement with America, or American media, American movies, American culture.” Which makes a degree of sense; certainly the spoofing of Americana is a vital part the franchise, which may or may not translate well into Swedish or South African culture. But, am I the only one who remembers GTA London on PSOne?
The last update for GTA V relates to the size of Los Santos. Last week we learned it would be larger than the worlds in Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV, and San Andreas combined. That’s now been clarified to mean at least five times larger than RDR alone. They’ll definitely be needing to bring back the taxi function again, as traversing that world would just be ridiculous.
Bioware’s new studio director, Yanick Roy, somehow managed to talk about Mass Effect 4 without actually saying much of anything at all. Apparently the team behind ME3‘s multiplayer will be driving development, with Bioware Edmonton supporting. Casey Hudson will remain “the Executive Producer, but he will have a Project Director under him, working in Montreal, leading [the] development team and making day-to-day decisions for the game.” As for story and gameplay, they’re “exploring new directions,” but “expect the pillars the franchise is known for to be fully intact… including diverse alien races, a huge galaxy to explore, and of course rich, cinematic storytelling.” On the technical side of things, it is being developed on EA’s Frostbite “as its foundation, enhanced by many of the systems that the Dragon Age III team has already spent a lot of time building.” No word on story, characters, or release date of course.
According to Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, the Crysis series will end with the third game, which will conclude Prophet’s story. But, much like Mass Effect, the franchise isn’t complete. The next game hasn’t even entered pre-production, but it won’t be Crysis 4. Yerli indicates the new game will be so “radically different” that calling it Crysis 4 would be misleading. Of course, this is the same guy that said all of their games would go free-to-play after Crysis 3. Does that mean this radically different game will be him putting his money where his mouth is? Maybe not. He says they “do have a plan for a F2P version of Crysis, but how this looks and when this will be done, whether this is the next one or the next next one, is to be decided…. But we have a very clear picture of how this will look in a transitional period where retail and free-to-play can coexist for one title.” Interesting. Crysis 3 is coming in February. I doubt we’ll hear much more about this until after the release.
Square Enix has revealed the collector’s edition for the Tomb Raider reboot and this one looks pretty good. The packaging will be a tin box, made to appear as salvage from Lara’s ship, the Endurance. It also comes with a Paly Arts Kai Lara Croft figure, featuring over forty points of articulation and four sets of hands (bow and arrow, shotgun, handgun, and climbing axe). You’ll also get a map of the game’s island with a cover art poster on the reverse side, a 5×7 lithograph, three iron-on badges from in game icons, a CD soundtrack, and a DLC weapon pack. See, that’s a pretty thorough collector’s edition. It comes at a price though, $100. Both editions are available for preorder and scheduled for release March 5, 2013.
The first DLC chapter for Capcom’s upcoming Devil May Cry reboot has been announced, despite the game not even releasing until January 15th. “Virgil’s Downfall” will add another playable chapter of the story and will cast the player not as Dante, but his brother, Virgil. He’ll have his own weapons and combos in this extra chapter. The official price will be $8.99, but preorders from GameStop will get the content for free. An official release date for the add-on was not announced, but it is expected soon after January 15th, possibly even day and date with the full game. If you have strong feelings about Capcom and on-disc DLC, this is probably your cue to air those grievances.
The long-awaited introduction of PS Plus to Vita will be happening next week on November 19th. This will come with the update to Vita firmware 2.00, which will also include an email app, upgrades to the browser, and wireless transfer from PC to Vita. Following the firmware upgrade, Tuesday’s store update will offer plenty of great content to PS+ subscribers (yes, one subscription works for PS3 and Vita). The very first titles to join the Instant Game Collection will be Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Jet Set Radio HD, WipEout 2048, Gravity Rush, Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack!, and Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (PSP). Now I’m not quite sure how to read that, but my interpretation is PSP owning Plus members could actually get War of the Lions for their system even if they don’t own a Vita. I’m awaiting confirmation on that assumption.
