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05-17-2006, 01:35 PM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR MAY 15, 2006
Part 1 of 2
Callis: New Galactica 'Remorseless'
James Callis, who plays the nefarious Baltar in SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming third season will build on the events of last season's shocking finale. "In the upcoming episodes, the simplest way to explain what happens is that the wheat is separated from the chaff," Callis said in an interview at this month's Saturn Awards in Universal City, Calif. "I'm not actually sure at this moment which I belong to, which bothers me, whether I'm the wheat or the chaff. All I know is that we are necessarily separated."
At the end of the second season, the last surviving humans found themselves trying to eke out an existence on the rugged planet of New Caprica, when the Cylons invaded and occupied them. Callis agreed that the new season has drawn comparisons to France under the Nazi occupation of World War II. "And the first few scripts of this particular season are phenomenal," he said. "And far darker and more gritty and more worrying than anything that you have seen before. I really am not just saying that. I remember just reading it going, 'My God almighty, this is remorseless and relentless.' And as such should be very gripping television. Even though it's very ... I think the word is dystopic." Galactica returns with new episodes in October. —Patrick Lee, News Editor
Knight Rider Rides Again
The Weinstein Co. is developing a movie based on the '80s TV series Knight Rider, Variety reported. The company signed a deal for the rights from creator Glen A. Larson, who also was behind such titles as Magnum, P.I. and The Fall Guy.
The original show, which ran on NBC from 1982-86, starred David Hasselhoff as a cop who gets a new face, a new name and crime-fighting gadgetry, including K.I.T.T., a talking Trans Am with artificial intelligence.
David Price, who brought the project to TWC, is co-producing. Larson told the trade paper that he sees the feature version of Knight as a potential franchise property.
NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Abrams: No Alias Film For Now
J.J. Abrams, who created ABC's Alias, is now winding down the spy series and launching his own movie-directing career; he told SCI FI Wire that he doesn't think there's going to be a big-screen version of the TV show, at least not yet. Speaking to reporters in a conference call to promote his current movie, Mission: Impossible III, Abrams said that he hopes to continue to work in both movies and television and added that tying up all of the loose ends on Alias is important to him. "I've got to say it's the only show that really needs to tie up everything," Abrams said about the show, which ends its five-year run with a two-hour finale on May 22. "This is something we have been anticipating for a while. I think it's the right time to end the series."
Abrams said that he will miss Alias star Jennifer Garner and the rest of the cast. "It's definitely bittersweet for a lot of obvious reasons," he said. "It's an incredible cast and crew, so we'll miss them, but I hope to work with all of them again soon. But in terms of the end of the year, it's actually a really good finale. I think it's incredibly satisfying. It connects all these pieces that have been in the Alias universe from the beginning, and I'm really proud of the work that Jeff Pinkner, Drew Goddard and the other amazing writers in the show have done, not just this year, but building up to the finale, which I think is going to be a really, really powerful and exciting ending."
As far as bringing it to the big screen, Abrams sighed. "I think at the moment, right now Alias is sort of going to rest in just the right way, so I think that it's the right way for it to go out." Mission: Impossible III is now playing. Alias airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Mike Szymanski
M:I III Builds On Alias
Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams told SCI FI Wire that the film features many sequences that he always wanted to do in his ABC spy series Alias, but couldn't because of time and budgets. "One of the things we did in the movie was this Vatican break-in sequence, which requires so many pieces," Abrams said in a conference call. "It's very visually intricate, an intricately told sequence, and in television you just never have the time to put those kind of pieces that you need to really tell it all properly."
Mission: Impossible III, the third installment in the action-adventure franchise, also features an elaborate action sequence on a a bridge and a helicopter chase through a windmill farm. "The Shanghai jump [from one skyscraper to another], the race, the whole factory sequence, each one of them was a dream version of the kind of thing we might conceive of doing on Alias but never have the time or budget to properly execute," Abrams said.
MI: III stars Tom Cruise, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It is now playing. —Mike Szymanski
M:I III Underwhelms In Debut
Mission: Impossible III, the first big action film of the summer, opened disappointingly at the weekend box office in North America, despite a whirlwind publicity tour by star Tom Cruise, the Reuters news service reported.
The spy thriller, from director J.J. Abrams, sold $48 million worth of tickets in its first three days in theaters across the United States and Canada. Paramount, which distributed the movie, told the news service that the figure was within its expectations of a bow in the $50 million range, but it was gratified by the international showing, where it earned $70 million after opening virtually everywhere except Japan and India. The movie did bomb in Germany, where Cruise has historically had a tough time, the studio said. The movie cost just under $150 million to make, Reuters reported. The two previous installments opened in the $70 million range, after adjusting for inflation.
Among the other films opening over the weekend, An American Haunting disappointed, debuting in third place with $6.4 million in domestic ticket sales.
Cruise's M:I III Stunts Were Scary
Mission: Impossible III co-star Ving Rhames told SCI FI Wire that the scariest parts of the film's production involved star Tom Cruise, who insisted on doing his own stunts. Rhames, who plays computer expert Luther Strickell, said that he was standing next to Cruise in a scene calling for the actor to jump off a skyscraper in Shanghai. "When Tom jumps off of that hundred-story building, I think that it was great," Rhames said in a conference call interview. "I was on the roof with him, and seeing him do that—and he did it anywhere from six to 10 times—I was pretty amazed with him and that he wanted to do it more. So that, to me, just watching them shoot that, was probably the one that touched me the most."
Rhames said that he has seen Cruise do stunts that most actors would pass on to a stunt person, and it made him a bit squeamish. "With Tom jumping off of the roof, I was a little more nervous than the others," he said. "Since I was there it brought feelings of—people don't like to ever talk about this—but what happens if a stunt goes wrong? That's always something to think about. The more you do a stunt, the more you risk something happening. The stunt guys on this were an excellent team, and we were very fortunate, but people don't realize that there is the possibility that something could happen."
That fear also gnawed at director J.J. Abrams, who shot the movie in locations around the world, including Berlin, Los Angeles and cities in Virginia and in China and Italy. "There are many, many visual-effects shots in this movie and special effects and stunts," Abrams said. Even so, Abrams said: "We finished ahead of schedule and under budget, and for me it was totally the result of having a crew that was just hard-working and dedicated and great at what they do. And my TV training has gotten me used to limited time and budget." (Abrams co-created ABC's Alias and Lost.) Mission: Impossible III was the number-one film at the box office this past weekend and is now playing. —Mike Szymanski
McKellen Praises Da Vinci's Howard
Ian McKellen, who plays Grail scholar Sir Leigh Teabing in Ron Howard's upcoming The Da Vinci Code, told SCI FI Wire that he was extremely impressed with the helmer of Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. "Everyone who worked on Da Vinci Code will tell you that Ron Howard is an almost ideal director in that what he promises you is what happens," McKellen said in an interview. "When he says you're going to start working on a specific day, you do. When he says, 'We're going to approach this in a particular way,' that's what happens. Nothing is left to chance. I think his years in the business have taught him that the more efficient you are, the less you take advantage of people's goodwill, and the more you explain to them exactly what you're up to, the better they will eventually be and the more relaxed everyone will be in getting on with fulfilling their particular part of the job. That's what I found."
McKellen co-stars with Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon and Audrey Tatou as Sophie Neveu as they investigate the murder of Neveu's grandfather, killed at the Louvre in a crime possibly tied to protecting the secrets of Christianity's roots.
"I can pick that movie out from every other movie I've ever made," said McKellen, who also appears in this summer's X-Men: The Last Stand. "It was the best organized, the best run. It was like riding in a Rolls Royce, fantastic. That Ron seems to have brought it off is an added delight, of course. Although Ron worries a great deal, he keeps his worries to himself, and it was nice to see him smile as much as he did on this shoot, because I think he realized it was all going well. He's a very modest man." The Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown's controversial best-seller, opens May 19.
McKellen Downplays Da Vinci Flap
Ian McKellen, who co-stars in the upcoming religious thriller The Da Vinci Code, told SCI FI Wire that he's well aware of the controversy surrounding the film and the Dan Brown book on which it's based, but thinks the controversy has been blown out of proportion. McKellen co-stars as Sir Leigh Teabing, the Holy Grail expert who figures prominently in the action as Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou) try to solve the murder of Neveu's grandfather. The murder took place at the Louvre in Paris, a crime possibly tied to protecting the secrets of Christianity's roots and the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
"We went to Lincolnshire, which stood in for Westminster Abbey, because the Abbey didn't want us filming there," McKellen said in an interview. "It would have disrupted their tourist take. I think that was the problem. So we went off to a quieter place called Lincolnshire, and there there was a demonstration against the filming in the hallowed portals of the cathedral, but the objections were only from one person who was dressed as a nun. And I said 'dressed as a nun' advisedly, because apparently the outfit she was wearing wasn't actually a nun's outfit. It just looked like one, and she'd borrowed it from some fancy-dress store. So that's the only person I know who's objected to this film, a fake nun. So I really can't help you."
McKellen added: "The Vatican has kept rather quiet and hasn't made an official statement." (Though the church hasn't said anything officially, several Vatican officials have vocally denounced Brown's book and the movie, and others are calling for a boycott because of the book's and movie's supposedly anti-Christian theories.)
"Opus Dei has also been rather quiet about it," McKellen added, referring to the secretive Catholic order depicted in the novel and film, which has urged unsuccessfully to have a disclaimer added to the movie. "They don't want to draw attention to themselves. They just hope this whole thing will pass over. I accused Sony of having organized all this opposition to the film in order to get it onto the front pages of the newspapers, which is what has happened, but I don't think anybody could have organized this free publicity. It's brilliant." The Da Vinci Code opens May 19.
McKellen Croaks In Flushed
Ian McKellen told SCI FI Wire that he voices a rich and powerful amphibian in the upcoming animated movie Flushed Away. The Aardman production also features the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Andy Serkis, Jean Reno and Bill Nighy.
"Flushed Away is done by the company who did Wallace & Gromit, which won the Oscar this year, and it's about a rat played by Hugh Jackman who gets flushed down the loo in London," McKellen said in an interview. "He discovers that he's in the sewers, which are run by the Toad, which is my part. He's a disappointed man, but cruelly rich and powerful. More than that I can't tell you, really."
Asked what type of acting—stage, screen, radio—voice-over performances most resemble, McKellen laughed and replied: "Overacting is what they're all about. Well, I don't know. They're closest to radio, of course. You put everything into your voice, and you're being filmed while you do it, videoed while you're doing it, so that the people who are actually making the puppets—the animation and the picture that goes with your voice—can match your mouth movements and, I dare say, some of your body movements, if they want to."
McKellen added: "So you're part of the process, but you're not in charge. So it's an odd feeling. I don't enjoy it anywhere near as much as I enjoy more conventional acting. I thought I might get more involved in [the] process than actually is required of you. You're just there to give the voice, and the voice comes first, then the picture. So I thought I was going to be matching myself to a picture and imitating what had already been decided by somebody else. But I don't know. We'll see what it is that turns out then." Flushed Away opens Nov. 3.
McKellen Praises X3's Ratner
Ian McKellen, who again plays Magneto in the upcoming SF sequel X-Men: The Last Stand, told SCI FI Wire that director Brett Ratner had his work cut out for him coming in at the 11th hour to helm the big-budget, F/X-heavy film. Ratner stepped in after Matthew Vaughn exited the project abruptly; Vaughn himself had replaced previous X-Men helmer Bryan Singer, who chose to forgo the third installment in favor of directing Superman Returns.
"Bryan Singer left the project rather late in the day, and Brett Ratner didn't replace him until eight weeks before they started shooting," McKellen said in an interview. "Well, you normally need eight months to set up a movie, not eight weeks. So it's no wonder I did my last bit of Magneto [the first week of May], and the film is going to be released in three weeks' time. I mean, poor Brett Ratner was up against it and was running against the wind the whole time. Well, that's a happy ending, because everyone is extremely pleased with X-Men 3. So that's worked out."
McKellen had been eager to reunite with Singer, who'd directed him in Apt Pupil and the first two X-Men features. But he added that it wasn't a tragedy that it didn't pan out this time. "I'd worked with Bryan on three movies, so not to make a fourth wasn't a desperate disappointment to me," McKellen said. "Anyway, I assumed he was going to give me a nice, juicy part in Superman Returns. But, no, it didn't turn out to be that way. But we're still good friends."
As for Ratner, McKellen said: "Brett couldn't be further from Bryan, really. Brett is a party animal. And that's a compliment, because I think a director who can't hold a decent party probably won't be a good director. They're very similar qualities. You have to be able to look after all your guests and make sure they've got the drink they need and that if they're vegetarian, they're not given chicken. Do you know what I mean? You've got to really look after people and treat them all as individuals. People who can run good parties can often direct well, and Brett is of that sort. He's always full of energy. He's always enthusiastic and he will not let go—and he's got this in common with Bryan Singer—until he's got what he wants. And when he's got what he wants, you can all heave a sigh of relief, because he really will have it. Then it will be a question of cutting it all together. So, no complaints." X-Men: The Last Stand opens on May 26.
Wright: Expect More Stargate
Brad Wright—co-executive producer of SCI FI Channel's original series Stargate SG-1 http://www.scifi.com/stargate/ and Stargate Atlantis http://www.scifi.com/atlantis/ —told SCI FI Wire he's confident that the longstanding franchise could spin off more series and even a feature film. Projects in the works include a third TV series, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and a movie, he said in an interview.
"What we've built is now bigger than all of us," Wright said. "Even if I were to not do the movie, I know somebody is going to do a Stargate movie. It's the second largest franchise for MGM next to Bond. So it's got significant brand potential, and by two series doing as well as they are and a game coming out, that could really, really, really brand the show in a big way. That's what they like in this business: a larger franchise with so many legs to it that it could go into the future for years to come."
The franchise began with the 1994 feature film Stargate, followed by SG-1 on Showtime in 1996. That series moved to SCI FI in 2002 and will begin its unprecedented 10th season on July 14, becoming the longest-running SF show in American television history. Atlantis spun off of SG-1 in 2004 and kicks off its third season also on July 14.
"I know there will be a movie made," Wright said. "I know there will likely be another series made, whether I make it or not. It's just too good a vehicle for storytelling. This is exactly what Jonathan [Glassner] and I recognized 10 years ago, when we created the series. The Stargate is dramatically, and in terms of storytelling, a perfect vehicle from which to launch characters and tell stories. That's why it will go for years to come." —Ian Spelling
USA Series Back For Summer
USA Network announced that its supernatural series The Dead Zone returns on June 18 at 10 p.m. ET/PT with a fifth season that will feature guest stars Sean Patrick Flanery, Martin Donovan, Kristen Dalton, Dedee Pfeiffer and Ben Cotton.
Meanwhile, The 4400 comes back for a third season on June 11 as a two-hour special, starting at 9 p.m. ET/PT, and will air in its normal timeslot Sundays at 9 p.m. starting June 18.
On June 4, USA will air The 4400 Special: Unlocking the Secrets, a one-hour clip episode that will catch viewers up on the story so far. It airs at 10 p.m.
USA is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Who's Cybermen Lighten Up
LONDON—Doctor Who http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ producer Russell T. Davies told SCI FI Wire that writer Tom MacRae's original story for the Cybermen episodes was much darker than the version that debuted on Britain's BBC1 on May 13. In the two-art story "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel," the Doctor (David Tennant), Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and Mickey (Noel Clarke) find themselves trapped on an alternate Earth where a mad scientist is trying to transform the human race into bio-mechanical creatures.
The original version featured a number of different elements, including a series of "Body Shops" in which wealthy citizens could order "upgrades" for various body parts. That process leads to the ultimate upgrade, in which the brains of unwitting victims are placed within an indestructible steel shell, creating the Cybermen. "Part of my problem with it was I didn't believe it," Davies said in an interview. "We were trying to create a world where there were Body Shops on every corner where people got a new arm, and I didn't believe that, and I've never believed it. I think you have to be practical and honest about these things, and I always used to have trouble with Steve Austin's bionic arm, because it's no good just having a robot arm; it's what it's attached to, so it could just be ripped off. So it wasn't the gore and the darkness about it. I just didn't believe it. What is the point of going for a new arm? It simply doesn't work."
The alternate-world versions of several key characters were also originally quite different from their counterparts. "I think it was one of those great lessons about the freedom of SF, as well as its greatest dangers, because when you're creating a parallel world, you suddenly get excited by saying everyone can wear eyepatches," Davies said. "Actually, I think the key to a parallel world is making it very similar to the modern world, so Pete and Jackie and Mickey, even in the parallel world, are very similar to their real-world counterparts."
Davies added: "The danger is to make the characters too silly and different. There's something very grotesque and almost pantomime-ish and too inbred about doing that, so a very faithful viewer may enjoy seeing the complete opposite of Mickey, whereas the casual viewer is not interested in that. They just want a good story, and a good story is more about meeting yourself. What's the point of meeting a character that's so different? You might as well introduce a new character. So it took us a long time to get the temperature right of the series, to tell what sort of parallel world story you're going to tell. So that's why the process of rewriting the story took a long time." The Cybermen episodes aired on British television May 13 and 20.
The first season of the new Doctor Who airs in the United States Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on SCI FI Channel. —Joe Nazzaro
Cybermen Rise In Who
LONDON—Graeme Harper, director of the second-season Doctor Who http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ episodes featuring the return of the Cybermen, told SCI FI Wire that he was disappointed when the first image broke prematurely, spoiling some of the surprise. The robotic Cybermen, a favorite of previous incarnations of the venerable British SF TV series, reappear in the upcoming episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel," which will debut on BBC1 in the United Kingdom on May 13 and 20.
"Some of it upset me," Harper said in an interview. "Not personally, but I was trying not to give too much away early in the storytelling. This was a new breed of Cybermen, so I planned to show a bit of eyes or mouth, maybe a little bit of hand or metal, or some out-of-focus blurs; just a hint so you know they're coming eventually. Once you finally see them, you see them for the rest of the episode and the following episode, so I wanted to leave it as long as possible for the audience to get their first taste of Cybermen."
As it turned out, faced with a possible leak of information, the BBC was forced to leak an official publicity photo several months before the episodes were due to air. "They told me the problem with last season was that some information and photographs got out to the press, whether it was a monster or an actor or a design or whatever," Harper recalled. "And [producers] Russell [T. Davies] and Phil [Collinson] were upset that they were crappy photographs. They decided, 'Look, if they're going to be stolen and shown, at least make them good photographs, so we'll give out the best publicity shot we've got and let the audience see it, and they won't be able to top that.' So that's what they did. Now, eight or nine months later, the show is finally going out, and hopefully people will have an image in their brain, but won't remember too much detail, so I'll still be able to tell my story properly."
In "Rise of the Cybermen," the TARDIS is stranded on an alternate Earth, where the Doctor (David Tennant), Rose (Billie Piper) and Mickey (Noel Clarke) discover that a scientist (played by Roger Lloyd-Pack) is making plans to transform humanity into a race of bio-mechanical hybrids.
According to Harper, who also directed a number of Doctor Who episodes for the original series in the 1980s, one of his biggest priorities with the Cybermen two-parter was to create a sense of fear. "When I used to watch Doctor Who, I wasn't a child, but I did get worried and scared by some of what I was watching," he said. "I'm not sure I hid behind the sofa , but I wanted to get back to that idea of a family saying, 'Oh, God, what's going to happen next?' and keep everyone on the edge of their seat. So I'm hoping that's what we achieved."
The first season of the new Doctor Who currently airs Friday nights on SCI FI Channel at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Joe Nazzaro
WoW Heads To Movies
The hit online game World of Warcraft is heading to the big screen, as Warner Brothers-based Legendary Pictures has picked up film rights and will develop the project with game publisher Blizzard Entertainment, which is owned by Vivendi, Variety reported.
World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing fantasy game, has more than 6 million subscribers who not only team up to go on quests, but also interact and form deep social relationships, the trade paper reported.
The only other video games that rival World of Warcraft are the Grand Theft Auto and Halo franchises. Universal and Fox are revising a script for Microsoft's Halo movie, with hopes to release it in the summer of 2007, though they may have to push back that date since the movie doesn't even have a director yet. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
E3: Gates Offers Halo 3 Peek
Microsoft chief Bill Gates personally unveiled the much-anticipated trailer for the upcoming Xbox 360 game Halo 3, the final chapter in the best-selling SF game trilogy and Microsoft's most popular gaming franchise to date, in a news conference in Los Angeles May 9.
The Halo 3 trailer showed Master Chief, the series' main character, approaching a cliff overlooking a giant alien crater on Earth as Covenant Banshees and Ghosts flew overhead and gathered over the glowing center of the crater. Though there was no official explanation, it looked like foreshadowing for a massive assault that would take place on the Earth's surface, something fans have been looking forward to and actually had hoped would happen in the previous installment, Halo 2.
Gates introduced the trailer coyly, interrupting Peter Moore, the software giant's corporate vice president of interactive entertainment business, as he was wrapping up the pre-Electronic Entertainment Expo conference. "Actually, Peter, as we walk offstage, I think there's something that would be fun to show these people," Gates said with a smile. "We've got a little in-game footage of one of the games that they'll probably recognize."
The trailer also featured an appearance from Cortana, the "smart" artificial intelligence guide to Master Chief; the AI spoke to Master Chief and said, "I know you, your past, your future."
The trailer ended with "This is the way the world ends," followed by the slogan "Finish the Fight 2007," which is something Halo fans have been waiting for since the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2 in 2004.
Halo 3 developer Bungie has not given an official release date, but industry insiders believe Halo 3 will premiere sometime in the spring of 2007, coinciding with the release of an upcoming Halo live-action feature film. Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) is producing the movie. —Casey Lynch
E3: Zelda Demo'd For Wii
Nintendo announced that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the latest iteration of the popular video-game franchise, will be released on the same day as the new Nintendo Wii console, in versions for the Wii and for the GameCube gaming system. A second Zelda title, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, will debut soon after for the company's DS hand-held system.
Executives demonstrated The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess at a news conference in advance of this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, showing off the Wii controller interface with real-time gameplay. In a scene in a dark dungeon with a scaled-down difficulty level, a fairy served as a proxy to access menus and select items. All long-distance weapons, such as bows, were accessed via the Wii remote, doing away with the old inverted-control scheme and putting the power to point and shoot in gamer's hands in a realistic way. "It feels like you're actually aiming with a bow," said George Harrison, Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing. The new controller also features a speaker that adds sound effects, such as the noise of a bow's firing or the sound of an arrow's traveling from controller to screen.
Nintendo also unveiled other titles that will be coming to the Wii, including Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The company also showed off titles designed for the Nintendo DS, including New Super Mario Bros., which will hit stores next week. Also announced for the DS were Starfox DS, Pokemon Blue Mystery Dungeon, Yoshi's Island and a revamped version of Final Fantasy III, exclusively for the DS. —Casey Lynch
E3: New PS3 Controller Revealed
Sony unveiled a new controller for such upcoming fantasy games as the aerial combat title Warhawk, which will be playable on the company's next-generation PlayStation 3, at a news conference in advance of this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
Phil Harrison, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, demonstrated the new controller, which will give the player the ability to control the sophisticated aerial maneuvering of Warhawk's futuristic combat jets in real time. "This standard-feature controller will be packed in with every PlayStation 3," he said. "The controller is standard, with no external sensor required, so I can move this controller in six degrees of freedom using my hands as the entire input device."
Executives also demonstrated the controller and played teaser clips for such upcoming PlayStation 3 titles as Armored Core 4, Gundam: Mobile Suit and Sonic the Hedgehog. Sony also unveiled a playable version of Resistance: Fall of Man, a first-person shooter whose premise is that World War II never happened and that aliens invaded instead. —Casey Lynch
E3: New Fantasy Titles Unveiled
Square Enix unveiled three new titles for the popular role-playing game Final Fantasy at a news conference in advance of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Versus and Final Fantasy XIII Agito. Final Fantasy XIII will premiere exclusively for the next-generation Sony PlayStation 3. Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase didn't say on which consoles the other two titles would debut, but said FF XIII Agito would be released exclusively for a next-generation mobile phone.
All three of the new Fantasy titles are a part of a larger project called Fabula Nova Crystallis. Though the three games share similar mythologies, they have nothing else in common. Square Enix also confirmed that other Fantasy titles—Before Crisis, Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, all of which are based on Final Fantasy VII—will premiere before spring 2007. "The Fabula Nova Crystallis project will have numerous but unrelated titles that run parallel with each other," Kitase said.
Kitase added: "We were originally planning Final Fantasy XIII for the PlayStation 2. After seeing the PlayStation 3 at 2005 E3 we completely abandoned programming and drastically changed our plan and began work on XIII for the PlayStation 3."
The company showed pre-rendered clips with detailed graphics and intensive real-time fighting not often found in Final Fantasy titles. The franchise is best known for its RPG and turn-based elements, but the iterations of Final Fantasy XIII will focus more on real-time combat. Kitase explained that a new battle system and engine he called the "White Engine" have been developed to run the "extreme action" elements of the game.
Tetsuya Nomura, director of Final Fantasy XIII Versus, said that the team that developed Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a recently released DVD, and the Kingdom Hearts games will also develop the Fantasy XIII.
"As you can see, the pre-rendered clips are beautiful," Nomura said. "But the gameplay will be just as stunning with the Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts team. It will present a vision we have pursued for a long time."
Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, said, "When it comes to next-generation gaming, we at Square Enix believe we have the responsibility to provide the highest-quality product, and we feel Square Enix are the only ones to complete that mission." Since its introduction in 1987, the Final Fantasy franchise has sold more than 65 million units. —Casey Lynch
E3: Quake Wars Requires Teams
Activision unveiled a playable demo of Quake Wars: Enemy Territory, the latest title in the popular first-person-shooter franchise, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 11. Quake Wars is a multiplayer game in which up to 32 players can square off against each other on two teams: the human Global Defense Force and the alien Strogg race.
Jerry Keehan, a designer at ID Software, told SCI FI Wire that Quake Wars improves on the Quake formula by requiring the creative use of teamwork. "I really like the strategy approach to solve missions," Keehan said. "You have to have teamwork and use every class of character to successfully complete the missions."
Each race has five different classes, including soldiers, engineers and medics, each of which has individual and specific functions that are critical to each team's success or failure. The demo was played on a map called "Valley" and featured 12-on-12 teams, where the GDF had to complete four missions that included building a bridge and dismantling an enemy shield generator. The GDF team had to work together, using medics to keep its engineers alive to build the bridge and hack the generator computer while soldiers fought off the enemy Strogg team, which worked hard to stop the GDF.
The story takes place in the Quake universe before the events in Quake 2 and 4 and before the human invasion of the Strogg world, Stroggos. The Strogg have invaded Earth, and Quake Wars centers around the fight between the Strogg and the GDF for the planet.
The game includes a wide variety of easily usable vehicles at the disposal of both teams, such as tanks, ATVs and 'copters. "The vehicles are one of my favorite features," Keehan said in an interview. "In some games, the AI control the vehicles. In Quake Wars you're totally in control of your vehicles. You can drop artillery and call in tanks. The different classes also really make the game fun, playing them and learning to manage them and keep the right type of characters in the right place at the right time. If you get your team to a rally point, but you don't have an engineer, you can't perform the action, so you're stuck. So there are all kinds of interesting ways to approach both offensive and defensive strategy."
Quake Wars: Enemy Territory is slated for release in the fall exclusively for the PC. —Casey Lynch
E3: Marvel Alliance Kicks Off
Activision kicked off its upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance game on May 11 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles with an in-depth demonstration showing off 20 playable heroes among the 140 well-known characters from the Marvel Comics universe. Popular characters such as Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor and Wolverine can be combined in customizable teams that support up to four players in offline and online play.
Dan Vondrek, project lead on Marvel Ultimate Alliance, told SCI FI Wire that players can pick their own "dream teams" of heroes and that each character has been individually modeled and equipped with signature combat moves and fighting styles. "Since a character like Thor has a totally different attack than Spider-Man, we wanted the game to reflect those obvious differences," Vondrek said. "If you've always wanted play with one combination or another, now you can do it in Marvel Alliance. And since each character has a unique set of powers, it deepens the game experience as players will take the time to learn to master all of the differences between playing, say, Captain America and Spider-Man."
The demonstration included a lengthy look at several levels, including combat on a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, on the planet of the Skrulls and underwater in the city of Atlantis. The demo also highlighted the effect that each character and each player decision has on the Marvel universe.
"The player determines the fate of the Marvel universe," Vondrek said in an interview. "The decisions you make will actually affect which epilogue cutscene plays at the end of the game."
Up to four players can take part in competitive online co-op play. There are also comic missions for each individual playable character that give backstory and pit the hero against his or her best-known enemy. The comic mission also gives three other online players a chance to play against villain bots.
"When a player goes into a comic mission, your friends can play against you and really make things hard for you," Vondrek said. "Or they can actually run the AI bots off cliffs and basically make it easier for the hero. It's all up to the player."
Marvel Ultimate Alliance will debut in November and is a scheduled launch title for the PlayStation 3. It will also be released for the PC, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii and GameBoy Advance. —Casey Lynch
E3: JLA Game Is Heroic
Warner Brothers premiered its cross-console DC Comic-based superhero co-op brawler Justice League Heroes at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 11. In the game, players fight in teams of two heroes from the DC universe, including Superman, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter. Snowblind Studios, the game's developer, also just announced that Green Arrow, another popular DC character, will be an unlockable character. Randall Ng, an animator on Justice League Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that there are more unlockables, but they can't say who just yet. "We're excited to finally be able to talk about Green Arrow," Ng said in an interview. "But we're really excited about being able to show him to you and play him."
Each one of the characters was modeled separately and given his or her own stance, attack style and abilities. The environment is almost entirely playable, but has logical rules. "We really have to do these characters justice, no pun intended," Ng said. "As an animator and a big fan of characters like Batman, we designed each character with individual characteristics. This isn't just a model with different skins; they were all designed separately, with their own styles and limitations. Green Lantern can pick up a car and use it to attack enemies, but because Batman isn’t super strong, he can't pick up cars. We wanted to get it as real as possible." He added: "Batman can't fly, but he can glide and has a somewhat intelligent cape. The Flash can't fly, but he can zip from one spot to another. It's pretty much limited to what you see in the comics. But since these guys are superheroes, it's still quite a bit that they can do."
The hands-on demonstration included several levels, including a city siege in Metropolis and a White Martian level in space. The game features a unique single-player co-op style of play, where one player can easily switch between either of the two playable heroes at any time. Justice League Heroes is set for release this fall on PlayStation 2, PSP and Xbox. —Casey Lynch
E3: Eragon Game, Film Unveiled
Ben Borth, associate producer for the upcoming fantasy dragon game Eragon, gave SCI FI Wire a demonstration of the title, based on Christopher Paolini's best-selling book, and Fox unveiled footage from its upcoming Eragon movie at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 10. The demo featured two different levels of gameplay action: on foot and riding atop the dragon Saphira. "There's a bunch of really unique multiplayer features," Borth said in an interview. "A second player can jump in and out of the game at any time and take over one of two AI characters, Murtagh or Brom. On the dragon-riding levels, a second player can actually fly the dragon while the first player controls Eragon and the combat functions."
Eragon has been in development for two years, an unusually long time for a game tied to a film release. "The story follows the path of Eragon, a 16-year-old boy, who finds a blue egg that hatches into a dragon," Borth said. "The narrative is tied into both the storyline of the Eragon film and [the] book the movie is based on. As Eragon, players get to grow into a legendary dragon rider and fulfill the legacy that will free the land from the tyranny of an oppressive king."
In addition to the creative co-op element, Eragon features a variety of combat options, including melee combat, range combat and powerful magic-infused combos. There are also times when the player can call upon Saphira the dragon to fly in and knock enemies off bridges or burn them with her fiery "dragon artillery."
Eragon is 60 percent finished and will go through some refinements in controls before it goes to beta this summer. Eragon will be released this November for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360 and PC. There will also be an Eragon dragon flight simulator for the PSP, a role-playing iteration for the Nintendo DS and a turn-based card game for the Nintendo GameBoy Advance. Fox will release the Eragon movie on Dec. 15. —Casey Lynch
E3: Bioshock Gets Noticed
Publisher 2K Games' Bioshock, a first-person-shooter role-playing game with deep SF and horror elements, caught the attention of gamers as a title to watch at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 10. Bioshock is already being considered a front-runner for the best game of the show by IGN.com. Bioshock is the spiritual successor of System Shock 2 and is being developed by Irrational Games, IGN's Game Developer of the Year. It's slated for release sometime in 2007.
Joe McDonagh, marketing manager for Bioshock, told SCI FI Wire that the game will offer real scares and change the look of shooter gaming. "For me, scary monsters are not big things with fangs and blood and all that," McDonagh said in an interview. "For me the scariest monsters are screwed-up crazy people, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and really that's what this is about. All the people in this world are completely off their rocker."
The demo featured claustrophobic corpse-littered halls where players search for Adam, a biochemical that is the currency and life force of the game. The story revolves around the moral choices the player must make while trying to escape drowning in a doomed underwater lab that is flooding.
"The first thing you'll notice is it's set in the '50s," McDonagh said. "Most [first-person shooters] look like Quake: They're all dark and brown. We call it the turd-brown color palette. We've gone for an art deco style. I don't think you're ever going to see a game like this that looks like this. It's a very beautiful game."
Designed for the Xbox 360, the game features realistic water effects and creepy enemies, like ceiling-crawling women and a little girl who jabs needles into the bodies of the dead looking for Adam. —Casey Lynch
E3: Fable 2 Full Of Surprises
Peter Molyeux—the studio manager for Lionhead Studios who is best known for his work on the "god" PC games Black and White and Fable—told SCI FI Wire that the just-announced Xbox 360 title Fable 2 will be packed with surprises. "I loved all the tiny little secrets that are in the Fable 2 video," Molyeux said in an interview at a news conference preceding the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, which started May 10. "If you're clever, if you're smart, there are about 10 secrets in there. You just have to spot them." Microsoft, which recently acquired Lionhead, unveiled a trailer for Fable 2 at the news conference.
Molyeux and Fable 2 executive producer Louise Copley said that the sequel will take place 500 years after the events in the original Fable. It is being developed using a new engine developed in-house, which Copley called the "Lionhead engine." Used exclusively on Fable 2, it may eventually be used in other Microsoft group games.
The Fable 2 trailer featured a hooded character manipulating what looked like a mystical origami game, which Copley said was "a metaphor for representing the kind of choice and consequence which is the core of the Fable franchise. And so what you do affects how you appear in the world, and that was reflected in the graphic of the trailer."
Molyeux added: "It's the surprises that we're putting in the game I'm most excited about. I can hardly wait. I am like a kid wanting to tell everyone about their Christmas presents. I can promise you this: They are totally and completely unexpected. When you have a sequel—especially with something like Fable that was a very ambitious title—you have to fulfill the ambitions that everyone wanted in [the first one] by delivering the surprises in [the second]. Anyone who thinks they know what's happening, I can assure you, ... don't."
Molyeux said that he and his team are concentrating on creating a game experience that will change based on the interaction and influence of the player. "As the designer, I really want the player to feel like they own and control the world," he said. "Everything that you can think of we've put on the table. We've got all the conventional stuff you'd expect in a great role-playing game, but we'll be introducing a hell of a lot more. But Louise will strangle me if I say what." —Casey Lynch
E3: New Alone Heads For PS3
Nour Pollini, a producer at Eden Games, told SCI FI Wire that a new version of Alone in the Dark will be developed for the PlayStation 3, in addition to the previously announced Xbox 360 and PC versions. Pollini, speaking May 10 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, said that the new Alone in the Dark title will take survival horror games in a new direction. "The original Alone in the Dark is considered the origin of survival horror," Pollini said. "We're very excited to be designing for the PS3, so this time around, we're breaking all the rules of the genre, literally."
Pollini offered hints about the game, starting with the first level, in which Edward Carmby, the returning main character, is thrown from a hallway as it breaks apart, revealing a view of New York City's Central Park, the main gameplay area. Unlike most survival horror games, the new Alone in the Dark will take place in a real, wide-open location and will feature streaming, free-roaming action with no load times.
"Edward Carmby is an ordinary guy that is caught in an extraordinary situation," Pollini said. "While the first Alone in the Dark dealt with Lovecraft themes, we're working with more supernatural and afterlife elements that draw from well-known cross-cultural and cross-religious references."
Pollini said that the development team focused on character interactivity with the environment. Whereas Leon in Resident Evil 4 performs a complex, pre-animated action with the press of a single button, Edward will be able to interact in small, individual acts in a logical way with most of the environment: He can get into cars, can switch seats and, when a player uses the analog stick, can be guided to turn on the heat to defrost a window or look in a glove box or hot-wire a car, all in real time.
"It's designed for total immersion," Pollini said. "There are no menus in real life. And you can't pause real life while you're looking for something to use. So with hot-wiring the car, the player must choose which wires to cross. If you choose incorrectly, you could get nothing, or, worse, you could turn the horn on, and, with enemies crawling everywhere, that's one thing you don't want to do." Alone in Dark will be set about 77 years after the events in the original title. Alone in the Dark is slated for a 2007 release. —Casey Lynch
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Callis: New Galactica 'Remorseless'
James Callis, who plays the nefarious Baltar in SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming third season will build on the events of last season's shocking finale. "In the upcoming episodes, the simplest way to explain what happens is that the wheat is separated from the chaff," Callis said in an interview at this month's Saturn Awards in Universal City, Calif. "I'm not actually sure at this moment which I belong to, which bothers me, whether I'm the wheat or the chaff. All I know is that we are necessarily separated."
At the end of the second season, the last surviving humans found themselves trying to eke out an existence on the rugged planet of New Caprica, when the Cylons invaded and occupied them. Callis agreed that the new season has drawn comparisons to France under the Nazi occupation of World War II. "And the first few scripts of this particular season are phenomenal," he said. "And far darker and more gritty and more worrying than anything that you have seen before. I really am not just saying that. I remember just reading it going, 'My God almighty, this is remorseless and relentless.' And as such should be very gripping television. Even though it's very ... I think the word is dystopic." Galactica returns with new episodes in October. —Patrick Lee, News Editor
Knight Rider Rides Again
The Weinstein Co. is developing a movie based on the '80s TV series Knight Rider, Variety reported. The company signed a deal for the rights from creator Glen A. Larson, who also was behind such titles as Magnum, P.I. and The Fall Guy.
The original show, which ran on NBC from 1982-86, starred David Hasselhoff as a cop who gets a new face, a new name and crime-fighting gadgetry, including K.I.T.T., a talking Trans Am with artificial intelligence.
David Price, who brought the project to TWC, is co-producing. Larson told the trade paper that he sees the feature version of Knight as a potential franchise property.
NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Abrams: No Alias Film For Now
J.J. Abrams, who created ABC's Alias, is now winding down the spy series and launching his own movie-directing career; he told SCI FI Wire that he doesn't think there's going to be a big-screen version of the TV show, at least not yet. Speaking to reporters in a conference call to promote his current movie, Mission: Impossible III, Abrams said that he hopes to continue to work in both movies and television and added that tying up all of the loose ends on Alias is important to him. "I've got to say it's the only show that really needs to tie up everything," Abrams said about the show, which ends its five-year run with a two-hour finale on May 22. "This is something we have been anticipating for a while. I think it's the right time to end the series."
Abrams said that he will miss Alias star Jennifer Garner and the rest of the cast. "It's definitely bittersweet for a lot of obvious reasons," he said. "It's an incredible cast and crew, so we'll miss them, but I hope to work with all of them again soon. But in terms of the end of the year, it's actually a really good finale. I think it's incredibly satisfying. It connects all these pieces that have been in the Alias universe from the beginning, and I'm really proud of the work that Jeff Pinkner, Drew Goddard and the other amazing writers in the show have done, not just this year, but building up to the finale, which I think is going to be a really, really powerful and exciting ending."
As far as bringing it to the big screen, Abrams sighed. "I think at the moment, right now Alias is sort of going to rest in just the right way, so I think that it's the right way for it to go out." Mission: Impossible III is now playing. Alias airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Mike Szymanski
M:I III Builds On Alias
Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams told SCI FI Wire that the film features many sequences that he always wanted to do in his ABC spy series Alias, but couldn't because of time and budgets. "One of the things we did in the movie was this Vatican break-in sequence, which requires so many pieces," Abrams said in a conference call. "It's very visually intricate, an intricately told sequence, and in television you just never have the time to put those kind of pieces that you need to really tell it all properly."
Mission: Impossible III, the third installment in the action-adventure franchise, also features an elaborate action sequence on a a bridge and a helicopter chase through a windmill farm. "The Shanghai jump [from one skyscraper to another], the race, the whole factory sequence, each one of them was a dream version of the kind of thing we might conceive of doing on Alias but never have the time or budget to properly execute," Abrams said.
MI: III stars Tom Cruise, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It is now playing. —Mike Szymanski
M:I III Underwhelms In Debut
Mission: Impossible III, the first big action film of the summer, opened disappointingly at the weekend box office in North America, despite a whirlwind publicity tour by star Tom Cruise, the Reuters news service reported.
The spy thriller, from director J.J. Abrams, sold $48 million worth of tickets in its first three days in theaters across the United States and Canada. Paramount, which distributed the movie, told the news service that the figure was within its expectations of a bow in the $50 million range, but it was gratified by the international showing, where it earned $70 million after opening virtually everywhere except Japan and India. The movie did bomb in Germany, where Cruise has historically had a tough time, the studio said. The movie cost just under $150 million to make, Reuters reported. The two previous installments opened in the $70 million range, after adjusting for inflation.
Among the other films opening over the weekend, An American Haunting disappointed, debuting in third place with $6.4 million in domestic ticket sales.
Cruise's M:I III Stunts Were Scary
Mission: Impossible III co-star Ving Rhames told SCI FI Wire that the scariest parts of the film's production involved star Tom Cruise, who insisted on doing his own stunts. Rhames, who plays computer expert Luther Strickell, said that he was standing next to Cruise in a scene calling for the actor to jump off a skyscraper in Shanghai. "When Tom jumps off of that hundred-story building, I think that it was great," Rhames said in a conference call interview. "I was on the roof with him, and seeing him do that—and he did it anywhere from six to 10 times—I was pretty amazed with him and that he wanted to do it more. So that, to me, just watching them shoot that, was probably the one that touched me the most."
Rhames said that he has seen Cruise do stunts that most actors would pass on to a stunt person, and it made him a bit squeamish. "With Tom jumping off of the roof, I was a little more nervous than the others," he said. "Since I was there it brought feelings of—people don't like to ever talk about this—but what happens if a stunt goes wrong? That's always something to think about. The more you do a stunt, the more you risk something happening. The stunt guys on this were an excellent team, and we were very fortunate, but people don't realize that there is the possibility that something could happen."
That fear also gnawed at director J.J. Abrams, who shot the movie in locations around the world, including Berlin, Los Angeles and cities in Virginia and in China and Italy. "There are many, many visual-effects shots in this movie and special effects and stunts," Abrams said. Even so, Abrams said: "We finished ahead of schedule and under budget, and for me it was totally the result of having a crew that was just hard-working and dedicated and great at what they do. And my TV training has gotten me used to limited time and budget." (Abrams co-created ABC's Alias and Lost.) Mission: Impossible III was the number-one film at the box office this past weekend and is now playing. —Mike Szymanski
McKellen Praises Da Vinci's Howard
Ian McKellen, who plays Grail scholar Sir Leigh Teabing in Ron Howard's upcoming The Da Vinci Code, told SCI FI Wire that he was extremely impressed with the helmer of Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. "Everyone who worked on Da Vinci Code will tell you that Ron Howard is an almost ideal director in that what he promises you is what happens," McKellen said in an interview. "When he says you're going to start working on a specific day, you do. When he says, 'We're going to approach this in a particular way,' that's what happens. Nothing is left to chance. I think his years in the business have taught him that the more efficient you are, the less you take advantage of people's goodwill, and the more you explain to them exactly what you're up to, the better they will eventually be and the more relaxed everyone will be in getting on with fulfilling their particular part of the job. That's what I found."
McKellen co-stars with Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon and Audrey Tatou as Sophie Neveu as they investigate the murder of Neveu's grandfather, killed at the Louvre in a crime possibly tied to protecting the secrets of Christianity's roots.
"I can pick that movie out from every other movie I've ever made," said McKellen, who also appears in this summer's X-Men: The Last Stand. "It was the best organized, the best run. It was like riding in a Rolls Royce, fantastic. That Ron seems to have brought it off is an added delight, of course. Although Ron worries a great deal, he keeps his worries to himself, and it was nice to see him smile as much as he did on this shoot, because I think he realized it was all going well. He's a very modest man." The Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown's controversial best-seller, opens May 19.
McKellen Downplays Da Vinci Flap
Ian McKellen, who co-stars in the upcoming religious thriller The Da Vinci Code, told SCI FI Wire that he's well aware of the controversy surrounding the film and the Dan Brown book on which it's based, but thinks the controversy has been blown out of proportion. McKellen co-stars as Sir Leigh Teabing, the Holy Grail expert who figures prominently in the action as Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou) try to solve the murder of Neveu's grandfather. The murder took place at the Louvre in Paris, a crime possibly tied to protecting the secrets of Christianity's roots and the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
"We went to Lincolnshire, which stood in for Westminster Abbey, because the Abbey didn't want us filming there," McKellen said in an interview. "It would have disrupted their tourist take. I think that was the problem. So we went off to a quieter place called Lincolnshire, and there there was a demonstration against the filming in the hallowed portals of the cathedral, but the objections were only from one person who was dressed as a nun. And I said 'dressed as a nun' advisedly, because apparently the outfit she was wearing wasn't actually a nun's outfit. It just looked like one, and she'd borrowed it from some fancy-dress store. So that's the only person I know who's objected to this film, a fake nun. So I really can't help you."
McKellen added: "The Vatican has kept rather quiet and hasn't made an official statement." (Though the church hasn't said anything officially, several Vatican officials have vocally denounced Brown's book and the movie, and others are calling for a boycott because of the book's and movie's supposedly anti-Christian theories.)
"Opus Dei has also been rather quiet about it," McKellen added, referring to the secretive Catholic order depicted in the novel and film, which has urged unsuccessfully to have a disclaimer added to the movie. "They don't want to draw attention to themselves. They just hope this whole thing will pass over. I accused Sony of having organized all this opposition to the film in order to get it onto the front pages of the newspapers, which is what has happened, but I don't think anybody could have organized this free publicity. It's brilliant." The Da Vinci Code opens May 19.
McKellen Croaks In Flushed
Ian McKellen told SCI FI Wire that he voices a rich and powerful amphibian in the upcoming animated movie Flushed Away. The Aardman production also features the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Andy Serkis, Jean Reno and Bill Nighy.
"Flushed Away is done by the company who did Wallace & Gromit, which won the Oscar this year, and it's about a rat played by Hugh Jackman who gets flushed down the loo in London," McKellen said in an interview. "He discovers that he's in the sewers, which are run by the Toad, which is my part. He's a disappointed man, but cruelly rich and powerful. More than that I can't tell you, really."
Asked what type of acting—stage, screen, radio—voice-over performances most resemble, McKellen laughed and replied: "Overacting is what they're all about. Well, I don't know. They're closest to radio, of course. You put everything into your voice, and you're being filmed while you do it, videoed while you're doing it, so that the people who are actually making the puppets—the animation and the picture that goes with your voice—can match your mouth movements and, I dare say, some of your body movements, if they want to."
McKellen added: "So you're part of the process, but you're not in charge. So it's an odd feeling. I don't enjoy it anywhere near as much as I enjoy more conventional acting. I thought I might get more involved in [the] process than actually is required of you. You're just there to give the voice, and the voice comes first, then the picture. So I thought I was going to be matching myself to a picture and imitating what had already been decided by somebody else. But I don't know. We'll see what it is that turns out then." Flushed Away opens Nov. 3.
McKellen Praises X3's Ratner
Ian McKellen, who again plays Magneto in the upcoming SF sequel X-Men: The Last Stand, told SCI FI Wire that director Brett Ratner had his work cut out for him coming in at the 11th hour to helm the big-budget, F/X-heavy film. Ratner stepped in after Matthew Vaughn exited the project abruptly; Vaughn himself had replaced previous X-Men helmer Bryan Singer, who chose to forgo the third installment in favor of directing Superman Returns.
"Bryan Singer left the project rather late in the day, and Brett Ratner didn't replace him until eight weeks before they started shooting," McKellen said in an interview. "Well, you normally need eight months to set up a movie, not eight weeks. So it's no wonder I did my last bit of Magneto [the first week of May], and the film is going to be released in three weeks' time. I mean, poor Brett Ratner was up against it and was running against the wind the whole time. Well, that's a happy ending, because everyone is extremely pleased with X-Men 3. So that's worked out."
McKellen had been eager to reunite with Singer, who'd directed him in Apt Pupil and the first two X-Men features. But he added that it wasn't a tragedy that it didn't pan out this time. "I'd worked with Bryan on three movies, so not to make a fourth wasn't a desperate disappointment to me," McKellen said. "Anyway, I assumed he was going to give me a nice, juicy part in Superman Returns. But, no, it didn't turn out to be that way. But we're still good friends."
As for Ratner, McKellen said: "Brett couldn't be further from Bryan, really. Brett is a party animal. And that's a compliment, because I think a director who can't hold a decent party probably won't be a good director. They're very similar qualities. You have to be able to look after all your guests and make sure they've got the drink they need and that if they're vegetarian, they're not given chicken. Do you know what I mean? You've got to really look after people and treat them all as individuals. People who can run good parties can often direct well, and Brett is of that sort. He's always full of energy. He's always enthusiastic and he will not let go—and he's got this in common with Bryan Singer—until he's got what he wants. And when he's got what he wants, you can all heave a sigh of relief, because he really will have it. Then it will be a question of cutting it all together. So, no complaints." X-Men: The Last Stand opens on May 26.
Wright: Expect More Stargate
Brad Wright—co-executive producer of SCI FI Channel's original series Stargate SG-1 http://www.scifi.com/stargate/ and Stargate Atlantis http://www.scifi.com/atlantis/ —told SCI FI Wire he's confident that the longstanding franchise could spin off more series and even a feature film. Projects in the works include a third TV series, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and a movie, he said in an interview.
"What we've built is now bigger than all of us," Wright said. "Even if I were to not do the movie, I know somebody is going to do a Stargate movie. It's the second largest franchise for MGM next to Bond. So it's got significant brand potential, and by two series doing as well as they are and a game coming out, that could really, really, really brand the show in a big way. That's what they like in this business: a larger franchise with so many legs to it that it could go into the future for years to come."
The franchise began with the 1994 feature film Stargate, followed by SG-1 on Showtime in 1996. That series moved to SCI FI in 2002 and will begin its unprecedented 10th season on July 14, becoming the longest-running SF show in American television history. Atlantis spun off of SG-1 in 2004 and kicks off its third season also on July 14.
"I know there will be a movie made," Wright said. "I know there will likely be another series made, whether I make it or not. It's just too good a vehicle for storytelling. This is exactly what Jonathan [Glassner] and I recognized 10 years ago, when we created the series. The Stargate is dramatically, and in terms of storytelling, a perfect vehicle from which to launch characters and tell stories. That's why it will go for years to come." —Ian Spelling
USA Series Back For Summer
USA Network announced that its supernatural series The Dead Zone returns on June 18 at 10 p.m. ET/PT with a fifth season that will feature guest stars Sean Patrick Flanery, Martin Donovan, Kristen Dalton, Dedee Pfeiffer and Ben Cotton.
Meanwhile, The 4400 comes back for a third season on June 11 as a two-hour special, starting at 9 p.m. ET/PT, and will air in its normal timeslot Sundays at 9 p.m. starting June 18.
On June 4, USA will air The 4400 Special: Unlocking the Secrets, a one-hour clip episode that will catch viewers up on the story so far. It airs at 10 p.m.
USA is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Who's Cybermen Lighten Up
LONDON—Doctor Who http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ producer Russell T. Davies told SCI FI Wire that writer Tom MacRae's original story for the Cybermen episodes was much darker than the version that debuted on Britain's BBC1 on May 13. In the two-art story "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel," the Doctor (David Tennant), Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and Mickey (Noel Clarke) find themselves trapped on an alternate Earth where a mad scientist is trying to transform the human race into bio-mechanical creatures.
The original version featured a number of different elements, including a series of "Body Shops" in which wealthy citizens could order "upgrades" for various body parts. That process leads to the ultimate upgrade, in which the brains of unwitting victims are placed within an indestructible steel shell, creating the Cybermen. "Part of my problem with it was I didn't believe it," Davies said in an interview. "We were trying to create a world where there were Body Shops on every corner where people got a new arm, and I didn't believe that, and I've never believed it. I think you have to be practical and honest about these things, and I always used to have trouble with Steve Austin's bionic arm, because it's no good just having a robot arm; it's what it's attached to, so it could just be ripped off. So it wasn't the gore and the darkness about it. I just didn't believe it. What is the point of going for a new arm? It simply doesn't work."
The alternate-world versions of several key characters were also originally quite different from their counterparts. "I think it was one of those great lessons about the freedom of SF, as well as its greatest dangers, because when you're creating a parallel world, you suddenly get excited by saying everyone can wear eyepatches," Davies said. "Actually, I think the key to a parallel world is making it very similar to the modern world, so Pete and Jackie and Mickey, even in the parallel world, are very similar to their real-world counterparts."
Davies added: "The danger is to make the characters too silly and different. There's something very grotesque and almost pantomime-ish and too inbred about doing that, so a very faithful viewer may enjoy seeing the complete opposite of Mickey, whereas the casual viewer is not interested in that. They just want a good story, and a good story is more about meeting yourself. What's the point of meeting a character that's so different? You might as well introduce a new character. So it took us a long time to get the temperature right of the series, to tell what sort of parallel world story you're going to tell. So that's why the process of rewriting the story took a long time." The Cybermen episodes aired on British television May 13 and 20.
The first season of the new Doctor Who airs in the United States Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on SCI FI Channel. —Joe Nazzaro
Cybermen Rise In Who
LONDON—Graeme Harper, director of the second-season Doctor Who http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ episodes featuring the return of the Cybermen, told SCI FI Wire that he was disappointed when the first image broke prematurely, spoiling some of the surprise. The robotic Cybermen, a favorite of previous incarnations of the venerable British SF TV series, reappear in the upcoming episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel," which will debut on BBC1 in the United Kingdom on May 13 and 20.
"Some of it upset me," Harper said in an interview. "Not personally, but I was trying not to give too much away early in the storytelling. This was a new breed of Cybermen, so I planned to show a bit of eyes or mouth, maybe a little bit of hand or metal, or some out-of-focus blurs; just a hint so you know they're coming eventually. Once you finally see them, you see them for the rest of the episode and the following episode, so I wanted to leave it as long as possible for the audience to get their first taste of Cybermen."
As it turned out, faced with a possible leak of information, the BBC was forced to leak an official publicity photo several months before the episodes were due to air. "They told me the problem with last season was that some information and photographs got out to the press, whether it was a monster or an actor or a design or whatever," Harper recalled. "And [producers] Russell [T. Davies] and Phil [Collinson] were upset that they were crappy photographs. They decided, 'Look, if they're going to be stolen and shown, at least make them good photographs, so we'll give out the best publicity shot we've got and let the audience see it, and they won't be able to top that.' So that's what they did. Now, eight or nine months later, the show is finally going out, and hopefully people will have an image in their brain, but won't remember too much detail, so I'll still be able to tell my story properly."
In "Rise of the Cybermen," the TARDIS is stranded on an alternate Earth, where the Doctor (David Tennant), Rose (Billie Piper) and Mickey (Noel Clarke) discover that a scientist (played by Roger Lloyd-Pack) is making plans to transform humanity into a race of bio-mechanical hybrids.
According to Harper, who also directed a number of Doctor Who episodes for the original series in the 1980s, one of his biggest priorities with the Cybermen two-parter was to create a sense of fear. "When I used to watch Doctor Who, I wasn't a child, but I did get worried and scared by some of what I was watching," he said. "I'm not sure I hid behind the sofa , but I wanted to get back to that idea of a family saying, 'Oh, God, what's going to happen next?' and keep everyone on the edge of their seat. So I'm hoping that's what we achieved."
The first season of the new Doctor Who currently airs Friday nights on SCI FI Channel at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Joe Nazzaro
WoW Heads To Movies
The hit online game World of Warcraft is heading to the big screen, as Warner Brothers-based Legendary Pictures has picked up film rights and will develop the project with game publisher Blizzard Entertainment, which is owned by Vivendi, Variety reported.
World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing fantasy game, has more than 6 million subscribers who not only team up to go on quests, but also interact and form deep social relationships, the trade paper reported.
The only other video games that rival World of Warcraft are the Grand Theft Auto and Halo franchises. Universal and Fox are revising a script for Microsoft's Halo movie, with hopes to release it in the summer of 2007, though they may have to push back that date since the movie doesn't even have a director yet. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
E3: Gates Offers Halo 3 Peek
Microsoft chief Bill Gates personally unveiled the much-anticipated trailer for the upcoming Xbox 360 game Halo 3, the final chapter in the best-selling SF game trilogy and Microsoft's most popular gaming franchise to date, in a news conference in Los Angeles May 9.
The Halo 3 trailer showed Master Chief, the series' main character, approaching a cliff overlooking a giant alien crater on Earth as Covenant Banshees and Ghosts flew overhead and gathered over the glowing center of the crater. Though there was no official explanation, it looked like foreshadowing for a massive assault that would take place on the Earth's surface, something fans have been looking forward to and actually had hoped would happen in the previous installment, Halo 2.
Gates introduced the trailer coyly, interrupting Peter Moore, the software giant's corporate vice president of interactive entertainment business, as he was wrapping up the pre-Electronic Entertainment Expo conference. "Actually, Peter, as we walk offstage, I think there's something that would be fun to show these people," Gates said with a smile. "We've got a little in-game footage of one of the games that they'll probably recognize."
The trailer also featured an appearance from Cortana, the "smart" artificial intelligence guide to Master Chief; the AI spoke to Master Chief and said, "I know you, your past, your future."
The trailer ended with "This is the way the world ends," followed by the slogan "Finish the Fight 2007," which is something Halo fans have been waiting for since the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2 in 2004.
Halo 3 developer Bungie has not given an official release date, but industry insiders believe Halo 3 will premiere sometime in the spring of 2007, coinciding with the release of an upcoming Halo live-action feature film. Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) is producing the movie. —Casey Lynch
E3: Zelda Demo'd For Wii
Nintendo announced that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the latest iteration of the popular video-game franchise, will be released on the same day as the new Nintendo Wii console, in versions for the Wii and for the GameCube gaming system. A second Zelda title, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, will debut soon after for the company's DS hand-held system.
Executives demonstrated The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess at a news conference in advance of this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, showing off the Wii controller interface with real-time gameplay. In a scene in a dark dungeon with a scaled-down difficulty level, a fairy served as a proxy to access menus and select items. All long-distance weapons, such as bows, were accessed via the Wii remote, doing away with the old inverted-control scheme and putting the power to point and shoot in gamer's hands in a realistic way. "It feels like you're actually aiming with a bow," said George Harrison, Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing. The new controller also features a speaker that adds sound effects, such as the noise of a bow's firing or the sound of an arrow's traveling from controller to screen.
Nintendo also unveiled other titles that will be coming to the Wii, including Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The company also showed off titles designed for the Nintendo DS, including New Super Mario Bros., which will hit stores next week. Also announced for the DS were Starfox DS, Pokemon Blue Mystery Dungeon, Yoshi's Island and a revamped version of Final Fantasy III, exclusively for the DS. —Casey Lynch
E3: New PS3 Controller Revealed
Sony unveiled a new controller for such upcoming fantasy games as the aerial combat title Warhawk, which will be playable on the company's next-generation PlayStation 3, at a news conference in advance of this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
Phil Harrison, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, demonstrated the new controller, which will give the player the ability to control the sophisticated aerial maneuvering of Warhawk's futuristic combat jets in real time. "This standard-feature controller will be packed in with every PlayStation 3," he said. "The controller is standard, with no external sensor required, so I can move this controller in six degrees of freedom using my hands as the entire input device."
Executives also demonstrated the controller and played teaser clips for such upcoming PlayStation 3 titles as Armored Core 4, Gundam: Mobile Suit and Sonic the Hedgehog. Sony also unveiled a playable version of Resistance: Fall of Man, a first-person shooter whose premise is that World War II never happened and that aliens invaded instead. —Casey Lynch
E3: New Fantasy Titles Unveiled
Square Enix unveiled three new titles for the popular role-playing game Final Fantasy at a news conference in advance of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Versus and Final Fantasy XIII Agito. Final Fantasy XIII will premiere exclusively for the next-generation Sony PlayStation 3. Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase didn't say on which consoles the other two titles would debut, but said FF XIII Agito would be released exclusively for a next-generation mobile phone.
All three of the new Fantasy titles are a part of a larger project called Fabula Nova Crystallis. Though the three games share similar mythologies, they have nothing else in common. Square Enix also confirmed that other Fantasy titles—Before Crisis, Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, all of which are based on Final Fantasy VII—will premiere before spring 2007. "The Fabula Nova Crystallis project will have numerous but unrelated titles that run parallel with each other," Kitase said.
Kitase added: "We were originally planning Final Fantasy XIII for the PlayStation 2. After seeing the PlayStation 3 at 2005 E3 we completely abandoned programming and drastically changed our plan and began work on XIII for the PlayStation 3."
The company showed pre-rendered clips with detailed graphics and intensive real-time fighting not often found in Final Fantasy titles. The franchise is best known for its RPG and turn-based elements, but the iterations of Final Fantasy XIII will focus more on real-time combat. Kitase explained that a new battle system and engine he called the "White Engine" have been developed to run the "extreme action" elements of the game.
Tetsuya Nomura, director of Final Fantasy XIII Versus, said that the team that developed Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a recently released DVD, and the Kingdom Hearts games will also develop the Fantasy XIII.
"As you can see, the pre-rendered clips are beautiful," Nomura said. "But the gameplay will be just as stunning with the Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts team. It will present a vision we have pursued for a long time."
Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, said, "When it comes to next-generation gaming, we at Square Enix believe we have the responsibility to provide the highest-quality product, and we feel Square Enix are the only ones to complete that mission." Since its introduction in 1987, the Final Fantasy franchise has sold more than 65 million units. —Casey Lynch
E3: Quake Wars Requires Teams
Activision unveiled a playable demo of Quake Wars: Enemy Territory, the latest title in the popular first-person-shooter franchise, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 11. Quake Wars is a multiplayer game in which up to 32 players can square off against each other on two teams: the human Global Defense Force and the alien Strogg race.
Jerry Keehan, a designer at ID Software, told SCI FI Wire that Quake Wars improves on the Quake formula by requiring the creative use of teamwork. "I really like the strategy approach to solve missions," Keehan said. "You have to have teamwork and use every class of character to successfully complete the missions."
Each race has five different classes, including soldiers, engineers and medics, each of which has individual and specific functions that are critical to each team's success or failure. The demo was played on a map called "Valley" and featured 12-on-12 teams, where the GDF had to complete four missions that included building a bridge and dismantling an enemy shield generator. The GDF team had to work together, using medics to keep its engineers alive to build the bridge and hack the generator computer while soldiers fought off the enemy Strogg team, which worked hard to stop the GDF.
The story takes place in the Quake universe before the events in Quake 2 and 4 and before the human invasion of the Strogg world, Stroggos. The Strogg have invaded Earth, and Quake Wars centers around the fight between the Strogg and the GDF for the planet.
The game includes a wide variety of easily usable vehicles at the disposal of both teams, such as tanks, ATVs and 'copters. "The vehicles are one of my favorite features," Keehan said in an interview. "In some games, the AI control the vehicles. In Quake Wars you're totally in control of your vehicles. You can drop artillery and call in tanks. The different classes also really make the game fun, playing them and learning to manage them and keep the right type of characters in the right place at the right time. If you get your team to a rally point, but you don't have an engineer, you can't perform the action, so you're stuck. So there are all kinds of interesting ways to approach both offensive and defensive strategy."
Quake Wars: Enemy Territory is slated for release in the fall exclusively for the PC. —Casey Lynch
E3: Marvel Alliance Kicks Off
Activision kicked off its upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance game on May 11 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles with an in-depth demonstration showing off 20 playable heroes among the 140 well-known characters from the Marvel Comics universe. Popular characters such as Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor and Wolverine can be combined in customizable teams that support up to four players in offline and online play.
Dan Vondrek, project lead on Marvel Ultimate Alliance, told SCI FI Wire that players can pick their own "dream teams" of heroes and that each character has been individually modeled and equipped with signature combat moves and fighting styles. "Since a character like Thor has a totally different attack than Spider-Man, we wanted the game to reflect those obvious differences," Vondrek said. "If you've always wanted play with one combination or another, now you can do it in Marvel Alliance. And since each character has a unique set of powers, it deepens the game experience as players will take the time to learn to master all of the differences between playing, say, Captain America and Spider-Man."
The demonstration included a lengthy look at several levels, including combat on a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, on the planet of the Skrulls and underwater in the city of Atlantis. The demo also highlighted the effect that each character and each player decision has on the Marvel universe.
"The player determines the fate of the Marvel universe," Vondrek said in an interview. "The decisions you make will actually affect which epilogue cutscene plays at the end of the game."
Up to four players can take part in competitive online co-op play. There are also comic missions for each individual playable character that give backstory and pit the hero against his or her best-known enemy. The comic mission also gives three other online players a chance to play against villain bots.
"When a player goes into a comic mission, your friends can play against you and really make things hard for you," Vondrek said. "Or they can actually run the AI bots off cliffs and basically make it easier for the hero. It's all up to the player."
Marvel Ultimate Alliance will debut in November and is a scheduled launch title for the PlayStation 3. It will also be released for the PC, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii and GameBoy Advance. —Casey Lynch
E3: JLA Game Is Heroic
Warner Brothers premiered its cross-console DC Comic-based superhero co-op brawler Justice League Heroes at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 11. In the game, players fight in teams of two heroes from the DC universe, including Superman, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter. Snowblind Studios, the game's developer, also just announced that Green Arrow, another popular DC character, will be an unlockable character. Randall Ng, an animator on Justice League Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that there are more unlockables, but they can't say who just yet. "We're excited to finally be able to talk about Green Arrow," Ng said in an interview. "But we're really excited about being able to show him to you and play him."
Each one of the characters was modeled separately and given his or her own stance, attack style and abilities. The environment is almost entirely playable, but has logical rules. "We really have to do these characters justice, no pun intended," Ng said. "As an animator and a big fan of characters like Batman, we designed each character with individual characteristics. This isn't just a model with different skins; they were all designed separately, with their own styles and limitations. Green Lantern can pick up a car and use it to attack enemies, but because Batman isn’t super strong, he can't pick up cars. We wanted to get it as real as possible." He added: "Batman can't fly, but he can glide and has a somewhat intelligent cape. The Flash can't fly, but he can zip from one spot to another. It's pretty much limited to what you see in the comics. But since these guys are superheroes, it's still quite a bit that they can do."
The hands-on demonstration included several levels, including a city siege in Metropolis and a White Martian level in space. The game features a unique single-player co-op style of play, where one player can easily switch between either of the two playable heroes at any time. Justice League Heroes is set for release this fall on PlayStation 2, PSP and Xbox. —Casey Lynch
E3: Eragon Game, Film Unveiled
Ben Borth, associate producer for the upcoming fantasy dragon game Eragon, gave SCI FI Wire a demonstration of the title, based on Christopher Paolini's best-selling book, and Fox unveiled footage from its upcoming Eragon movie at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 10. The demo featured two different levels of gameplay action: on foot and riding atop the dragon Saphira. "There's a bunch of really unique multiplayer features," Borth said in an interview. "A second player can jump in and out of the game at any time and take over one of two AI characters, Murtagh or Brom. On the dragon-riding levels, a second player can actually fly the dragon while the first player controls Eragon and the combat functions."
Eragon has been in development for two years, an unusually long time for a game tied to a film release. "The story follows the path of Eragon, a 16-year-old boy, who finds a blue egg that hatches into a dragon," Borth said. "The narrative is tied into both the storyline of the Eragon film and [the] book the movie is based on. As Eragon, players get to grow into a legendary dragon rider and fulfill the legacy that will free the land from the tyranny of an oppressive king."
In addition to the creative co-op element, Eragon features a variety of combat options, including melee combat, range combat and powerful magic-infused combos. There are also times when the player can call upon Saphira the dragon to fly in and knock enemies off bridges or burn them with her fiery "dragon artillery."
Eragon is 60 percent finished and will go through some refinements in controls before it goes to beta this summer. Eragon will be released this November for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360 and PC. There will also be an Eragon dragon flight simulator for the PSP, a role-playing iteration for the Nintendo DS and a turn-based card game for the Nintendo GameBoy Advance. Fox will release the Eragon movie on Dec. 15. —Casey Lynch
E3: Bioshock Gets Noticed
Publisher 2K Games' Bioshock, a first-person-shooter role-playing game with deep SF and horror elements, caught the attention of gamers as a title to watch at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 10. Bioshock is already being considered a front-runner for the best game of the show by IGN.com. Bioshock is the spiritual successor of System Shock 2 and is being developed by Irrational Games, IGN's Game Developer of the Year. It's slated for release sometime in 2007.
Joe McDonagh, marketing manager for Bioshock, told SCI FI Wire that the game will offer real scares and change the look of shooter gaming. "For me, scary monsters are not big things with fangs and blood and all that," McDonagh said in an interview. "For me the scariest monsters are screwed-up crazy people, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and really that's what this is about. All the people in this world are completely off their rocker."
The demo featured claustrophobic corpse-littered halls where players search for Adam, a biochemical that is the currency and life force of the game. The story revolves around the moral choices the player must make while trying to escape drowning in a doomed underwater lab that is flooding.
"The first thing you'll notice is it's set in the '50s," McDonagh said. "Most [first-person shooters] look like Quake: They're all dark and brown. We call it the turd-brown color palette. We've gone for an art deco style. I don't think you're ever going to see a game like this that looks like this. It's a very beautiful game."
Designed for the Xbox 360, the game features realistic water effects and creepy enemies, like ceiling-crawling women and a little girl who jabs needles into the bodies of the dead looking for Adam. —Casey Lynch
E3: Fable 2 Full Of Surprises
Peter Molyeux—the studio manager for Lionhead Studios who is best known for his work on the "god" PC games Black and White and Fable—told SCI FI Wire that the just-announced Xbox 360 title Fable 2 will be packed with surprises. "I loved all the tiny little secrets that are in the Fable 2 video," Molyeux said in an interview at a news conference preceding the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, which started May 10. "If you're clever, if you're smart, there are about 10 secrets in there. You just have to spot them." Microsoft, which recently acquired Lionhead, unveiled a trailer for Fable 2 at the news conference.
Molyeux and Fable 2 executive producer Louise Copley said that the sequel will take place 500 years after the events in the original Fable. It is being developed using a new engine developed in-house, which Copley called the "Lionhead engine." Used exclusively on Fable 2, it may eventually be used in other Microsoft group games.
The Fable 2 trailer featured a hooded character manipulating what looked like a mystical origami game, which Copley said was "a metaphor for representing the kind of choice and consequence which is the core of the Fable franchise. And so what you do affects how you appear in the world, and that was reflected in the graphic of the trailer."
Molyeux added: "It's the surprises that we're putting in the game I'm most excited about. I can hardly wait. I am like a kid wanting to tell everyone about their Christmas presents. I can promise you this: They are totally and completely unexpected. When you have a sequel—especially with something like Fable that was a very ambitious title—you have to fulfill the ambitions that everyone wanted in [the first one] by delivering the surprises in [the second]. Anyone who thinks they know what's happening, I can assure you, ... don't."
Molyeux said that he and his team are concentrating on creating a game experience that will change based on the interaction and influence of the player. "As the designer, I really want the player to feel like they own and control the world," he said. "Everything that you can think of we've put on the table. We've got all the conventional stuff you'd expect in a great role-playing game, but we'll be introducing a hell of a lot more. But Louise will strangle me if I say what." —Casey Lynch
E3: New Alone Heads For PS3
Nour Pollini, a producer at Eden Games, told SCI FI Wire that a new version of Alone in the Dark will be developed for the PlayStation 3, in addition to the previously announced Xbox 360 and PC versions. Pollini, speaking May 10 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, said that the new Alone in the Dark title will take survival horror games in a new direction. "The original Alone in the Dark is considered the origin of survival horror," Pollini said. "We're very excited to be designing for the PS3, so this time around, we're breaking all the rules of the genre, literally."
Pollini offered hints about the game, starting with the first level, in which Edward Carmby, the returning main character, is thrown from a hallway as it breaks apart, revealing a view of New York City's Central Park, the main gameplay area. Unlike most survival horror games, the new Alone in the Dark will take place in a real, wide-open location and will feature streaming, free-roaming action with no load times.
"Edward Carmby is an ordinary guy that is caught in an extraordinary situation," Pollini said. "While the first Alone in the Dark dealt with Lovecraft themes, we're working with more supernatural and afterlife elements that draw from well-known cross-cultural and cross-religious references."
Pollini said that the development team focused on character interactivity with the environment. Whereas Leon in Resident Evil 4 performs a complex, pre-animated action with the press of a single button, Edward will be able to interact in small, individual acts in a logical way with most of the environment: He can get into cars, can switch seats and, when a player uses the analog stick, can be guided to turn on the heat to defrost a window or look in a glove box or hot-wire a car, all in real time.
"It's designed for total immersion," Pollini said. "There are no menus in real life. And you can't pause real life while you're looking for something to use. So with hot-wiring the car, the player must choose which wires to cross. If you choose incorrectly, you could get nothing, or, worse, you could turn the horn on, and, with enemies crawling everywhere, that's one thing you don't want to do." Alone in Dark will be set about 77 years after the events in the original title. Alone in the Dark is slated for a 2007 release. —Casey Lynch