Funcom designer Tanya Short introduces the Albion Theatre, which will be open for business in the next update.
…you’ll be able to go inside, and put on whatever kind of show your heart desires! Our goal is to empower players. Open mic night? Sketch comedy shows? Extensive Shakespearean productions? Cabaret? Music video? It’s really an open toolbox — you and your friends can use the Albion to do whatever you want.
Intriguing. If you’ve played Lord of the Rings Online, maybe you’ve seen impromptu bards loitering around Bree, availing themselves of the game’s indepth music system. I was gobsmacked to hear a halfling plucking perfect Zeppelin out of a lute. Maybe this could be like that?
One group at a time can reserve the stage for an hour for a small fee. Anyone who joins that group at any time has free access to get on stage and do almost anything you can think of! Raise and lower the curtain, place out sets willy-nilly, change the backdrop, add visual effects (weather, filth, confetti, etc), adjust the lights, trigger sounds and music… and tadaaaa you can host whatever show comes to mind. We’ve also added the “stagesay” and “act” chat commands, which broadcast your screenplay across a broader radius than the usual “say” and “emote” commands.
We wanted to keep the Theatre as personal and player-driven as possible, with an eye to promotion. Any would-be directors or comedians can also organise their publicity, through the forums, chat, etc. We’ve combined the Theatre chat channels with the London ones for convenience, and we’re sure some of our fan radio stations (there are multiple!) might also help spread the news of the upcoming high-quality productions, and reviews of those past. Perhaps cabals will use their message of the day to track promising young screenwriters?
As much as I think it’s a fascinating idea, as much as I admire the thinking behind it, I can’t imagine Albion is going to be anything but entirely empty after a week or so.
To get a videogame movie made, game publishers traditionally shop their IPs around to the studios. Hey, Paramount, want to make a Daikatana movie? No? What about you, Fox? Columbia/Sony? Miramax? Microsoft went so far as to get a Halo script written first and then they allegedly got some dude in a Master Chief suit to schlepp it around. See how well that worked out? You can’t wow movie studios the same way you wow Gamespot reviewers.
But Ubisoft has a different idea. Go straight for the star power. They did that earlier this year by hitching Assassin’s Creed to Michael Fassbender’s production company and, by association, Michael Fassbender (who might not actually be in the movie, but never mind that).
This week, Ubisoft enlisted Tom Hardy (pictured) to spearhead a Splinter Cell movie. There’s no director yet, and no studio, and therefore no funding. But given Tom Hardy’s rising star, it’s a pretty safe assumption that the money will follow, and therefore a Splinter Cell movie is all but in the can, with Tom Hardy playing Michael Ironsides.
The first step in doing dungeons is wanting to do dungeons. Peruse the merchants lined up under the bright blue awning at Fort Marriner, trading for trophies you’ll earn in any given dungeon. Each merchant has armor relevant at the level when the dungeon unlocks. Furthermore, they also sell weapons and armor that you can only use at level 80, called exotics. This is a significant part of the endgame. Go ahead and check the stats. Furthermore, feel free to try on the armor (right click and then select “preview”). Pretty nifty, huh? Now try to tell me you don’t care about doing dungeons.
Read this week’s Guilded at Gamespy.
Rudy Basso is here to update us on Natural Selection 2 and the now free-to-play Star Wars Old Republic, one of which sounds pretty darn awesome. We also discuss whether you should skip Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which games you need to get when you pick up your Wii U, what the guys behind Fallen London are up to now (or should we say “down to now”?), and which downloadable Rock Band songs are going strong. Finally, no one will be seated during the thrilling finale, in which Tom Chick recants his Halo 4 review!
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You ever stop reading a book or watching a movie because you don’t want it to end? Me either. That’s another example of how books and movies aren’t like videogames. Because I’m at the ending of Assassin’s Creed III — I’m in the final “sequence”, which is roughly analogous to a chapter or episode — and I have no desire to find out what happens at the end.
After the jump, so far, yet so close Continue reading →
