‘Creed’ heading for Egypt to reignite gamers
Raving Rabbids, Mario join forces in new Switch game
Animated
LOS ANGELES, June 13, (Agencies): Ubisoft’s blockbuster “Assassin’s Creed” video game is heading for Egypt, taking the serial’s storyline back to an ancient world and overhauling play to reignite its top franchise.
The French video game star took last year off after hitting the market with annual releases and boasting overall sales of more than 110 million copies of the game since it first launched in 2007.
A cooling in fan interest appeared to prompt a step back, and an investment by Ubisoft to revitalize it was unveiled at a press event Monday ahead of the opening of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.
Work on “Assassin’s Creed: Origins” began nearly four years ago, and included overhauling the combat system and building artificial intelligence into all of the non-player characters, according to game producer Julien Laferriere.
Every character has a “life” of its own, tending to work, worship, family, meals and other daily routines that players can take into account while on missions, an early glimpse at the game showed.
Players are also free to explore a virtual version of all of Egypt in 49 BC, during the rise of Cleopatra to the throne.
“It is a part of world history we have wanted to do for a long time,” Laferriere said. “We wanted to be as authentic as we could.”
Players get to climb pyramids, explore beneath the Sphinx, and learn the origins of the brotherhood of assassins, whose deadly fight with the order of Templars is at the core of the franchise that segues from one generation of master assassin to another.
“Fans will have a front row seat to the formation of the brotherhood,” Laferriere promised.
Ubisoft hopes Origins will energize longtime fans and win new players at the start of the story in a game that has become fodder for books and films.
Versions of Origins tailored for play on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windowspowered personal computers will be released on October 27.
“Assassin’s Creed” was among a diverse line-up Ubisoft is showing off this week at E3.
Ubisoft offerings spanned genres, from action shooters such as “Far Cry 5,” to sports, dance, piracy, a space monkey, and virtual reality.
A “Fractured But Whole” based on an irreverent South Park animated television series opens with well-known children characters obsessed with being super heroes sneaking into a strip club to solve the mystery of a missing cat.
Their weapons include flatulence and firecrackers.
“The South Park universe doesn’t take itself too seriously, so you can be satirical,” game director Jason Schroeder told AFP while providing a peek at the game, which also releases on Oct 17.
“You can take the notion of something like a strip club and turn it on its head.”
Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto joined Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot on stage at a press event to unveil an innovative alliance with Nintendo to unite its zany “Rabbids” with beloved “Mario” in a game.
“I have been excited to see what kind of humor the Rabbids could bring to the Mario world,” Miyamoto said through an interpreter.
The game maker continued its tradition of embracing hardware innovations, showing off games crafted for Nintendo’s hot-selling and tough to find Switch consoles as well as the budding virtual reality gear market.
“We have been experimenting with virtual reality for several year,” said Ubisoft partnerships vice president Chris Early.
LOS ANGELES:
Sony on Monday showed off rich, action-packed new PlayStation 4 video games, some for virtual reality, as it defended its crown as the top-selling new-generation console.
The company focused on blockbuster games and intriguing new titles for PS4 at a press event on the eve of the opening of the major Electronic Entertainment Expo here.
There was no mention of the Xbox One X console unveiled a day earlier by rival Microsoft in a heightened challenge to PS4.
“PlayStation is home to all the biggest and best game franchises in the world,” Sony Interactive Entertainment worldwide studios chairman Shawn Layden said during a rapidfire presentation of video trailers.
The line-up included the first “Uncharted” game to feature a heroine in place of the “Nathan Drake” hero, a “God of War” sequel with a mighty father-son theme, and a pulsepounding title starring “Spiderman” of Marvel Comics fame.
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Video game giants Ubisoft and Nintendo have teamed up to put their respective stars, Raving Rabbids and Mario, together in a new role-playing adventure.
Japan’s Nintendo has agreed to lend France’s Ubisoft its famous moustachioed plumber Mario for the game, due out in late August on the Switch console.
The two companies spent three years working on the project, Xavier Poix, managing director of Ubisoft’s French studios, told AFP.
Nintendo and Ubisoft have collaborated on projects before, but this was the first time the Japanese giant had agreed to lend characters from the Mario galaxy to a non-Japanese company, said Poix.
“It’s a sign of trust,” he added.
LOS ANGELES:
“South Park” is headed to mobile.
Ubisoft debuted, during a press conference on Monday at E3, a new trailer unveiling the release date for the long awaited video game “South Park: The Fractured but Whole,” and also announced the franchise’s move to mobile gaming with “South Park: Phone Destroyer.”
“The most high-tech company in the world has unlocked the mobile phone’s true potential so that it can do what it was truly meant to do,” a voiceover says as the trailer opens to one of the show’s main characters, Eric Cartman, announcing they’re playing Cowboys and Indians.
The game seems to share the same turnbased combat used in Ubisoft’s other “South Park” games. It also follows the same narrative of the kids from South Park, Colo, dressing up and playing games around town. The trailer shows the kids facing off while clad as cowboys and Native Americans, buccaneers and knights, and bards and choirboys.
LOS ANGELES:
Sony unveiled a new “Spiderman” game for its Playstation video console at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles on Monday.
“Spider-man”, due for release in 2018, is being developed by Insomniac Games, the group behind PlayStation offerings such as “Resistance” and “Ratchet & Clank”.
“The future is here and it’s now with PlayStation 4 Pro and PS VR,” said Shawn Layden, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, unveiling the “Spider-man” game.