COMMON PEOPLE
Each character (who your mates will be able to control in co-op, incidentally) will come with his or her own backstory, moral beliefs, secrets and personality. And the level to which you'll be able to converse with them, almost rivalling the sort of conversations you'd expect in a BioWare game, is frighteningly deep for an action-shooter.
"Ultimately, they're just normal people," says Syvähuoko. "They're not superheroes. They're just normal people who are trying to make the best of a very bad situation, trying to survive, trying to reconcile with their families, trying to overcome tragedy and personal loss, trying to make sense of it all. And sometimes those ordinary people will be required to do extraordinary things to survive, and they will be changed by it. Hopefully, our players will be changed by it as well."
A lofty goal. And one, surely, that has a cynical Brit's bullshit detector wired for sound. Both you and I have heard this 'loveable virtual friends' claim many times before - but rein in the knee-jerk reaction a little and you realise that the Recoil and 3D Realms boys are talking sense. The initial template they're using is that of the sci-fi disaster movie - stuff like The Thing or Alien.
Ultimately, what makes these films great isn't a chest-burst scene or a bit where a human body cavity bites off a man's arms before its head grows legs and runs away (though that certainly helps). Rather, it's the tension and realism provided by an unsettled cohesion of flawed characters, and the way in which you relate to them.
"The tension created by putting a group of strong, often incompatible characters into a high-stress scenario also allows us to explore all kinds of interesting story directions, as well as to contextualise all the action in the game," explains Van Lierop. "Action doesn't just occur in a vacuum - things happen because people make difficult, often flawed decisions about how they are going to react to a stimulus in their environment.
"This sounds obvious, and yet how often have you stopped playing a game because you had no idea why you were in room X fighting enemy Y? We never want players to have that feeling in Earth No More."
SHOCK AND OAR
So, so far we've got ourselves a shooter trying on certain swish garments from the cinematic metaphorical clothes rack at Topman, but there's a certain area
in which games clearly have an upper hand over our old friend celluloid. Namely, that you're one of the stars of the show - and thereby get to stick an oar into proceedings. Even if it's an oar that might come back to haunt you, or an oar that's somewhat morally demanding. Either way - in games you get an oar, and in films you don't.
"Earth No More will allow the player to react to the ever-evolving gameplay situation as he or she sees fit. Oftentimes, the player will be faced with situations that will include several layers of potential consequences and moral dilemma," explains Syvähuoko. "Each decision that the player makes will have an impact on the way the other characters view him. They will remember each situation and form a cumulative opinion about the player - sometimes resulting in drastic consequences, and sometimes something completely the opposite."
ROLE AND SHOOT
So, essentially we're thinking of a shooter donning the karmic mantle of an RPG - something at once obvious, yet simultaneously far, far away from what we have in the current crop of shooters. Imagine a Half-Life 2 in which Alyx grew to resent you repeatedly staring at her arse and eventually became miffed at your insistence on piling street furniture on dead bodies.
Or, to be slightly less jocular, one in which she reacts with horror as you decide you don't want to rescue City 17 survivors after all, and would rather keep yourself safe. Deus Ex trod on the toes of this concept, with Alex Jacobson's expression of horror as you (for example) chose to gas an underground system where civilians were being held hostage, but beyond this, true NPC approval or suspicion has never really entered into action games. In shooters, by and large, only bad guys diss the hero.
NO 'I' IN TEAM
As for the action itself, well, that's one thing that 3D Realms and Recoil aren't keen to spill the beans on - but it would seem that affairs will be a lot more like a collaborative Half-Life 2 effort rather than a tactically skewed Rainbow Six-type affair. Just as character personalities are being built to bounce off each other, the game is set to feel like a joint effort, with each weapon being designed with collaborative use in mind - and one weapon called the Linker that 3D Realms's boss describes as being "a reverse proton pack from Ghostbusters".
In addition to all of this, expect some issues with a military having enormous problems with crowd control, long alien (yet not extraterrestrial) spines jamming themselves into the sides of modern America and all the visual jazz that Unreal Engine 3 can muster for a game that's two years off in the ether.
Yes, it is a long, long way from completion - but talking to a group of developers who are clearly not content to merely sit inside a genre and trot out the same old shooter routine with bigger and better explosions is genuinely refreshing. It'll be in hibernation for quite a while after you read this, but do keep an eye out for Earth No More - it really could be quite special.
![[sonrisa]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani1.gif "sonrisa")
![[oki]](/images/smilies/net_thumbsup.gif "Ok!")
![[qmparto]](/images/smilies/net_quemeparto.gif "Que me parto!")
![[idea]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/idea.gif "idea")
...que gran hombre este Jimmy.![[poraki]](/images/smilies/nuevos/dedos.gif "por aquí!")
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