No sabía que la EGM estaba online.
http://www.egmmag.com/article2/0,4364,1368733,00.asp
Ed Fries es el cabecilla de MGS pa quien no lo sepa.
El muy cabrón poniendo los dientes largos diciendo que ha jugado al Halo 2 en multiplayer.
EGM: You've recently mentioned that Microsoft is changing as a first-party game publisher. How?
Ed Fries: The one thing you've gotta remind yourself is that [Microsoft hasn't] even been a console publisher for two years now. We've been learning a lot; I think we've been making good progress. But the situation has changed a lot, too. When we were starting, not only were we learning about how to be a console publisher, but we were also trying to make sure we had games in every genre because we really didn't know what kind of third-party support we were gonna get.
Now that we're really successful and clearly in the No. 2 position...that frees my group up to really focus on not just how to be a console publisher, but how to be a first-party console publisher—really focusing on making sure that everything we deliver is something that's super-high-quality, something platform defining, something that you couldn't get anywhere else.
EGM: So let's talk about the games that are going to do that. A few people seem interested in this "Halo 2" game.
EF: Yeah, I played a little multiplayer a few weeks ago. The reception at [the annual E3 videogame trade show] was really thrilling for [developer Bungie]—they put so much work into that nine-minute live demo of Halo 2. They are an amazing team to work with—so many incredibly talented people.
If you haven't seen it already, head over to halo.bungie.net to check out the demo. Now!
EGM: Do you see Halo 2 and its online multiplayer game as the killer app that will get everyone on Xbox Live?
EF: I think it's gonna help Xbox Live. Xbox Live is doing great without Halo, but I think [it's] gonna get even more people online. One of the things we haven't been able to do yet is talk much about [Halo 2's] multiplayer features. Hopefully, we'll do that sometime soon, maybe before the end of the year, and I think people will understand how Halo 2 is as innovative in the online multiplayer area as it is in the offline single-player story.
From the little bit of the Oddworld game shown on TV, it appears to be a combo of third-person action and first-person shooting (above), starring a part lion, part moose kinda lookin' thing. Oh, and it's set in a vaguely Old West sorta place. With chicken-people settlers, Yeah.
EGM: How about the follow-up to Munch's Oddysee, the next Oddworld game…what can you tell us about that? We've only seen it in a show that ran on the Discovery Channel.
EF: [Smiles] What can I tell you about that? It's not really a game we're talking about a lot right now....
EGM: We heard a rumor that it had gotten the ax?
EF: No, we're continuing to work with those guys. I'm not sure there's much I can say about it right now...I don't know...we kind of get in trouble if we talk about stuff before we're ready...I'd rather wait until we're confident when it's gonna be out and what it's gonna be…and then we can talk about it.
EGM: How about Crimson Skies?
EF: Yeah, I've been playing a lot of that over the last few weeks, too. I love the idea of the universe—it's this kind of Mad Max in airplanes that takes place in an alternate past, and the main character's really a pirate. It's really a pirate movie where you replace the boats with zeppelins, and cars are, like I said, airplanes, and it has a very Indiana Jones kind of swashbuckling feel. It's a game that we took a whole extra year to make sure it was going to be amazing because I want it to be the start of another big franchise for us.
EGM: What was that extra year spent on?
EF: I think from a visual point of view, it's just a lot more stunning. It has a great multiplayer online capability, like MechAssault does, but you know, the next generation beyond that. If we had shipped it last year, basically what you would have had was a pretty traditional setup, kind of linear levels with a story connected to them. Now what we have in Crimson Skies are sets of hub worlds that are connected by story elements. So basically, you come into a hub world and you have a lot of choice and freedom about what to do next for a while. Then when you're ready, you can go back to the story path and you come out in a new hub world, in a new area.
EGM: All right, moving on: Psychonauts. A tough game to describe.
EF: You know, it's your typical…you know, there's only a few games people are making today, right? First-person shooters, RPGs…so this is your typical game with a kid who comes from a family of circus performers. He goes to psychic summer camp—which is next to the insane asylum—and all the levels take place inside the brains of insane people. You know, it's one of those [smiles].
The level [I was just playing] takes place in the mind of an artist who only works in black velvet. And the entire level is black velvet, so the entire level is black with these incredibly bright glowing colors—like a black light is on all the time. And it just glows off the screen. And of course, it's beautiful, it's just jaw-droppingly beautiful, but it's also incredibly funny, and you run into the dogs playing poker…it's great to have something in our portfolio that's just really unique and artistically challenging and not so blatantly commercial.
EGM: So what have you been playing lately just for fun? We hear you're a big fan of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
EF: It's my favorite game so far this year. When I see something like KOTOR, it just feels like the future to me. It's like, wow, here's this incredibly rich new story, and a story that's not told in a linear way where I have to sit down and watch 10-minute cut-scenes, but where I really feel like I'm at the heart of the story.
Games so far push a set of emotional buttons that's just so limited, and so when you see KOTOR finding ways to push new buttons that in the past have only been pushed by books and movies, that's what gets me excited. I mean, here's a game where all of a sudden you can choose which of these four worlds to go to. I can play the whole middle part of that game in any order I want, but it's balanced right and the story works, no matter what order I do that in. That is cool! And you have all this dialogue and every line is spoken. To me, that feels like the future.
EGM: You've mentioned before about Nintendo games not using voice as a sign of them being stuck in the past….
EF: I remember [listening to a Q&A session] with [Nintendo President Satoru] Iwata and [Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru] Miyamoto, and someone asked them why none of their games had voices. And they talked about cost and the time and trouble to localize it to different countries…and I just felt like I was listening to silent-movie directors talking [about how films work fine without sound]. Yeah, it costs more and it's a pain, but that's now a part of making games. I feel like that's just part of the price of doing business nowadays, and it's something everyone should be doing. It's something people should expect from games. We should all be pushing the art form ahead.
[But] you asked me before what's the last game I spent a lot of time on—that'd be the new Pokémon.
Perhaps a reference to Nintendo's misplaced (in our opinion) focus on GC-GBA "connectivity" for the future?
EGM: Pokémon?
EF: Yeah. But then, you know, I've been playing games forever, and some of my favorite games of all time are Nintendo games. I have no problem loving a Nintendo product, because there's a lot there to love. But when you ask me about the future and where things are going, maybe [Nintendo and I] don't agree on that.
EGM: Speaking of the GBA, do you think Sony's PlayStation Portable [PSP] will hurt Nintendo when it comes out next year?
EF: The question for me is how much are Sony and Nintendo really going to be [competing] head-to-head. Because the more and more I hear about [the PSP], it sounds like a [more] expensive machine. They've gotta spin that disc [media], which means they've gotta have good battery technology. They're gonna have [wireless networking], the screen, and everything else…it sounds like an expensive device.
EGM: Was Microsoft considering its own handheld at one time? The rumored "Xboy"?
EF: Microsoft is a place where any small group of ambitious people can go off and look into [something] for a while and see if it makes sense or not, so there's actually been any number of experiments—from within [Microsoft Games] to the cell phone group and the PDA guys. I've talked to a lot of groups over the years who thought about getting into [the handheld business].
EGM: While we're on the subject of the competition, what do you think of the headset mic and, coming soon, the hard drive for the PS2....
EF: ...and more games that require broadband. Yeah, it seems like [Sony is] incrementally coming up to an Xbox kind of strategy. It's gratifying, actually. To me, it confirms that we made the right choices, but the thing is, we're light-years beyond that already. Maybe they'll [catch up with the] PS3. And of course, by then, I feel like we'll be even further ahead.
