UPDATE!
It's not much, and it is pre-rendered, but there is now some kind of trailer for this.
(link supplied by Sheep)
http://kotaku.com/5025634/ubisoft-announces-i-am-alive-for-spring-09
It's only a small piece of news so far, but I'm already interested to hear more. Via Eurogamer, this small rumour from Gamekyo:
We can today announce that Ubisoft will show for the first time a new action game during E3 2008 next week called I Am Alive for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Jade Raymond (Assassin's Creed) will be working on this new game developed by Darkworks (Cold Fear) in Paris since 3 years. Scheduled to be released during spring 2009, I Am Alive is a survival video game that takes place after an earthquake in Chicago, it will be a first person game without heavy weapons, a little bit like Mirror's Edge. Ubisoft will show a very long video of I Am Alive (14 - 20 minutes) during E3 2008, no playable version will be shown this time, we will probably have to wait for Games Convention in Germany to see the first playable demo of the game.
has me wondering what this could be like, especially as I'm already enamoured with Mirror's Edge. Anything looking to innovate from the first-person perspective has my attention.
And yes, supposedly Jade Raymond is working on it, hooray, but anyone caught turning this into a discussion about her and either "OMG SHE'S HOT!" or bitching that "people only care because they think she's hot!" will be dragged out back and shanked.
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Also shouldn't she be working on Assassin's Creed 2?
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Also first-person.
She's a producer. She's not a game designer or coder or artist or writer or cinematographer or whatever. She helps getting budgets and deadlines and organizing things together.
This game, I Am Alive, it's being developed by a team that has already done a survival horror game already.
Incidentally, their previous Survival Horror game was a very direct rip off of Resident Evil 4. That said, it was still a fairly decent game. Not bad, but not definitely not great.
So I think that a new game by the dev team could potentially be good. But I don't think Jade Raymond's involvement in it anything has much to do with anything. She's just a name and a face that Ubisoft spent a long time and money building up to get geeks worked up over and spread the hype over any game for which they can name-drop her for.
edit: for the record, I'm sure Jade Raymond is a fine producer and good at her job. But it's also clear to me that marketing did their job in making her a big, well known name and face that they can use to hype and sell a game.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Kinda like You are Empty, which is a terrible game.
Jade Raymond is hot.
This game sounds hot.
I will buy Jade Ray- I mean this game.
Don't make me do it because I swear to whichever deity has forsaken you I will drag you out back and add one more number to the rising knife-crime statistics.
I'm just intrigued by the premise of surviving a post-earthquake Chicago. Sounds like plenty of room for a good atmosphere and some kickass set-pieces.
Edit: Our minds are both of the awesome.
Yeah I have to say I agree with this. I never understood why Jade Raymond was pushed so hard with Assassin's Creed. The only real reason I could come up with was "marketing must have thought it was a good idea."
Yeah, they did. Called "Disaster Report," or SOS: The Final Escape.
Survival horror set in a city after major earthquakes, described as Silent Hill without monsters, a survival horror game without all the gun-toting action of the REs, meant to be realistic, etc
I believe there was another game with the same premise on the PS2, the name of which I cannot remember.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Hmm, sounds like something I need to look into.
I would love them to go for a kind of Bioshock atmosphere. When you started out in the game and everything was broken down and falling apart,that was just amazing.
Put this into a realistic setting and add the best sound effects ever and you will have a great game.
Apparently, if you can get past some controls issues and some bugs, and weak graphics, then it's a fairly decent game underneath.
Some people enjoyed it despite these things, some people couldn't due to the issues with the controls/graphics and bugs.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Raw Danger.
That's the sequel to Disaster Report. It was silently localized here though, with absolutely no publicity.
A first person Disaster Report/Raw Danger sequel? Nice.
By the team that did Cold Fear? Not nice.
Gotta admit, the marketing thing with Jade worked, because this is exactly what I first thought off. I mean , it's not like they can't make AC2 without her or anything.
Yes, Cold Fear. The gameplay design was lifted straight from RE4. But it was set in a boat, and the enemies are humans to which something evil has happened, causing them to want to kill you. You walk/run around in typical RE style, solving puzzles and looking for items to unlock the next area. Trying to figure out what's going on. The control and action setup is the same as RE4; overthe shoulder camera with tank controls, and holding up a gun with a laser sight, everything. Lots of backtracking, scavenging for ammo, etc.
Some people enjoyed it as a decent rip off of RE4 with a pretty well-done cold, rainy boat setting. Other people felt like it was repetitive and too backtracky and lacking in variety in enemies/puzzles, with overly linear characters and blah story.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Yes! That's the name of the game I was trying to think of.
Same sort of premise; 'realistic' survival horror in a devastated city.
Same issues with controls/presentation as the first. But still, seems like a good bunch of people were able to see past some of the presentation and controls issues and enjoy it.
Kind of a budget game too.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
http://youtube.com/watch?v=de3ZWOTnypA
I'm just hoping against supernatural crap and monsters. If the conflict comes from looters and stuff, that could work fine. I don't want zombies or whatever. A trashed city and a few over-zealous survivors would suit me.
Also on saying it's a silly title, I Am Legend?
The water and the mayhem, having to move stuff or grab onto things to not be swept away.
This can be amazing on a next gen platform.
:x
It should be easy enough to find. I got it at Wal-Mart because I took a look at the cover and instantly recognized that it was a localization of the Disaster Report sequel, which as a Disaster Report fan I had no idea that there was a localization. o_O
I saw it also at Toys R Us and Gamestop. All cheap.
http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=65571
So the protagonist awakes one day, you start going about your business and then the city is struck by a horrifyingly powerful earthquake. Noone knows what is going on, or what to do. There are remarkably few survivors, and what little news does trickle in brings nothing but more confusion. Some news casts are talking about Chicago, some seem to be completely ignoring it. Radio and Television announcements tell you to go places for supplies and rescue, but noone ever comes. Aftershocks rip into the city, seemingly at random, nowhere is safe. Some other survivors talk of seeing helicopters picking people up, others swear blindly they haven't seen anything from outside since the earthquake. As time passes food and fresh water become scarce astoundingly swiftly, news broadcasts from the outside become both increasingly desperate, filled with requests for any survivors to come, to make themselves known in any fashion, assuring them that rescue teams are on the ground searching for them, and yet others begin to talk about other issues in the World, even discussing Chicago itself as if nothing had happened. The power grid flickers between life and death, illuminating the shattered remnants of a city, before casting it back into a dusty gloom. Fires and dust from the earthquake make it hard to see, to breathe, and the sun casts only a pallid glow during the day.
It begins to become clear that your only hope is to get out of the city, past the earthquakes, fires and hungry animals. Past people driven mad by fear and desperation. Past the looters, criminals and thugs driven to the brink of desperation. Will you go on alone? Will you trust others to help you? All you know is that you are alive, and you intend to stay that way.
Oh man. That box art is just...just horrible.
Still the graphics don't look nearly as horrid as Disaster Report's, so I may have to check it out.
Yes, it is.
But have you ever seen the Japanese box art for the Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series?
PLOT TWIST!
The game should play with our "gamer mentality" of expecting things to jump at you and such.
Like,you walk into a room and suddenly a man jumps towards you from the dark and you jump back and realize it was just a coat hanger/stand with a coat and a hat on top.
I would love that game so much.
Well everywhere gets earthquakes, but you don't get massive earthquakes destroying a whole city away from fault lines and regions of strong volcanic activity. I mean, the UK got a 4.7 this year and it's about as far away from a fault line as chicago is. My point was, why go with Chicago if you don't want to make it mysterious? There are lots of iconic US cities to realistically destroy with earthquakes if you want. San Diego for example would give you your big tall buildings, and a large suburban area around it if you didn't want San Francisco.
OMG SPOILER THAT!
Really though, I'm hoping that bit about a 14-minute video is true, since I really want to see how this game looks and what themes they're going for.
Fingers will be crossed for minimal combat, with a greater emphasis on navigating a destroyed city.
In my plot you'd never find out what the hell was going on, I reckon I'd just have it be impossible to escape, you'd always go mad, but you'd compete with everyone to try and get as far as you possibly could.
You are actually from the future and are possessing a man's body in the past so you can go into a secret lab during the earthquake and get data on a new weapon which was build in the future and is going to explode in 1 hour until you can disarm it.
I...I should be a writer.
I'd buy it.