At EGX today, Steve Papoutsis took the stage to present Battlefield Hardline. Steve is the General Manager of Visceral Games as well as Executive Producer of Battlefield Hardline. He took a somewhat different approach to his presentation, choosing to focus on his childhood and his life as a video game developer. It was an interesting talk, leading up to a trailer for Battlefield Hardline’s Hotwire Mode. This is a car centric mode which Steve described as “mobile domination”. The trailer and presentation are below.

At EGX today,

One of the games that was talked about today in a dev session on stage at EGX was Until Dawn by Supermassive Games, a choice-driven horror game with narrative determined by the choices made.

Taking place in a remote mountain getaway, Until Dawn is the story of 8 friends who need to survive a night of terror as they are stalked by a mysterious ‘Psycho’ character. Using what we were told is being called the ‘Butterfly Effect’ we are told that we can affect how the story progresses by choices in which way we want the story to go, by examining items picked up closer, whether we pick up items at all and even in the choices of how to continue conversations between characters. Some choices are even timed, which adds pressure to the situation (although if you don’t choose something in time, there is a third action that will take place instead).

Interaction icons only appear in the line of sight of the character, and conversations can change based on how what the character has found out. If you’ve missed something then it won’t suddenly pop up in the cutscenes. The clues found as to what is going on can also be discovered about the game and will be kept in a ‘Clue Line’ so you can see what has already been found out. Anyone and everyone can survive until the end, but anyone and everyone can die and once a character is dead they are dead in that playthrough for good.

Until Dawn will be released sometime in 2015 exclusively for the Playstation 4.

Ok, Relic were on hand again for EGX 2014 to talk about Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault.

We’ve talked about this already, namely in EGX Rezzed commentary from earlier this year, but Relic surprised me by making this one of the shortest Dev Sessions so far of EGX2014…
Now in March, at Rezzed, people were expecting Dawn of War, not Company of Heroes, but ho hum and Ardennes Assault is what we’re getting.

The brief game play video they showed off, showed the use of the new True Sight system, which basically means troops have true line of sight, meaning you can tell them to shoot something, but if they can’t SEE it, they won’t shoot it, which, in itself is cool, but honestly, I’m bored of WW2 games… Hell, even the FPS industry has moved away from WW2 finally

Well, the game looks fun, if you’ve played CoH2 or Dawn of War 2, you know whats on offer here, so lets let Relic explain…

Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault will feature three entirely new Companies to choose from within the US Forces, each with their own unique Officers and play-style. Players will see their decisions and actions reflected across the Ardennes landscape in this dynamic new single-player campaign. Player choices are crucial as every decision will not only impact the story but also their Company with upgrades and Veterancy carrying over from mission to mission. With limited soldiers under your command, you must manage their lives and well-being effectively or risk losing that Company for good. Will you lead your Company valiantly and emerge as heroes?

Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault is developed by Relic Entertainment and will be launching on November 18, 2014, for Windows PC and PC digital download platforms and you can see the Developer Session below:

Seems Paradox Interactive have jumped in to catch teh ball Maxis fumbled with SimCity…

The Sky is no limit!

Inhabit a world where you define the rules. Cities: Skylines invites you to create the city of your dreams in a sprawling landscape dominated by cloud hugging structures and jaw dropping architectural marvels.

Developed by Colossal Order, Cities: Skylines offers sprawling landscapes and maps with endless sandbox gameplay and new ways to expand your city. Key to progression is the ability to influence your city’s policy by incorporating taxation into districts. All this including the ability to mod the game to suit your play style makes this the definitive city building simulation.

You’re only limited by your imagination, so take control and reach for the sky!

Main features:

>City policies: Set policies to guide how the city and districts develop over the course of your playthrough.
>City districts: Personalize city districts with names of your choice for variety and personality.
>Road building and zoning
>Unlock buildings and services
>Taxation: Fine-tuning the city budget and services and setting tax rates to different residential, commercial and industrial levels and controlling what kind of areas are more likely to spawn in the zoned areas
>Public transportation: Build transport networks throughout the city with buses and metros
>Outside connections: Make industry and commercial districts flourish with new customers in the neighboring cities
>Wonders: the ultimate end-game content that the players strive towards
>Huge maps: Unlock new map tiles with unique possibilities to expand the city
>Water flow simulation: Add new challenges to water services.
>Polished visual style and core gameplay
>Modding tools: Built in feature designed to encourage creative pursuits.

Last year a veteran video games journalist named Tom Francis made  a game called Gunpoint to test out his theories and criticisms about other games. Gunpoint was very successful and lead him down the path of becoming a full time indie developed. He worked on several other small projects and has now settled on a new concept named Heat Signature.

Heat Signature is a game based in a randomly generated galaxy (that presently is infinite with nothing but other ships) where you fly around in a boarding capsule that allows you to board any ships you come across, and depending on which of the two classes you picked,  completing and collecting either theft or assassination missions.

The game takes the concept of permadeath and adds a soft failure mechanism where if you are caught and shot on board a ship you do not instantly die, instead you are ejected from the vessel and you have a chance to catch yourself by remotely piloting your original vessel to catch yourself. You can even do this when you are flying away in a space ship’s debris after a battle. When you have boarded a vessel you can shoot triangular objects which act like fuel barrels and you can blast chunks away from a ship or take control of a ship and begin a battle with another ship and as these ships take damage they break apart into debris and where a chunk was originally it is replaced with an air lock so you can dock with the debris and segments of the ships to explore for loot or to complete your mission.

His display at EGX showed off the ship boarding, and the current basic build he has for people to play. He intends to add new components  and expand  further but he has said he does not wish to add planets and other large objects to the game that are not ships or gas/vapour clouds. He does want to expand on the loot drops though with things like random weapon upgrade drops and more drops like coolant that make stealth easier or even harder within the game, these loot drops even potentially include special upgrades as well.

As you pick up more upgrades the difficulty will not endlessly ramp up, instead it will ease you in and then level out to a standard difficulty where you have to do things like cutting your engines to not create heat signatures for them to detect and as he adds factions in he wants them to have air lock security and tiered ships where you have to find the security cards to board the next tier of ship up.

As yet there is no official release date, we’ll keep our eyes open and keep you posted!

This game looks like it has a lot of promise, what do you think? Tell us in the comments below