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THE CREW GUILTY GEAR XRD GAME OF THRONES DESTINY: THE DARK BELOW THE TALOS PRINCIPLE SCROLLS
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#276 fe b rua ry 2015
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H O W T O BU I L D Y O UR O W N AR C A D E
The pleasure and pain of excavating old treasure More than any other kind of entertainment, videogames are obsessed with the future, and we don’t always make time to look back. As 2015 kicks in, are we thinking hard about all of the great games we didn’t get around to playing in 2014, vowing to try them now that release schedules have calmed down? Or are we fixated instead on the new PS4 games from Sony’s PlayStation Experience? Is it too soon to be thinking about what may be at GDC? Is it out of order to even consider E3’s lineup in June? With regulars such as Time Extend, we make an organised effort to consider the past, and our recent replay of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves provided a timely primer for this issue’s cover story. In E275, we focused on the considerable strengths of Nathan Drake’s best adventure to date, but playing it again, five years on from its release, also reveals a number of cracks we simply didn’t notice the first time around. What once felt so slickly executed now seems weirdly clunky in places. (And we’re not talking about that Lazarevic fight, which was always rough.) The reality, of course, is that every high-octane thirdperson action game of 2009 was clunky in places. Our expectations have been ratcheting up slowly, year on year, as technology has evolved alongside game makers’ artistry, to the extent that even the most seemingly bulletproof games of the PS3 era feel a little ragged around the edges in the unforgiving glare of 2015. That Uncharted 2 feels this way today is good news for Naughty Dog because it leaves plenty on the table to work with. And it’s doing so not by papering over cracks, but by rethinking Uncharted at an elemental level, creating something with aspirations of standing alongside The Last Of Us. As Naughty Dog moves on, so do we by opening our doors to new freelance contributors. If you’re interested in being a part of Edge – and particularly if you have experience working on features, interviews and reviews – submit your copy samples via edge@futurenet.com. 3
games Hype
Play
34 The Order: 1886 PS4
104 The Crew
38 Metal Gear Online 360, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One
108 Guilty Gear Xrd Sign
40 Bloodborne PS4
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42 Adrift PC, PS4, Xbox One 44 Until Dawn PS4
360, PC, PS4, Xbox One
PS3, PS4
112 Game Of Thrones: Iron From Ice
360, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One
114 Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris
PC, PS4, Xbox One
46 Block N Load PC
116 Scrolls
48 Street Fighter V PC, PS4
118 Destiny: The Dark Below
50 Hype Roundup
Android, iOS, PC
360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One
120 The Talos Principle PC
122 Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed PS4
Explore the iPad edition of Edge for additional content
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Follow these links throughout the magazine for more content online
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sections #276
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98
F eb r ua ry 2015
Knowledge
Dispatches
8 Experience points
22 Dialogue
12 Lost in deeper blue
24 Trigger Happy
14 A farewell to Ralph Baer
26 Difficulty Switch
Reporting from Sony’s communityfocused PlayStation Experience Get marooned on the Pacific sands of Stranded Deep
Edge readers share their opinions; one wins SteelSeries hardware Steven Poole on the danger of promising, well, anything
Saluting the father of videogames and Magnavox Odyssey creator
16 Soundbytes
Light shed on the creative process by Ron Gilbert and Koji Kondo
18 My Favourite Game
Gambling’s flirtation with gaming only devalues it, says Ian Bogost
38 Big Picture Mode
Nathan Brown puzzles over the future of free-to-play’s image
129 Postcards From The Clipping Plane
Musician Ghostpoet on tapeloading screeches and GTAV
106
James Leach considers the pitfalls of relying on playtest feedback
The things that caught our eye during the production of E275
Features
20 This Month On Edge
74 Gold Rush
Investigating the psychology and science behind our insatiable craving for shiny loot
82 Infinite Lives
How America’s keenest coin-op collectors are preserving the rich heritage of the arcade scene
94 The Making Of…
How an animation experiment went on to become the arcade and PlayStation classic, Tekken
98 Studio Profile
We drop in on a surprisingly hirsute Turtle Rock, the Californian creator of Left 4 Dead and Evolve
124 Time Extend
How the frozen North reheated roleplaying in Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
54 Pushing Forward
Naughty Dog opens up its doors and its horizons as Uncharted evolves for new hardware
68 An Audience With…
Sports Interactive studio boss Miles Jacobson on nearly ten years of Football Manager
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EDITORIAL Tony Mott editor in chief Nathan Brown deputy editor Ben Maxwell writer Matthew Clapham production editor Mark Wynne senior art editor Andrew Hind art editor CONTRIBUTORS
Ian Bogost, Gerard Buchko, Richard Cobbett, Martin Davies, Samuel Horti, James Leach, Alice Liang, Nick Lombardo, Jamie Madigan, Angus Morrison, Matthew Pellett, Steven Poole, Daniel Robson, Matthew Sakuraoka-Gilman, Chris Schilling, Alvin Weetman
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PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION
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MANAGEMENT
Daniel Dawkins group editor in chief Graham Dalzell group art director Declan Gough head of content and marketing, film, music and games Nial Ferguson content and marketing director Printed in the UK by William Gibbons & Sons on behalf of Future. Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT (+44 (0)20 74294000). Overseas distribution by Seymour International. All submissions to Edge are made on the basis of a licence to publish the submission in Edge magazine and its licensed editions worldwide. Any material submitted is sent at the owner’s risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future Publishing Limited nor its agents shall be liable for loss or damage. While we make every effort possible to ensure that everything we print is factually correct, we cannot be held responsible if factual errors occur. Please check any quoted prices and specs with your supplier before purchase. A new year! Exciting. Let’s make an interactive CD-ROM or something. All contents copyright © 2014 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or used in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price and other details of products or services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any changes or updates to them. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage.
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12/23/14 8:41 AM
Knowledge PSX
Experience points Why Sony’s community-focused PlayStation Experience was just what game-hungry PS4 owners needed
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hile it wasn’t like Sony had any choice in the matter, PlayStation’s 20th anniversary could hardly have arrived at a better time. Its Las Vegas event, PlayStation Experience (PSX), was designed to commemorate two decades in the console business, but the company was already in celebratory mood, with PS4 sales well ahead of its rivals. Indeed, as SCEA president Shawn Layden took to the stage to introduce “two intense days of all things PlayStation”, he opened by reminding us all that PS4 is now the fastest-selling home console of all time. And yet, even as Sony was keen to mark its achievements to date, PSX represented a chance to look to the future. Its hardware may be selling well, but this has not been Sony’s strongest year from a creative standpoint, and PS4 owners could be forgiven for wondering when their console was going to live up to its prelaunch billing. With numerous high-profile delays and big games arriving with bugs and online issues
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SCEA chief Shawn Layden loses the suit in Las Vegas to celebrate 20 years of PlayStation
Viewers of the livestream might have (none more damning than DriveClub), been surprised by the apparently muted Sony has had to rely on remasters and reaction to A Thief’s End, but you can ports of indie favourites to prop up the blame the sound team for cutting out release schedule. Over the past six crowd noise whenever a video was months, Microsoft has regained some playing. In the auditorium, the response ground, and you could now easily make was raucous. Questions were asked a case for it having the stronger roster of about how much of a mechanical exclusives. And with NPD numbers for advance had been made over its November showing Xbox One outselling predecessors – questions answered on PS4 in the US for a change, Sony had p54 – but visually the game is a cut something to prove. above everything else on PS4 to date. Though press were present, PSX A strong start, then, and there were 2014 was an event with a firm focus plenty of crowd-pleasers to come. We on community. Notably, it began with saw new trailers of existing footage of and voiceovers games, and witnessed from fans – nothing too We saw enough enough announcements to self-aggrandising, just people talking honestly announcements to make us wonder whether Sony might be leaving about what games mean to make us wonder itself short for E3 in June. them. “We continue to be Many of them were humbled by your passion,” whether Sony aimed at pleasing players said Layden, dressed down might be leaving rather than press or trade, in a Kratos T-shirt, with though our delight at the Sony’s other hosts in itself short for E3 news of Yakuza 5’s similarly casual attire. This localisation was as great as anyone’s. consciously more informal approach was Applause also greeted the imminent a world apart from a sharp-suited E3 arrival of Suikoden I and II on Vita, with presentation. The message was obvious: SCEA Third Party Production director Gio we’re just like you. And if it wasn’t entirely Corsi announcing portable versions of convincing, the effort was appreciated. It Super Time Force Ultra, The Banner helped that Sony chose presenters wisely: Saga, Octodad, TowerFall Ascension the likeable Adam Boyes introduced and Resident Evil Revelations 2. Destiny’s PlayStation-exclusive content by making a loot cave gag that was more warmly received than the DLC bonuses. Meanwhile, the ebullient CG trailers were conspicuous by their Yoshinori Ono managed to work the absence. A demonstration of Uncharted crowd to a frenzy for the already-leaked 4 began with the words “the following Street Fighter V, while EA earned itself a footage is running entirely in realtime on bit of goodwill as Peter Moore made a PlayStation 4 system”, and that was three of the publisher’s games available true of just about everything that followed. to download for free for the duration of
Beyond the colouration and logo, there’s little in common between the Limited Edition PS4 and its distant ancestor, but its DualShock 4 controller, despite being massively overhauled since the original PS1 joypad, tingles the nostalgia glands
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James Jarvis
Knowledge PSX
From Exotic rifles to quixotic trifles, there was something for everyone at PSX. Blockbusters and indies rubbed shoulders, while Project Morpheus offered a glimpse of the future. 2015’s lineup has remarkable breadth Limited edition Keen to ensure UK fans didn’t miss out on all the fun, Sony opened a popup shop in Shoreditch to sell a grey 20th anniversary model of PS4, styled after the original hardware. For once, this was a limited edition that lived up to the name: just 200 units were available, with the first 94 selling for a one-off price of £19.94 to those who brought along PlayStation merchandise. Sony promised that 800 more would be made available online the following week, but forced potential buyers to jump through a series of convoluted hoops to get hold of them. If the idea was to weed out the opportunists, it didn’t work: Ebay was immediately put to work as sellers piled them on for exorbitant sums.
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Super Time Force Ultra
The Forest
Gang Beasts
Enter The Gungeon
Killing Floor 2
The Banner Saga
Capy’s updated temporal shooter is coming to both PS4 and Vita, with Shuhei Yoshida as a playable character. It sounds like an Internet joke gone too far, but it was amusing to watch the pixellated exec firing tweet missiles and emoticons from his smartphone.
Part twin-stick shooter, part procedural dungeoncrawler, this top-down blaster has a hint of Vlambeer about it. It’s in development at Dodge Roll, a studio founded by ex-Mythic Entertainment staff. Publisher Devolver Digital may well have another hit here.
the two-day event. More big names arrived: Tim Schafer didn’t just confirm Broken Age for Vita and PS4, but surprised with Day Of The Tentacle: Special Edition. Yet Sony spent plenty of time showcasing more offbeat fare: Keita Takahashi and Robin Hunicke baffled everyone with a trailer for Wattam, while Giant Sparrow’s glimpse of its follow-up to The Unfinished Swan, What Remains Of Edith Finch?, looked like a similarly rich, melancholic treat. Few could fail to notice the breadth of the games on show, with room reserved for Kickstarter RPG Darkest Dungeon and pixel-art sidescroller Skytorn alongside blockbusters such as Batman: Arkham Knight. Not everything came off, of course. Sony hasn’t mastered conciseness, and some attendees were visibly flagging as it passed the two-hour mark. Attractive set dressing and magnificent facial hair aside, The Order: 1886 looks to have little going for it. David Jaffe’s heartfelt thanks to fans for supporting his family for 20 years was soured by a poorly chosen turn of phrase afterwards, and it was a strange choice to close on Drawn To Death, a high-concept, low-art multiplayer
Endnight Games’ sandbox survival horror is still in Early Access, but it’s been confirmed for a PS4 release this year. It’s dark, uncompromising, and alarmingly popular – and given the success of Outlast early in PS4’s life, it’s little wonder Sony snapped this up.
With depressing inevitability, online complaints forced Tripwire Interactive president John Gibson to explain the PC-centric studio’s reasons for bringing its FPS to PS4 – it’s still coming to PC, of course. And the game? Fast-paced, gore-soaked zombie slaying, as before.
arena shooter that looked crude in every sense – understandably so in pre-alpha state. Square Enix, however, took the wooden spoon, teasing the crowd with the Final Fantasy VII logo before revealing that the PC port of the original – not a remake – was coming to PlayStation 4. The uncomfortable silence that followed suggested Sony knew what it was doing when it muted the mics for the livestream.
Nonetheless, this was a show with real substance, and the generosity continued once the presentation had concluded. With around 800 game kiosks, queues were for the most part reasonable, while playable demos were often lengthy. At E3, attendees were limited to five minutes with The Order; here, you could stay on for half an hour. Away from the show floor, Sony hosted a series of panels covering all aspects of development, though these were targeted at players rather than developers, suggesting Sony had taken a few pointers from PAX. Impressively, these were no mere PR exercises. A discussion looking back at ten years of God Of War saw a panel including God Of War II
This knockabout brawler has won plenty of admirers on the event circuit, and now developer Bone Loaf is bringing its physics-based mayhem to PS4 with a little help from Double Fine. It’s another to add to the growing list of great local multiplayer games.
We can vouch for how good the Ralph Bakshi-inspired art of Stoic’s grim strategy-RPG looks when given the big-screen treatment, so a PS4 port will surely look sumptuous. And with its UI already smartly designed for touchscreens, it may be an even better fit on Vita.
director Cory Barlog talk over early footage from when the game was known as Dark Odyssey, and a rough cut of Kratos riding Pegasus set to Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone. A Storytelling In Video Games panel featuring Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, Media Molecule’s Rex Crowle and Double Fine’s Tim Schafer would undoubtedly have been a highlight at GDC and was naturally a draw here. Tellingly, Sony encouraged audience participation wherever possible: in a session where Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson discussed voice acting, attendees were asked to step up and deliver lines that would later be spliced into cutscene footage of God Of War III. The results were mixed, but everyone seemed to be having a good time. Any whispers that complacency might have been setting in at Sony were dispelled by what was a convincing show, then – for its home console division, at least. Sony perhaps needed PSX more than it would be prepared to admit, but over the course of a weekend it worked hard to remind players why they bought a PS4 in the first place. n
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Knowledge Stranded Deep
Lost in deeper blue Beam Team’s fight for survival takes place in the sun – and with absolutely zero zombies
T
new undersea world for exploration, here’s a plane, an explosion, and then complete with elements such as buoyancy you wind up on a desert island with simulation, sea foam, god rays to neither your favourite albums nor a luxury illuminate the exploration, and sharks. to call your own. This is Stranded Deep, “The great thing about being indie a rare survival game where you don’t is that we can create the game we’ve have to worry about zombies, but sharks always wanted to play,” says Massey. and starvation are another matter. “It started off as trying to capture a It’s the debut project from Brisbanereal-life horror experience that didn’t based Beam Team, AKA Ben Massey involve the supernatural. The thought of and Sam Edwards. For Massey, it’s the sharks, deep open water, and isolation result of many smaller experiments, most terrified us, so we went with that. Islands notably SF shooter Livalink. “I had always act as a safe haven, but at the same dabbled in game development and time they’re surrounded by extremely committed most of my teenage years to dangerous oceans. Snakes, urchins and learning the industry. I was interested poisonous fish are all very real threats, in being a one-man band at the time, and we love that you’re forced into which allowed me to vaguely learn the these areas for food, loot and travel.” process of each aspect of game “I get annoyed by development and figure out zombies after a while,” my areas of specialty.” “I think a lot of Edwards says. “I’m like, Edwards, meanwhile, ‘Oh, would you go away! comes from a programming people wonder I just want to craft, build family, and came to Beam how they’d and explore.’ We’ve Team after changing career traded the fear of, ‘Oh no, from running a self-owned handle being they’re coming!’ for, ‘If I painting business to do in an extreme want to live, I’m going to something he really loved. “It’s quite ridiculous for situation like this” have to go out there!’” Specifically, survival in us to look back on what Stranded Deep involves finding materials we initially envisioned for Stranded to build shelter and tools, seeking food Deep,” says Massey. “The project and warmth, and making the tools started fairly simple but quickly adapted required to explore. Massey lists as to our ‘want, want, want’ attitude. inspirations the likes of Castaway, Open Because we were creating what felt so Water, Kon-Tiki, and “even TV series like original to us, it quickly became hard Survivorman and Dude, You’re Screwed. to come up with new material, which They all cover that similar ‘lone survival’ resulted in many days of head scratching. setting that had never really been Luckily, we both have similar interests, introduced to the gaming world. I think a we’re both perfectionists, and we take lot of people wonder how they’d handle what we do very seriously.” being in an extreme situation like this. For me, the lure is having such a great The best example of this is the sandbox to survive and even thrive in, water. It would have been easy to simply while being a little scared that a wrong treat it as a barrier, but Stranded Deep’s move could wipe out all my hard work…” complex technologies open up a whole
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Beam Team is Ben Massey (top) and Sam Edwards. Stranded Deep is its debut game
Game concept art always involves a raft of images; Beam Team has taken it more literally than most. Sharks, meanwhile, will provide danger, alongside urchins and poisonous fish
The sea bed is surprisingly untapped in games, and, for Massey, that means lots of freedom. “Part of our approach to making it work here, though, is blending sea and surface together, and making it interesting to explore in and of itself. A lot of games tend to focus heavily on one and abandon the other. Most underwater titles lean toward a lush, oversaturated Finding Nemo reef look, whereas we set out to portray the real diversity of ocean biomes. It’s been a great way to break up environment development, since underwater scenes are so alien.” Later, the plan is to add multiplayer – with the success of Rust et al, it would be crazy not to. The lone survival test, however, is taking the lead here, using procedurally generated content to keep things fresh. “I genuinely think our procedural system saved our sanity… but don’t get me wrong, it’s been a massive pain,” admits Massey, who would like to see procedural tech used more often in mainstream titles. “I still get surprised and excited by different formations, and often end up getting distracted while testing a simple mechanic. Next thing I know, I’ve sailed to another island.” Its output, however, along with the exact implementation of the survival elements and range of activities on the island, will be guided by the response to the Early Access build. “We’re going to use Early Access to let the game grow to its full potential, rather than a ‘this is what we have so far’ bug-catching exercise,” says Massey, who is aware that several premature launches have somewhat soured the mood for survival games. “Our original goal was to create a unique survival title, and we think we’re on track. We also want to help reverse the bad reputation the genre seems to be getting with Early Access if we can.” n