The essential guide to Xbox 360 and Xbox One Issue 124 May 2015
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rainbow SIX Exclusive! First hands-on with Clancy’s incredible Xbox return PLUS all this!
elite: dangerous / the witcher 3 phil spencer interview / gigantic final fantasy xv / ori and the blind forest battlefield hardline / Lego jurassic world
Welcome…
to a game of cat and mouse With many games trying to justify their swollen budgets by reaching in all directions at once, there’s something refreshingly focused in Ubisoft’s decision to zoom right in on five vs five hostage situations and milk every drop of tension from them. Rainbow Six Siege, like Evolve and Titanfall, is betting the house (and blowing a few holes in one) on the strength of its one core experience, so it’s a huge relief to have Alex return from his Ubisoft Montreal session raving about his time with the game. Go read his in-depth thoughts on page 30 now and pray for beta access soon. While Siege explores one scenario in nearmicroscopic detail, “read our in-depth the rest of this issue is dedicated to the thoughts on siege and you’ll pray for bigger picture: we talk to Phil Spencer beta access soon” about his vision for Xbox One and interview the developers trying to execute it. Still not big enough for you? Elite: Dangerous is bringing 400 billion star systems to Xbox One – find out how on page 60. Enjoy! Subscribe and SAVE! turn to page 58 EMAIL matthew.castle@futurenet.com Live OXM Pesto Twitter @mrbasil_pesto
@OXM
1
Tom clancy’s rainbow six siege
Are you a hostage taker or liberator? Either way, Alex’s massive hands-on guide has you covered (p30)
2
3
elite: dangerous hits xbox one
exploring final fantasy XV
In space, no one can hear you say, “Wow, that’s a lot of space” (p60)
How to squeeze every last drop of fun from Episode Duscae (p40)
4
5
mr xbox spills the beans
ori and the blind forest
Alex goes full Paxman on Phil Spencer in our Xbox chat (p68)
Look at me using the editor’s page to pimp my own reviews (p84)
the official xbox magazine / 5
#124
contents
page
30 rainbow six siege
Hands-on and doors-off with Ubi’s new shooter.
page
page
22
60
DASHBOARD
News and interviews curated for your easy digestion
10 Crossing the Streams
What the PC/console pact means for Xbox owners.
16 Windows 10 Xbox App
Organise your Xbox Live social life on the go.
20 Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
Back to Bavaria we go for The New Order’s prequel.
22 The Witcher 3
Destiny awaits for this rapidly approaching RPG.
xbox extra
GETTING MORE FROM YOUR CONSOLE
100 OXM Investigates
The weirdest things you can do to your pals in #IDARB.
102 Now Playing page
100 6 / the official xbox magazine
elite: dangerous The stars align for Xbox One.
How to play Perfect Dark Zero until you love it. Sinister!
114 AI Soldier School
14 dopey tactics they (probably) teach AI recruits. www.totalxbox.com
page
44
“If you put a compsognathus head on a T-rex body, it’d just look a bit silly”
Subscribe
save up to 50% See P58
TT Games’ Mike Taylor on building dinos out of plastic bricks.
page
features
page
68
44
30 Rainbow Six Siege
Negotiations have failed. An assault team are moving in. But which side of the door will you find yourself on?
60 The Final Frontier
We pay David Braben’s studio a visit to discover how it’s pressing an entire universe to disc.
68 Xbox One: The State of Play
A sit-down chat with Phil Spencer, worldwide head of Xbox, on what the future has in store for Xbox One.
the state of play
The head of all things Xbox talks exclusively to OXM.
previews page
48
page
40
reviews
final fantasy xv
The epic RPG ten years in the making. page
78 page
92 page
74
battlefield hardline
The new sexiest thing you can do with a pair of ’cuffs. @OXM
40 Final Fantasy XV 44 Lego Jurassic World 46 The Flame and the Flood 47 Beyond Eyes 48 Wasteland 2 50 Sheltered 51 Afro Samurai 2 52 Gigantic 54 Previews round-up 74 Battlefield Hardline 78 Final Fantasy Type-0 HD 80 LA Cops 81 OlliOlli 82 Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin 84 Ori and the Blind Forest 86 Shiftlings 87 White Night 88 DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition 90 Zombie Army Trilogy 91 Tales from the Borderlands: Episode 2 – Atlas Mugged 92 Borderlands: The Handsome Collection 94 Online – Evolve 95 Online - GTA V: Heists 96 Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – The Bright Lord the official xbox magazine / 7
Meet the…
oxm contributors
The people behind, and in some senses also under, the UK’s biggest games mag
Alex Dale
Emma Davies
Joe Skrebels
Paul Taylor
Tom Sykes
Live ChocoboOfDoom
Live OXM Emma
Live OXM Joe
Live Paulus McT
Live Private
Twitter @SporadicDaler
Twitter @emcetera
Twitter @2plus2isjoe
Twitter @mynameispt
Twitter @tomdavidsykes
What with GDC and a trip to Canada to see Rainbow Six Siege, we’ve basically seen hide nor hair of Alex this month. We’ve sellotaped a stickman drawing to his chair, though, and it’s remarkably more chipper.
Subbing our huge Rainbow Six feature this month sent Emma a bit funny. She’s currently hiding under her desk, wearing night-vision goggles and refusing to come out until she’s granted a direct line to the President.
We’ve welcomed old hand Joe back into the OXM fold this month – albeit under a few conditions. The first being that he keeps his desk tidy, the second being that he salutes Matthew on the hour, every hour.
The changing seasons means we have only a few words from Paul this month, as he’s started preparing himself for hibernation ahead of the cold, bleak Aussie winter. Which is, er, warmer than it is over here.
Tom went through the Final Fantasy rabbit hole for us this month, having both previewed XV and reviewed Type-0 HD. He emerged mumbling about crystals and sporting a much more, er… interesting haircut.
Deputy editor
Production editor
Community manager
Editor, OXM AU
Contributor
OFFICE PLAYLIST > WHAT WE’VE SPENT OUR TIME ON THIS MONTH
Tablet We’re pretty sure this Scottish confection of butter and sugar is as addictive as class-As. MORE!
OXM on GR+
8 / the official xbox magazine
Cops and robbers Matthew’s favourite thing is playing bad cop in Battlefield Hardline. Just like in the office.
Beautiful games Ori and the Blind Forest, DmC, White Night… how are our eyes meant to go back to normal now?
Now that we’ve moved our online home and set up shop with our pals at GamesRadar+, you can find us over at gamesradar.com/oxm. We’ve unpacked the boxes and everything now – you’ll love it. Come join us! Recent highlights: Battlefield Hardline gets a smooth launch… so people try to break it / I love my Xbox One – DO YOU? / The 2015 OXM Rezzed Awards
Hobnobbing Alex got face-to-face with the industry bigwigs at GDC – he even interviewed Phil Spencer. Get him.
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xbox news, analysis, culture, opinion & more
m o v i n g p l at f o r m s
Crossing the streams
Microsoft has outlined plans to unite its gaming devices under one umbrella. What will this mean for Xbox’s future? 10 / the official xbox magazine
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Shovel Knight coming to Xbox One Yacht Club’s amazing ode to 8-bit will have an Xbox-exclusive cameo from Rash, Zitz and Pimple – aka the Battletoads. Following on from Phil Spencer’s ‘Toads shirt worn at a Windows 10 event, the evidence of a Rare reboot is piling up.
Build your own Conker sequel
Project Spark is getting a Conker-themed asset pack, along with a new episodic game that sees a “washed-up Conker trying to get himself together”. Rare supplied the art, based on Conker’s Bad Fur Day, while Chris Seavor returns to voice Conker.
//developers can work on a single product that then can be released on any windows 10-enabled device//
Siegecraft Commander is a hectic RTS where the objective is to box in your opponent.
W
indows and Xbox are Microsoft's biggest gaming platforms – but yet the two brand behemoths don't exactly have a history of playing nicely together. Microsoft's last big attempt at unifying the PC and Xbox gaming spheres came in 2006, with the ill-fated Games for Windows. This was an ambitious attempt to bring many of Xbox Live's standardised features – Gamertags, Achievements et al – to the PC gaming scene (which, remember, was still in its Wild West pre-Steam days back then). It also let Windows Vista and Xbox 360 players compete against one another in select cross-platform titles, such as, er, Shadowrun. Unfortunately, Games for Windows proved as popular as mouse-wheel gunk amongst PC gamers, not least because of its aggressive DRM restrictions and juddering servers. More to the point, developers and players alike resented what they saw as an attempt by Microsoft to regulate the open nature of the platform. After several agonising years circling the drain, Microsoft finally pulled the plug in 2013, and the brand was mourned by precisely zero people. So you'll forgive PC gamers if they weren't exactly setting off fireworks in the streets at the news that the upcoming Windows 10 sees the OS get back into bed with Xbox. But this is no Games for Windows debacle. It's an initiative that’s built around the needs of today's developers, making it cheaper and easier for them to bring their games to an audience of billions. It works by preventing duplication of effort. With the Universal App Platform, developers can work on a single product that then can, with minimal fuss, be released on any Windows 10-enabled device – be it PC, tablet, phone or indeed Xbox One. This appears to have been the plan for Xbox One from its very conception, as we're told it's remarkably easy to reverse-engineer existing games to run on Windows. “About a month ago, Microsoft came to us, gave us the software development kit and said, ‘Give this a shot. We think it’s easy, but we don’t know – you tell us if it’s easy’,” says Mike Mika, industry veteran and designer of #IDARB. “And we literally got the game ported to Windows 10 in just about a day – I mean, it was actually shorter than that. I’ve been a developer for years, and when you hear the promise, ‘Oh, you just deploy this,’ you think that’s a load
@OXM
the official xbox magazine / 11
Colour Destiny players happy
Bungie’s latest patch adds support for colour-blind Guardians, with a mode that increases the contrast to help eyes better differentiate between shield types.
of BS. But it actually worked, so we were shocked.” “The hardest thing to actually deal with was cross-play,” continues Mika, when pressed on whether there were many kinks to iron out. “But the funny thing about #IDARB is that it’s not a very complicated game, so we’re able to run on some pretty low-performance platforms. It’s actually pretty exciting… you can go on PC or tablet and [play against] Xbox players. It’s pretty crazy. It finally feels like we’re in the future with our retro game!”
in control
#IDARB was one of several games chosen to showcase the new crossplay feature at Xbox's expansive Game Developers Conference booth in March. Thanks to a soon-to-be-released adapter that compatibalises (not a word, but it really should be) Xbox One's controllers with other Windows 10-powered devices, console players and tablet users alike were able to compete against one another with the same controller, in blissful, lag-free harmony. We're starting to think John Lennon didn't die in vain after all. Being able to use the same input across all formats is a great leveller. The knock against cross-platform gaming in the Quake III deathmatch 12 / the official xbox magazine
Zen Studios’ Pinball FX2 is one of the first games to opt into the cross-buy program – buy it on one format, you own it on all.
days of yore was that lightning-fast mouse aiming gave PC gamers an insurmountable advantage over Dreamcast players and their dopey thumbstick. But Microsoft's vision of cross-platform gaming does allow for differing inputs – it's up to the dev to determine whether they’re appropriate. In the case of Siegecraft Commander, a newly announced RTS game from Blowfish Studios, it's an easy call. While it's faster-paced than most turn-based games, reaction speed isn't of the essence (and in any case, its slick radial menus make
it easy to deploy your next move). In action games such as Fable Legends however, it's an altogether thornier issue. How do you balance controls? “It’s been a big bit of work to make sure that the controls work on both Windows 10 and Xbox One, but I think what we've done works really well,” says Legends’ executive producer Geoff Smith. “One thing we're particularly proud of on the Villain side is that you can switch between Xbox One and the PC controls on the fly – so if you’ve got a controller plugged in, your HUD changes immediately.
We’re not loving how that creepy dude in the middle reminds us of the Child Catcher.
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