Toronto's Berkeley Church adorned in Assassins' garb

Few places in Toronto are as appropriate for an Assassin’s Creed event as the Berkeley Church on Queen and Parliament. Originally built in 1871, it’s a mix of the modern and the historical – a perfect fit for the time-jumping, history-shaping saga that continues this week with the release of Ubisoft’s latest chapter in the series, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

Banners with series stalwarts Ezio Auditore and Altair Ibn-La’Ahad draped over the building’s entrance. To the side, flickering braziers could make a visitor wonder if they had been invited to a clandestine Templar gathering. Inside, multiple television screens were hooked up to Xbox 360 consoles, allowing guests and the media to try out Revelations‘ multiplayer mode, improved and expanded from last year’s version in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

Darby McDevitt, lead writer for Revelations and the tie-in short film AC: Embers, ran though a demonstration of the game’s single player story. An older, burlier Ezio Auditore is joined by a team of assassins on their way to meet the young Prince Suleiman in Constantinople, while also protecting him from potential Templar attempts on his life.

The sequence began with the need for more subterfuge than usual – procuring disguises to enter a party thrown by Suleiman’s family, not unlike the festive scenes in Venice we’ve seen before. To do that, McDevitt-as-Ezio punches the living daylights out of those irritating minstrels, throws them into a straw wagon, and then dresses as one himself – including the ability to play the lute as a distraction.

Once at the party, Ezio uses his Eagle Vision to find the Templar infiltrators. Once found, he plays the lute – often singing a ditty belittling the Borgias from Brotherhood – distracting the crowd. Meanwhile his Assassin brothers grab the Templar, dispatch them with a trademark Snikt, and throw them in down a well or behind a bush. The crowd at the Berkeley Church roared with laughter at every Templar’s demise, punctuated by the juxtaposition of onlookers applauding Ezio’s performance.

Left to right: Art director Raphaël Lacoste, Revelations and Embers writer Darby McDevitt, Live Producer Andréane Meunier, Embers Producer Louis-Pierre Pharand and Marketing Brand Manager Carl Caldareri

The event’s host, Shaun Hatton, then sat down with McDevitt to talk about Revelations and where it fit into the Assassin’s Creed lore. They were joined by Live Team Producer Andreane Meunier, who oversees the multiplayer mode’s development, and Art Director Raphael Lacoste.

Hatton asked about the creative process for making a Creed game – which comes first, the game mechanics, or the story? McDevitt answered that, at least for AC2, the Renaissance was the first thing they decided upon. After that, “you immediately start to imagine a character in that world, and because he’s part of the Assassin’s order, how does that fit into the first game?”

For Revelations, “we looked around in history, wondering what else was going on in history while the Renaissance was going on [in Italy]. We looked to the east and realized there’s this amazing city called Constantinople. We saw this chunk of Ezio’s life where we said that yeah, he could plausibly go there – because there were certain questions that we wanted to have answered.”

When asked about fan interaction, McDevitt said he reads many online forum discussions to see what the fans of the games are talking about, and also what plot points they are feverishly debating.

“Around the time when I’m making the script, I will read the forums a lot, because I want to know the topics that the fans are arguing about, and getting into flame wars about. Because maybe there’s something that makes me think, ‘oh, you know, I didn’t even intend for that to be confusing. I should probably answer that question.’”

Meuning’s mission statement deals with the multiplayer component, “we’re really giving you a new inside look at what’s happening on the Templar side,” she explains. “You’ll have people from [Abstergo] talking to you, and it’ll probably let you in on a lot of secrets that are blurring the line of good and bad, Assassins versus Templars, and you’ll probably realize that there’s a lot more to the story than just the Assassins’ side of things.”

As for Constantinople itself, Lacoste said he and his team worked hard to introduce a wider array of vistas, colours, and personality to the different areas in the game compared to Rome in Brotherhood. He noted they especially paid attention to the large buildings such as the Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace, making no secret about the amount of planning it took to make sure Ezio would be able to climb and traverse the locations with aplomb. “It was a great challenge to re-create the city of Constantinople,” said Lacoste. “We hope it’s an exotic, fresh new experience for the players.”

As for the team’s Dork Shelves? McDevitt’s includes the collected works of Orson Welles, PC classic Another World, “all the Lucasarts Sierra games,” and two copies of Dark Souls. Lacoste owns several reference books about architecture, and his favourite designer is American Frank Lloyd Wright.

Meunier says she currently has a homemade, in-progress crochet Sackboy. “It’s mising a limb right now…I’ve been working on it for six months on-and-off.”

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations launches this Tuesday, November 15, on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. PC gamers will have to wait until November 29th.

Alexandre Breault, Ubisoft’s lead game designer for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, gave Dork Shelf a rundown of the game’s latest preview build at Microsoft’s X-11 holiday preview event last week. Taking place early in the single-player narrative, a beardy, burly Ezio Auditore is on his way to Masyaf, former stomping grounds of his predecessor Altair, which is now overrun by Templars.

We begin on a horse-drawn carriage, racing alongside a mountainous setting in the middle of a cloudy snowfall, towards the gate to Masyaf. He’s after the captain of the Templar contingent here, who’s in possession of the key to the stronghold. Some Templar guards throw a bomb in his direction, blasting the cart apart and sending him flying down the rocky hills. Ezio plunges into the freezing waters below, but groggily makes his way to the shore. His character model is visibly hurt, limping and grunting in the cold air with every step. It’s not enough to impede his progress, however, as he scales the walls of Masyaf while dispatching several guards in the process.

Eventually he reaches a small town area, with a few citizens making their way through the shops and alleys as comfortably as the weather allows. It’s a sparsely populated area unlike most of the Italian city-states in the last two Creed games; the new (old?) setting alone makes for a refreshing change of pace. Ezio picks up some supplies from an abandoned doctor’s station, restoring his health and posture. As Breault explains, throughout the game the player will have to defend territory previously won over (as with the Borgia Towers in AC: Brotherhood). These attacks will be initiated by the player just like any other side mission, instead of popping up randomly. “We didn’t want the player to be forced out of his mission in order to defend the district.”

A small messenger box next to a stable allows Breault to enter the bomb-crafting screen, showing materials and some impressive cross-section diagrams of various bombs. Surprisingly, the player can dismantle bombs currently in his inventory to use their constituent parts to make other varieties: in this case, Breault uses parts from trip wires to make impact shell bombs, which will be more useful in upcoming conflicts.

At one location of the town, two paths branch off with little indication of where to go next. Here Breault shows a new feature of the Eagle’s Vision: a ghost of the Templar Captain appears, revealing his movements from earlier in the day. Ezio follows. Along the way he perforates a single guard, then sets a proximity bomb on his body. Hiding in a nearby pile of hay, he watches as a group of patrolling guards approach their comrade’s body before it explodes, sending “pieces of Eden” flying everywhere.

We eventually run into a large group of Templar warriors to show off the modest, but noticeable evolution of the combat system. Perhaps befitting Ezio’s age, each swing of the enemy’s sword that he blocks with his own comes with a thunderous clang, causing the screen to blur with recoil for a split-second. He drops a caltrops bomb before legging it. Caltrops are small bits of metal tied together, resembling the “barbs” on a barbed wire fence, preventing guards from following Ezio unless they want a foot full of shrapnel. Ezio climbs a wall, prompting the camera to change to a third-person view of enemy guards nearby firing with reckless abandon, affording the player few options other than to move as fast as possible.

Even with over half a dozen enemies on the screen, the frame rate didn’t slow down once. The overall graphical detail has been cranked up significantly from Brotherhood, and is impressive considering the console versions of the last installment were prone to chugging frame rates. The visual design has also improved, evidenced by the ornate armour on both Ezio and the Templar soldiers.

At the top of the tower, Ezio has his target, the Templar Captain, at his mercy. One Hidden Blade later, and the captain has a few words of protest before he slumps awkwardly on his knees to an ignoble death. Ezio picks up the key from the body, which turns out to also be a special artifact that allows him to re-live the memories of Altair.

Next we’re transported to a memory sequence with Altair, speaking with his mentor Al Mualim before the events of the first Assassin’s Creed. The demo ends shortly after the cut-scene, leaving behind – as usual – more questions than answers. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is due for a simultaneous release on both PC and the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 15.

Rocksteady Studios showed off a preview build of Batman: Arkham City at Microsoft’s X-11 event last week, and we had a chance to romp through a wrecked of Gotham’s biggest prison yard ever. Unsurprisingly, we left as excited as the previews and trailers have been making us over the past year, and then some.

Batman is on his way to the court house we’ve seen in previous trailers, following the trail of Catwoman. Environmental design shines here; angular hallways are filled with portraits of judges in silly white wigs and dour expressions, their eyes seemingly judging your every move. Climbing the stairs to the upper level, Batman crosses a tightrope above Two-Face and about two dozen thugs. The player can initiate the inevitable chaos any number of ways. Throwing an errant Batarang into the crowd doesn’t really give you any advantages, so instead we use the new dive-bomb mechanic to land right on top of one poor, unfortunate soul and send half a dozen others flying in a move that’s more Bruce Banner than Bruce Wayne.

Half the thugs flee in terror while a sizable group stays behind to beat to a pulp. Some of them mirror their head Rogue, clad in split white and black clothing and equally eerie half-white, half-black paint. The fighting mechanics in Arkham City shine here, expanding on Arkham Asylum‘s foundation. Batman weaves between the foes, countering attacks with the Y button, occasionally smacking two thugs into each other for a double-K.O. One enemy throws a wooden chair at the player, but a quick counter (denoted by the same “Spider Sense” symbol as a thug’s regular hits) allows you to catch it and hurl it back at the enemy, both chair and face exploding into splinters, eliciting one of many OOOHH’s from the crowd watching the screen.

“Try holding the left trigger and pressing A for the last guy,” the Rocksteady rep suggests. Batman shoots out his grappling hook at the last enemy, pulling him in Mortal Kombat Scorpion-style, then levels him with a scintillating clothesline.

Soon after, Batman and a newly-freed Catwoman are shot at by a sniping Joker from several blocks away. In order to determine the trajectory of the bullet, we have to set up a crime scene using the revamped Detective Mode. Two bullet holes are highlighted in fluorescent yellow, allowing the player to scan them in a very Metroid Prime-esque fashion. We then get a short cutscene that follows the trajectory to a bell tower a few blocks away. It’s off to the next objective.

On the way to the tower we get a sense of just how big Arkham City is. Rocksteady claims it’s about five times larger than Arkham Asylum before it, but that hasn’t stopped the developers and design team from cramming it full of detail and character. Car wrecks belch out small fires in defiance of the dark and damp weather. Whole districts are barricaded off due to neglect or structural damage, and a small area designated for “political prisoners” is a slum within a slum, filled with despondent criminals standing next to flickering bonfires to keep warm. Snowflakes fall convincingly, even settling on your cape and cowl before melting away.

The mix of gameplay and procedural narrative really shined once we got to the bell tower – which wasn’t difficult, even in the gigantic prison playground, thanks to an unobtrusive compass-like indicator at the top of the screen. Walking straight through the front door, you’re faced with a group of Joker-branded thugs. From behind them comes a cartwheel-ing Harley Quinn, and within seconds you’re prompted to counter her attacks. A successful evade by the player throws Quinn to the ground, and initiates a short conversation between the two in a seamless transition.

Everything we’ve seen of Batman: Arkham City has proven just as fun and exciting as Arkham Asylum was, fulfilling the promises of the deluge of trailers and then some. Dork Shelf will certainly be there on release date Bat-time: October 18, Bat-Channels: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Yang's anti-air kick will catch most newcomers by surprise.

The slices of life we learn about the characters in the Street Fighter ethos often raise troubling questions about what they’re up to when not mauling each other into oblivion. Yun and Yang, two of four characters added in the latest iteration of Street Fighter IV, are apparently teenaged brothers with no concern for their education or a stable social life. They set out to find Chun-Li, an Interpol agent chasing a global terrorist organization, in the hopes of finding challenging and exhilarating fights. I guess that’s what two boys raised by a former assassin aspire to, instead of, say, going to college.

How they plan on their room and board while traveling is beyond me. Ryu gets it done, but it’s well-established that he’s a vagrant. But given the twins’ seemingly expensive, trendy clothing and totally sweet skateboard and rollerblades, it’s safe to say that they’re sitting on a family fortune without a care.

Regardless of their future employment viability, the twins are still as fearsome as their appearances in the Street Fighter III series. Newcomers will love their simple and damaging special moves while the more advanced players will use their Super Combos – which alter the properties of all their other moves, like increasing damage output and juggle properties – to absolutely waste an unsuspecting opponent. Personally, I’m excited that it’s another colourful way to destroy those cars in the bonus stage.

Evil Ryu (a raging, glowing Ryu) and Oni (a raging, glowing Akuma) round out the roster expansion, seemingly to attract the teenage male demographic that even Cammy’s leotard hasn’t reeled in before. They gnash their teeth and pulverize their opponents with Ultra moves straight out of a Shonen Jump manga. These four newcomers will interest those with an appreciation for the Street Fighter lore, but expect most to fall back to their favourite characters in online competition.

Evil Ryu (above) and Oni turn the Ultra Combo theatrics up to 11.

All the existing characters have undergone changes in specific, under-the-hood ways that only veterans will notice or fully appreciate. Most will be able to jump back into the competition with only minor tweaks to their strategies, such as trying to cope with the almost too-powerful and versatile Yun and Yang. The ranking points system is revamped, but it’s generally unimportant book-keeping. The replay database does, however, include a new section that includes matches by some of the top ranked players in the world for perusal. It’s probably one of the best ways a fighting game has ever taught players how to play competitively, simply by showcasing the best in the world at what they do.

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition is flowery language for a satisfactory DLC release. It won’t get new players interested in the fighting game scene any more than the latest map pack will for the Call of Duty franchise. But anyone who’s sunk dozens of hours into the game over the past three years would do well to upgrade for roughly the price of two pints.

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition is available as a digital download upgrade to Super Street Fighter IV for $14.99 on PSN and 1200 MSP on the Xbox Live Marketplace, or a stand-alone disc for $39.99 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Click here to view the embedded video.

…so. There’s a whole lot going on here. Columbia is populated by various factions, including the Vox Populi, who make things terribly uncomfortable for Booker DeWitt and the super-powered Elizabeth. While characters are seen acting amongst the setting without immediately jumping on the player, when they do things get more crowded and threatening than most encounters in the first two Bioshocks ever did. The “tears” are probably the most intruiging part of the demo, appearing in one instance as a variety of options Elizabeth can help you with during a firefight, and a baffling multi-verse tease in another. Comic book nerds like us are surely speculating the hell out of that moment.

We also get to see how much vertigo we’ll experience while flying along the skylines, and some insight into the relationship between Elizabeth, Booker and the steampunk predator called the Songbird in ways that surprise even at this early stage. If this wasn’t on your radar before, it probably is now.

Bioshock Infinite is scheduled for release in 2012. For some more insight from Irrational head Ken Levine, check out the extended interview with Geoff Keighley on the Gametrailers website, and this interview with Kieron Gillen on RockPaperShotgun.

Metro 2033 had some memorable characters and situations reminiscent of Half-Life 2, and breathtaking scenery made possible by technology that brought many gaming PCs to their metaphorical knees. The gameplay also helped convey the desperate nature of the Metro in a way that most shooters don’t. Guns had a ramshackle appearance and operation – the pneumatic sniper rifle had to be pumped every couple shots – and the good-quality ammunition also doubled as currency.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, developer 4A Games has released their first trailer of the sequel Metro: Last Light. In this early stage, it looks like we’re in for more of what made the last game fascinating: dark, oppressive environments underground and eerily peaceful wastelands outside, as well as gunplay mixed with more insight into the daily lives in the slum-towns of the Metro. 4A haven’t given Last Light a release date more specific than 2012, but consider this one to watch.

Continuing videogame trailer music watch 2011, our nightmarish glimpse of Metro: Last Light plays to the conveniently titled “Machine Gun,” by English band Portishead’s 2008 album Third.

Electronic Arts and DICE yesterday released a spectacular 12-minute gameplay trailer for their upcoming Battlefield 3. The military first person shooter (shocking, we know!) is being touted as EA’s answer to Activision’s incredibly popular Call of Duty franchise.

The release comes in response to EA’s campaign to “recruit” over 1 million Likes for its Battlefield Facebook page. The trailer was made available after over 800,000 users became fans of the page.

Battlefield 3 is easily one of the best looking games ever made. Whether those looks hold up across the various platforms the game is being released for is another question entirely. Presently the PC version of Battlefield 3 is the most impressive, featuring the aforementioned visuals, gargantuan maps and 64 player battles. The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions on the other hand feature reined graphics, smaller map sizes and only support 24 player battles. The aging consoles simply cannot handle the sheer scale of Battlefield 3.

It’s a true return to form for the franchise. If Battlefield 3 is anything like it’s PC predacessors, then I’m in a lot of trouble.

Battlefield 3 is due out November 2, 2011.

There’s going to come a point when a genre simply can’t take it anymore. It’s not exhaustion; that comes much sooner. This is different, and while there’s no fantastic word that I can come up with, the closest I can hit is ‘implode’. After a while it’s like the genre couldn’t handle it, like older role-playing games, where you just get these infinite mirror reflections and what used to be traditions, then tropes, become these malicious and kind of snarky bad habits. It’s not offensive or annoying, it’s just like the elves, knights and archers are constantly winking at the screen as if you’re ‘in on it’. Shooters are going to hit that wall. Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will be the guiding hand, but shooters are going to collide with this unfathomable heap, where there is so little unexploited reasons for guns to shoot people left that the entire concept will just collapse in on itself.

So what is Bulletstorm? Originally hyped up due to the presence of developers Epic and People Can Fly, many folks expected a heinously cheeky, violent slaughterhouse that only a name like Bulletstorm could suggest. But as time went on, evidence started to mount that there was going to be something special about Bulletstorm, once again hard to pin, but unmistakably present. It’s angle and excuses for violence take clear cues and influence from previous shooters, but it’s the way these parts mix together that helps this quirky little thing present some real ingenuity. After all, even tried and true ingredients can be cooked together astonishingly by the right chefs. Beef. Chicken. Soy. Chunk. Mutant.

It’s always good to do something with a clear head. So when taking revenge on the warmonger who framed him and his team, Captain Grayson Hunt would soon regret not doing so while sober. Now his ship is wrecked, his friends mostly dead and the only other survivor is hacked together with a computer system in order to live. To make things a goofy brand of worse, the planet they crash land on is inhabited by crumbling cyber-deco and rabid pseudo-natives. Discourse between characters clearly has familiar bro/jerk origins, but they maul their selectively masculine language to the point of disassociation. Though all is not lost, if by some pinhole of a chance, they can get a hold of the very man they intended to kill, Grey and his now cyborg pal Ishi might be able to make it off this crazy weird world.

There are some obvious inspirations for the style of the game. Under a magnifying glass you can dissect and trace almost every classic FPS element, from something as sophisticated as Bioshock to as blunt as Serious Sam. The world feels massive, with many machines, buildings and monsters big enough to attack Ultraman, it becomes all the more spectacular when each comes a-tumblin’ down. Things you kaboom early in the game have surprising and generally charming repercussions. While the machoisms chucked out by Grayson aren’t too too distant from what you’d hear from any other grizzled space marine, the context that surrounds it, keeping Ishi more human than machine, makes it a touch more endearing. In general, Hunt seems to display emotions cold and unfamiliar to many FPS protagonists, often grieving over losses and mistakes in subtle ways.

What comes next to weird-up Hunt’s adventure and opening the gate for bloggers to unleash e-theses about the ‘genius of a meta-game’ is also the explanation why every screenshot you’ve seen has blazing slang quotes hovering about the gore: The leash. Early on Grayson nabs some new tech from the army of his enemy, discovering they wielded not only a plasma whip but aggressive encouragement. The leash tracks soldiers’ kill records, a sort of ‘game’, tallying up points which can be exchanged for ammo and upgrades from supply pods scattered about the planet, making sure only ‘the good die young’. But as always, killing isn’t enough, and your gun is only as good as you use it (or not use it). Getting creative with your casualties can unveil massive bundles of points and finding ways to merge your leash, your roster of guns, gun modes and ever powerful boot heel you’ll find a slight tug to ask yourself, “Yes, what would happen if I kicked this fanged pulsing pod on to that man’s head and then shot that angry glowing thing next to it whilst surrounded by suicide bombers and cacti?” Each gun has a secondary mode, which can sometimes make the difference between a revolver and a flare gun, though some classics are spruced up even in regular settings, like a sniper rifle that gives you direct control over the bullet. The kick is a titan all of its own, and if you’re strapped for ammunition there’s no shame in using the mighty gesture to launch enemies into spikes, magma, the open air or just into the wall over and over till they become nothing more than a red smear.

It’s strange how far a little push can go. While you’ve never really hesitated to test the variety of shooters that offer it, it’s a whole new experience to have it be the driving force. Bulletstorm is a game that resembles many games you’ve marched in before, and is difficult to call an homage, but it’s much more embracing of these elements. Things aren’t big, they’re titanic. Enemies aren’t violent, they’re rabid. These colours aren’t muddy, they pop radioactive like a sugar cereal box. Things don’t just blow up, they take the planet with them. But despite so many echoes, Bulletstorm isn’t afraid to blaze some new paths. Certain chapters shake with a creative headspace more inventive than ‘snow level’ and ‘fun fun carnival place’, these’ll stick. There’s a lot of legitimate pathos for these rag tag space pirates, and unlike so many other shooters it hits higher echelons than just simple martyrdom. You feel bad for Grayson and Ishi, and you feel bad for Grayson feeling bad about Ishi. With such great mood, setting and pacing, I really felt like I floated through Bulletstorm with a whimsical sense of glee. I don’t think of myself as a violent person, but Bulletstorm makes a great case for violence. Hooray for Violence!

The first trailer featuring in-game footage of the anticipated Elder Scrolls sequel, Skyrim, has arrived. Elder Scrolls V is Bethesda’s long awaited follow-up to the excellent Oblivion, a game that was praised at the time for its state of the art visuals. Skyrim seems to be following in its predecessors footsteps, the fantasy role-playing game’s visuals look second to none. Watch the trailer below.

Bethesda has had a wonderful track record with the Elder Scrolls games, which despite their many flaws, are some of the best role-playing games out there. If the time we spent playing Morrowind, Oblivion, and their expansions is any indication, we can easily imagine sinking days, if not weeks, of gameplay time into Skyrim.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim arrives for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on November 11, 2011.

Bethesda Game Studios, today confirmed the upcoming release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the next installment in the award-winning Elder Scrolls series and follow up to the 2006 Game of the Year, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Under the direction of Todd Howard, Skyrim will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC worldwide on November 11, 2011.

Dork Shelf recently spoke via Twitter with Pete Hines (@DCDeacon), VP in charge of Marketing at Bethesda, who confirmed to us that Skyrim is not using the id’s Tech 5 “RAGE” engine as speculated, but will be using a completely new and yet to be named engine developed internally by Bethesda Game Studios. It’s new, it’s real….and it’s spectacular!

So long Gamebryo and good riddance.

Also, thanks to Dennis on the Neogaf Skyrim Info Thread, we have a HUGE recap of anything and everything related to Skyrim.

Here’s a quick recap if you don’t want to read  all the in-depth stuff below:

-A variation of level scaling.
-Dynamic Shadows
-Overhauled Combat-system
-Improved Faces/Improved Models Example: Faces have been dramatically overhauled. Characters now exhibit more emotion show of distinctions between different races and just plain looks better.
-Radiant AI
-Updated Engine Snow falls dynamically (not as a basic texture on the ground)
Trees and branches move independently with the wind
Water flows
-Randomly generated quests.
-Beards
-You can’t run backwards as fast as you do forward.
-10 races to choose from (Holy crap that’s a lot of races)
-confirmed creatures: zombies, skeletons, trolls, giants, ice wraiths, giant spiders, dragons, wolves, horses, elk, mammoths, saber-toothed cats
-presumably open cities (that dragons can attack)
-HUD-free first-person view and improved third-person perspective
-Unique landscapes! Also unique dungeons! In other words, lots of uniqueness!
-Character creation improved, body features customizable
-Two-handed weapons and dual-wielding confirmed.
-Finishing moves, unique to each weapon and enemy you fight.
-Kids
-The game takes place two centuries after Oblivion
-Sprinting is added!
- Dialogue will pop up when you approach an enemy
- cooking/farming/mining/woodcutting/blacksmithing
-18 skills.
-Perk picking at every level-up
-Five Magic Schools: Destruction, Alteration, Conjuration, Restoration, Illusion.

Detailed recap:

On leveling:
Leveling is totally revamped, no more class selection at the start of the game, every skill you level contributes to your overall level. And each time you level up, you get extra health plus the ability to get either more health, magicka or stamina. Each level also brings you perks, cool abilities similar to those found in Bethesda’s Fallout 3. Also, the leveling is soft-capped at 50, you just advance really slowly after that.

On skills:
Mysticism is gone. 18 skills, down from 21 in Oblivion, and 27 in Morrowind. Trying to accommodate players who want to specialize in a certain profession (like mage or thief), while at the same time giving room for players who like to do plenty of everything. They want to take special care so that skills feel organic, not prone bugs and exploitation.

On the story and lore:
The game takes place 200 years after Oblivion. Set in Skyrim, a region north of the Imperial City, where the Nords live. The dragons are returning to the world, as it was prophesized in previous games. You are a dragonborn – a dragon hunter – players will be trying to stop the wicked dragon god. Your mentor is one of the last Blades, voiced by legendary actor Max von Sydow.

On combat:
They want to make it more dynamic and tactical. You have to assign each hand with a function, either magic, two weapons, a weapon and a shield, etc. You can also waste stamina by sprinting, allowing you to get access to tactical positions. Emphasis is on really improving the combat this time around. They are also putting care into how each weapon feels on your hand.

Other:
Third person view has been improved.
Five massive cities, more variation in caves and underground stuff.

On quests:
Quests are much more dynamic now. Questing is now more determined by how you build your character, individual actions and overall are much more dynamic. Examples provided: If you are more of a magic user, some other mages may approach you who may not have if you were just a melee character. Or if you killed some person who owned a store that was going to give you a quest, his sister would inherit the store, but she may resent you before giving you the quest. Also, if you drop a weapon in the street instead of selling it, it may just disappear, some kid may get it and give it back to you, which would lead to a series of stuff, or some characters may fight over who gets it.

Also, the quests you are given would be modified by how you have played (scaling the quests). For example, the location of a rescue mission would be determined by which locations you have visited (it will try to give you a dungeon you haven’t been in) and I also give you appropriate enemies to your level. I can add that there is an option for no HUD.

On Conversations:
Conversations aren’t done in a zoomed in static shot anymore. Start a conversation with someone and they will act like someone would in real life, looking at you occasionally and walking around a bit and also continue doing a task if they were doing one while talking.

On Weapon smithing:
Go to a forge and carve a new weapon out of red hot metal.

Dual-wielding: You have two hands now in combat and you can wield anything to both hands. You may assign a dagger on left hand and use a mace with right hand. The choice as they say is yours.

Duel: You may duel any NPC on the streets Western style.

Inheritance: When you kill a shopkeeper, his/her family member will inherit the shop and will be angry towards you, but still give you missions.

Level-scaling: It is coming back

18 skills: Supposedly even less skills to play with?

No mysticism

Perks: Rumored to be in Skyrim. Not officially confirmed as of yet.

Boosts: Pick stamina, health, magic boosts on level up.

Enchanting: This skill makes a return.

“Radiant storytelling” or Level Scaling 2.0: “The game eventually logs a huge storehouse of knowledge about how you’ve played, and subsequently tailors content to your capabilities and experiences. Entering a city, a young woman might approach you and beg you to save her daughter from kidnappers. The game will look at the nearby dungeons you’ve explored, automatically set the mission in a place you’ve never visited, and designate opponents that are appropriately matched to your strengths and weaknesses.”

Fast-Travel: As you probably expect, you can instantly travel to previous locations with a tap of the button

Sprinting: You can now sprint!

Town visiting: You may do more in towns, like tailor weapons, cooking, farming or mining. Not many details about this or how detailed they are as jobs.

Source: NeoGaf, GamrFeed

If you’re looking for even more info on Skyrim, it will all be revealed in the exclusive cover story in Game Informer’s February issue.

Check out the video below to see Bethesda’s new studio and a little behind the scenes stuff on Skryim.

If you dig tweets, feel free to follow me on Twitter @The_GeekJock

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was a year where you could easily hear Super Meat Boy and Halo: Reach mentioned in the same breath. There were great games to be found on every platform, from the indiest of indie to the most conglomerated of corporate titles. However, like most years only a few of these games will have the distinction of being remembered in the years to come. Here are a few. - Will Perkins

At E3, Nintendo strutted in a way that disgusted some and enthralled others. No longer were they pushing gimmicky white apertures but instead brought out their big guns so quickly and aggressively it made you want to pull out a cigarette after it was all said and done. Some argued that it was a cheap way to rally their fan base, I argue that I really don’t give a shit. Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Goldeneye, NBA Jam and Donkey Kong Country Returns may not revolutionize anything, but they are severely well executed remakes, sequels and retrospects. DK, NBA Jam and Goldeneye were crafted by folks who clearly cherish the material they are dealing with. Identifying what about those titles made them so everlasting, but just leaving it at that would not have made them stellar, no, they went above the pale by bringing these gems to the contemporary, adding elements that represent the modern state of gaming be it through direct mechanics or just painful attention to creative detail.

Not all of the best was found on the Wii, but it was a nice change of pace that a lot of it was. For the more conventional ‘next-gen’ entries, we seemed to have a year built upon left fielders. While the original Red Dead Revolver was a hidden gem, few were prepared for the magnitude of the follow-up, Red Dead Redemption, a massive western game, nay, experience, that would have players pinned to a time that’s always found trouble finding its destiny in the gaming world. The year was certainly back loaded, many triumphant entries seemed to flop out of some neglected closet, Enlsaved and Vanquish are two stellar, gorgeous, if not unassuming action games and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, while only kind of a Castlevania game, is still an attractive adventure. Downloadables shouldn’t be neglected either, with Clandun, Scott Pilgrim, Super Meat Boy, Chime, Cave Story, After Burner Climax, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Costume Quest letting you game nice without bothering to put on pants.

The catch-up played by Sony and Microsoft with Kinect and Move may have more competent tech to rival the Wii, but the majority of releases seem like nothing we weren’t getting done before. Sports games, dance games and fitness games have played maypole with Nintendo in both good and bad variations. But leave it to the best to at least give us some reason to hope, or at the very least, drunk dare the hell out of our closest friends. I mentioned that there is no shortage of dance games, but Dance Central is the dance game realized, no longer vaguely asking you to move in certain directions, but entirely challenging you to contort gestures you hope no one is watching you perform. Only people are totally, totally watching you. Oh, and the variety of songs is good too, so. - Zack Kotzer

Bioshock 2

Some gamers soured on 2K Marin’s sequel to the 2007 masterpiece, deeming it “too familiar” to the first. But there really isn’t any setting in video games like Rapture, and the second dive below the Atlantic has everything that made the first so impressive and then some. The combat is deeper, hacking is no longer a pain in the butt. The environments are even creepier than in the first (Little Sister Orphanage, I’m looking at you). The kill-or-spare choices are increasingly complex and morally muddled, although the “Saviour” achievement erases the entire idea behind it. And this game’s “oh shit” moment is arguably more emotionally devastating than the first’s. Top it off with the utterly fantastic DLC episode Minerva’s Den and you have one of the best single-player experiences this year. - Jonathan Ore

Fallout: New Vegas

I loved Fallout 3, but like many I thought it was missing something. Bethesda’s crack at the seminal post-apocalyptic role-playing game reinvented the series as a quasi-shooter with RPG tendencies – ‘Oblivion with guns’ they called it. For whatever reason, Fallout 3 lacked the character and humour that made the original Black Isle Fallout games so memorable, which was why old schoolers like myself were so pleased when it was announced that Obsidian Entertainment – a studio made up of many key Black Isle designers – would be handed the reigns to the spin-off: Fallout: New Vegas.

Back was the twisted sense of humour and tangible sense of horror that the post-nuclear wasteland evoked. Characters were more memorable, combat more intense and consequential, choices more stark and morally grey. Fallout: New Vegas for all of its graphical shortcomings and oft-reported bugs was everything Fallout 3 should have been and wasn’t. Never has the hellish, brutal and irradiated wasteland of the post-apocalypse been so inviting. - Will Perkins

Super Street Fighter IV

Last I checked, my total playtime for SSFIV was over 135 hours. I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I can do in this game. SSFIV has one of the biggest rosters in the Street Fighter series, and a large active player base. Finding opponents of all skill levels online is a breeze, so whether you want to have fun throwing fireballs or work on your painfully difficult 1-frame link combos, you’ll find the right kind of competition. That’s to say nothing of the gorgeous visual design and unforgettable characters. Super SFIV’s new characters run the SF Canon gamut, and Juri and Hakan are both welcome newcomers. It’s the pinnacle of the fighting game genre from the people who defined it. - Jonathan Ore

Minecraft

No 2010 list of games would be complete without mentioning this game. Originally made by one guy in a week, Minecraft turned into one of the biggest gaming success stories of the decade. The rudimentary graphics betray a stunning complexity that the game makes possible. Minecraft is essentially one giant sandbox, a digital Lego set that allows the player to build pretty much anything they can imagine. Scale model of the USS Enterprise? Sure! Custom sky castle? Why not? Gargantuan underground fortress? Of course! Working arithmetic logic unit…? Uh, holy shit… yeah, that too! A quick search of YouTube with the term ‘Minecraft’ will reveal some of the insane creations players have constructed in-game

I was completely sucked in by Minecraft, playing every chance I got for about a month straight. Simple in concept and rendering, but absolutely enthralling to anyone with a creative bone in their body. - Will Perkins

The 1982 original TRON film evokes some very specific imagery. Recognizer tanks zooming by in defiance of the laws of aerodynamics, lightcycles racing through the city leaving behind light trails, and above all else neon reds and blues crisscrossing against a sleek digital world. These still form the basis of the re-imagined world spearheaded by the film TRON: Legacy, but as we found out, the tie-in video game TRON: Evolution goes a bit further.

Up until the game’s release we’ve only seen brief glimpses of the expanded world in Evolution, including the stately Spiritualist faction, who seem to form some combination of the Grid’s political and religious identity. In stark contrast are the Outlands, the likely home of the Survivalist faction (more on them in a bit). There, the sleek cityscape is replaced by rocky cliffs illuminated in organic green light, while ‘rain’ falls from above.

David Patch is the senior art director at Propaganda Games, and was tasked with fleshing out the game’s unique locations and factions that add a distinctive twist to the tried and true formula – while still fitting into the overall aesthetic. He’s been working with art direction in games for about 17 years, having studied at the California College of Arts (“I was a teamster,” he notes with a laugh). With past credits including Sim City and The Sims, I was able to talk with David recently about the artistic influences for TRON: Evolution. His answers may surprise and even shock you.

Dork Shelf: How closely did you work with the art directors of the movie, and how did you sync those projects together?

David Patch: We worked primarily with Joe Kosinski, and Shawn [Bailey] and the producers. They were our gateway, our liaisons. So they gave us the chance to show Joe what we were doing and get his feedback. He’s a very visual art director, so he had a lot of input into what we were doing. We also had a lot of input pushing up to them.

DS: Was there a mandate on Disney’s “style guide” to the new TRON film that you had to follow?

Patch: The IP was in development, which was a plus and a minus. We didn’t know exactly what we could do, but at the same time we didn’t know exactly what we couldn’t do. So we had to often get approval on things, because the movie’s going to be the lynch pin that holds the whole IP together. But we had a lot of leeway, and we could press and push to make decisions based upon gameplay that wouldn’t have been made if this wasn’t a game.

Along the lines of that are what the ISO cities looked like that no one ever sees in Legacy. But we’ve got a chance to take the design concepts that were being established in TRON, apply those high-level concepts to very different architectural styles, different styles of costumes, different ways of moving and behaving, and apply those to the different ISO factions.

DS: Can you give any examples of the new ISO factions in the game?

Patch: The Spiritualists who live in Arjia City. When you come up there, it’s not the stark grey and blue. All their outfits are very white, and the piping has just the hint of this nice cyan. We took the ideas that they’d established, like what is piping and how does it interact with the clothing, so it’s not just a decorative pattern, it’s an integrated part of their body. So we applied that to our design decisions, but our designs were very influenced by monastic robes.

We also looked at Jean-Paul Gaultier’s couture: how would he make a monk’s robe? Last year he came out with some pantyhose that were bare right down the front, so it actually looked like piping going down the pantyhose. I saw them and was like, ‘Okay. I’m going to look at more of this guy’s designs, take those two aesthetics and cram them together in a meaningful way.’ And that’s how we came up with the look of the Spiritualists.

DS: Were there any points of reference for you that you used in helping create the new factions?

Patch: Not necessarily movies, per se. I drew more on architectural stylings. Getting back to the Spiritualists, I looked to gothic architecture, and what the key tenets of it were: height and light. So not necessarily making churches everywhere, just understanding [and] taking all those key elements and applying the minimalism of TRON over that. And that’s how we came up with the huge hub that you see coming in. It looks sort of the church-i-est thing we have, but it’s not a church.

And the other [faction] is the Survivalists. They’re almost a sort of counter-culture to what was going on in the rest of the Grid. So what’s the best counter-culture going on right now? That’s Burning Man. I’m involved with it, I know friends who are a part of it. It’s a collective community, it’s that hive mind that expressive artistic atmosphere that became the key words to developing their look.

DS: What exactly is Burning Man?

Patch: On Memorial Day, Black Rock becomes the second-largest city in Nevada for a week. Everyone goes out to the middle of the desert plateau, nothing there but sand – actually, not even sand, just dust – and they build a city. At the end of it, they build a giant wicker-stick man. And then at the end of the celebration they burn the wicker-stick man down. Everyone just comes up and there’s this spirit where money doesn’t matter.

Burning Man (Photo by Tristan Savatier)

DS: it sounds very different from anything that fits in with TRON. How do you sync that in?

Patch: Again, it’s in the high ideals. It’s not being a slave to what Burning Man is. With the gothic architecture, we aren’t a slave to multicoloured glass windows and all that sort of stuff. It’s just the key elements. For the Survivalists they are rebelliousness, but also community and a sense of wanting to create. And so taking those ideas and being outside of the norm, and then incorporating it with a look of high style, high design, haute couture, then laying that over these key elements.

DS: Do you have any advice to aspiring video game artists?

Patch: If you want to be an illustrator or concept artist, draw. Draw, draw, draw. Learn your colour. Learn your composition. Learn your anatomy. Become fluent in very different styles. Know your art history, because you need to be able to know when to break the rules, and why those rules are there. If you don’t know the rules, you’re not going to be able to break them in a believable or meaningful manner.

TRON: Evolution is in stores now.