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PS Blog: ALIENATION Q&A - What to expect from Housemarque’s Resogun follow-up

B

Bundy

Banned
Alienation Q&A: What to expect from Housemarque’s Resogun follow-up

The Finnish studio goes into more detail on its explosive Gamescom reveal.

On a personal level at least, one of the most pleasing reveals in our Gamescom press briefing last week was a first glimpse at Alienation, the new game Dead Nation creator Housemarque. As a huge fan of classic arcade gameplay, it’s great to see the studio back on the scene so quickly after the phenomenal Resogun.

The launch trailer was predictably splendid, but it also raised plenty of questions. Questions that I wanted answered! So I tracked down Housemarque’s Mikael Haveri after the show in search of a few answers. Read on to find out a little more about what the brilliant Finnish team has in store.

How far back does the idea for Alienation go? Is it something you’ve wanted to make for some time?

Mikael Haveri: We’ve always been a tech-centric company. We start projects by just playing around with tech. We have our own engine which we’re always upgrading and trying out cool new things – new lighting systems, particle effects, and so on. These experiments are the setting point, and then we start implementing those things in different game scenarios. Would this work best in a top-down shooter? Or would it be better suited to, say, a platformer?

So it’s not like we were making Dead Nation and said to ourselves, “Oh, we should do this again… but with aliens!” It was more like, “We’ve got this cool technology – how do we implement it in the best way?”

And then we start iterating. We happily admit that we do borrow from what we think are some of the greatest games ever, but then we reinvent them in the Housemarque way. For example, we play a lot of Dark Souls and Demon Souls, and a lot of different stuff to get inspiration. Then we take a concept we like and try and improve it or put a twist on it.

Dark Souls you say? You’re talking my sort of language Mikael. Can you go into more details on how that influence might manifest itself in the finished game?

Mikael Haveri: We’re not going into too much detail right now but in the trailer there’s a segment where you see co-op play and then a message that says, “Go rogue”. And that’s an indicator of the kind of elements we might have in the game. That’s us asking how we can do interesting things with player relations and I’d say there might be some influences from the Souls series in that aspect of the game. Ask yourself what the scenario might be. Why would you attack another group? Are there factions involved? Let your mind go crazy and think of different reasons players might start murdering each other. I’ve got to keep a little air of mystery here!

Housemarque are of course famous for their love of explosions. How will you be refining that art form in Alienation?

Mikael Haveri: We’ve some really, really cool stuff in Alienation – explosions with smoke plume effects, and next gen effects that you wont have seen before. We’re able to do very dynamic stuff, and very visually pleasing explosions that go beyond the edge of the screen with real physics interactions. You’ll blow something up and the debris will interact with the environment and ricochet off walls. We’re not going the route where absolutely everything is destructible, but a lot of stuff will get blown up.

And grenades. We have a lot of cool grenades. Alien tech grenades. So, explosions are absolutely going to be a mainstay!

Will there be any narrative link to Dead Nation or returning characters?

Mikael Haveri: We’re playing around with that a little bit. We know our core competency and we’re sticking to it. Storytelling will have a role to play, but it will be that classic game storytelling where it’s more of a thrill-ride.

There could be parallels to other Housemarque universes, like how we dropped some Resogun ships into the latest version of Dead Nation. To us, it’s all part of the same multilateral Housemarque universe in some weird way, where everything co-exists. So, you might see some familiar things. Like, a lot of our games feature that female android-y voice. I’m not promising anything but there’s a good chance she might be involved somehow…
Click to expand...

gif-31ijxf.gif


gif-27mjgb.gif


More here
 
N

nelsonroyale

Member
Crazy effects going on in this game. One of the best looking next gen games without a doubt. Very interested. Them is more up my alley than Dead Nation as well.
 
E

Elixist

Member
Wynnebeck said:
Give me swarms of aliens crawling all over the place attacking players and I'll be there Day 1.
Click to expand...

im gonna go out on a limb and say that you'll be covered :p


a little bit of a bummer that the whole environment isnt destructible, but it looks like alot of it is, those fucking particles man so pretty.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Love the gifs. Looks like the standard gun is fully auto too...Dead Nation killed my trigger finger with that dumb semi-auto rifle. Housemarque's always a day one anyway. Not sure why Sony hasn't bought 'em, I guess because they mostly make on playstation anyway?
 
F

Fisty

Member
Man I knew there was some continuity here, was pretty much ignored in the other thread when I brought it up...

Dead Nation -> Alienation -> Resogun -> SSD (?)

Not quite sure where Outland would fit in... maybe between Alienation and Resogun
 
nikos

nikos

Member
Mikey Jr. said:
Didn't people bash Dead Nation but loved Stardust and Resogun?

Why go back to another nation game?
Click to expand...

What I didn't like about Dead Nation was having limited ammo. I prefer Dual stick shooters to be an infinite ammo frenzy. That's my only wish for this game, but the ability to kill other players could mean taking their weapons/ammo. It could be to steal points though, that would be interesting.
 
F

Fancy Clown

Member
This is gonna be so good. Dead Nation was fun in co-op but it had issues, namely that it took to long to kill enemies and you ran out of the fun ammo rather quickly. The later levels are a blast though when you have a bunch of upgraded weapons and are fighting a bunch of enemy types.

This looks like Dead Nation x Resogun and I'm totally okay with that.
 
M

Miles Quaritch

Member
Looks a lot like that Warhammer game that was released some time ago.

It should at least play a lot better than that did with Housemarque at the helm.
 
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