Orlando Bloom may be starring in an Amazon Prime Original series (Victorian fantasy drama Carnival Row), but don’t expect him to cameo in Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show.The British actor, who got his big break starring as Legolas Greenleaf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (and subsequently reprised the role in Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy a decade later), recalled that 20 years ago when they were in the midst of filming the fantasy epic, Jackson predicted that someone would someday try and remake the story based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal novels, with the cast insisting it would never happen. “Now here I am working for Amazon and they’re remaking it,” Bloom laughed, appearing alongside Carnival Row costar Cara Delevingne, creator Travis Beacham, and showrunner Marc Guggenheim at Amazon’s Television Critics Association press tour.
But when asked if he would consider making an appearance in Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings TV series, Bloom said, “I don’t know how they’re going to approach it,” but pointed out that he’s probably done everything there is to do with Legolas as part of Jackson’s films. “I like to think of myself as ageless, but I don’t know where I would fit in that world,” he admitted. “If you’re saying as Legolas, they probably have a 19-year-old kid who’s ready to go.”
Unlike Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, which were a direct adaptation of Tolkien’s LotR books, Amazon’s series will take place in the largely unexplored Second Age, thousands of years before Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring’s adventures. While Legolas’s exact age has never been stated, depending on when in the Second Age Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show takes place (since the time period spans 3441 years), it’s possible Legolas won’t have been born during the events explored in the show – although it’s possible Amazon could cast Bloom in a different role or cameo.
Jackson isn’t involved in the new series, but Amazon has announced the creative team for Lord of the Rings, which includes Game of Thrones alums Bryan Cogman and Bruce Richmond, Breaking Bad writer Gennifer Hutchison, Hannibal writer Helen Shang, and Stranger Things scribe Justin Doble.
Update: It’s #FoundersAndLegends day! Today we celebrate the auspicious history of tabletop gaming, and how it’s success paved the way for our favorite games of the modern era. The D&D community is celebrating over on Twitch, and donating money to ExtraLife to raise money for children’s hospitals across the country – consider giving if you can.
So many of the 2019-2020’s biggest games are big, elaborate RPGs, and this got us thinking about how the genre has evolved from its pen and paper roots. If you’ve never played a tabletop role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu or Cyberpunk 2020, you may not realize just how much modern RPG video games — all video games, really — owe to their venerable tabletop predecessors.
Using the broadest definition, any tabletop game could technically be considered a role-playing game. Even a game like chess puts the player in the abstracted role of a commander in a battle. For our purposes, though, we’ll define a tabletop role-playing game as one that places paramount importance on player choice through a fantastical mix of exploration, combat, social interaction, statistical advancement, and practical logistics. And dice. Lots and lots of dice.
In the digital realm, early programmers first began writing text-based computer RPGs on university and government mainframes in the 1970s, starting with Will Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure in 1976. Then, as now, role-playing video games have included as many of the elements above as possible in an effort to translate the shared storytelling of a tabletop game into a self-contained electronic medium. In a tabletop game, the Game Master (or Dungeon Master, Keeper, Referee or whatever particular terminology a game decides to use) populates the game world and adjudicates its rules for the players. Thus, the entire evolution of video game RPGs — from simple text-based forerunners like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork to modern titles like Monster Hunter: World and The Witcher — can be seen as an attempt to perfect a virtual Game Master. This is no small task, as human GMs are capable of adapting to a limitless variety of player choices, changing the entire game on the fly depending on how the players choose to play it.
East & West
Most gaming historians tend to view the development of computer and console RPGs as bifurcated into so-called eastern and western games. The distinction has blurred over time, but there nevertheless remain important differences in how each style goes about emulating the style and play of tabletop RPGs.
Western RPGs tend to focus on creating ever larger and more intricate sandboxes for players to explore. The goal is to give players the freedom to attempt as many types of activities as possible in any order, which means that many of the player’s actions won’t always be sufficiently reflected in the main narrative. Take, for example, the character Caesar from Fallout: New Vegas. Caesar is an important character who offers the Courier a variety of missions, allowing the Courier to advance within the Legion faction. As a major faction leader he’s widely known and generally despised by other factions. Yet if you decide to kill him, there’s no effect on the Courier’s standing with any faction save the Legion itself. This sort of narrative dissonance can easily happen in games that attempt to create the illusion of limitless free will. Yet many western RPGs continue to aspire to do just that because of the tremendous immersive effect it has on players, and because the freedom to attempt any activity was and remains a huge selling point for tabletop RPGs.
Eastern RPGs, or “JRPGs” as they’re sometimes called (though that term’s emphasis on Japan ignores similar styles of games from other Asian countries), on the other hand, skew more toward tightly-woven stories with precisely timed beats that players will hit regardless of what choices they make. These RPGs emphasize character and party development, stat progression, and emotional twists. Rather than a more freeform narrative built around player agency, they usher players down linear paths painstakingly crafted by the developers to emulate the delicately woven narratives and grand emotional stakes that long-running tabletop campaigns can attain.
Perhaps these two styles evolved separately as a result of audience preference. It’s just as likely, however, that the split arose because it was simply too difficult to meet both goals simultaneously. While a western RPG like Skyrim gives you myriad options for how to spend your time between story quests, there’s no guarantee that your particular Dovahkiin’s obsession with, say, thievery will have any bearing on the main plot. On the other hand, Final Fantasy XV might deliver an epic, cinematic climax that carefully incorporates all of your character’s exploits, but you aren’t likely to find your playthrough all that different from someone else’s.
It’s a rare game indeed — only the best entries in the Mass Effect series and maybe The Witcher 3 come to mind — that can successfully combine both the broad freedom of choice of a western RPG with the emotional catharsis of an eastern RPG. Even then there are limitations on how far down the rabbit hole one can go. At least until Westworld becomes a reality, tabletop RPGs remain the leaders in providing open worlds to explore while still ensuring that meticulously designed narrative elements and even the most outlandish player choices work in harmony.
Advancement
Perhaps the most important contribution D&D has made – not just to RPGs but to the entire video game industry – is the concept of character progression. In creating his Blackmoor campaign for the Chainmail “fantasy supplement” ruleset, Dave Arneson pioneered a number of innovations that he and Gary Gygax would use as the basis for Dungeons & Dragons. Perhaps Blackmoor’s greatest contributions were the concepts of experience points and character levels. Almost by accident, Arneson touched on one of the most addictive qualities of role-playing games, one that has come to be a core mechanic of nearly every genre of video game.
For some tabletop players, the rewards unlocked by leveling up a character can be more gratifying than the broader story and gameplay. The same is sometimes true in video games. The massive scope of Fallout 4 is impressive and its conclusion is more or less satisfying, yet one of its most compelling aspects is the simple thrill of unlocking new abilities in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. Games like World of Warcraft place such a heavy focus on character advancement that players often feel the need to grind their way to the level cap before the “real fun” even starts.
Leveling and character progression now exist to some degree in almost every video game. While you may not “Level Up” in a game like Dead Space, you do earn the ability to upgrade Isaac’s weapons and armor, essentially unlocking new attacks and defenses. This is very similar to the skill point progression system in Cyberpunk 2020, which doesn’t have levels at all. Instead, as you progress you get to enhance your character with new equipment, body modifications, and training.
Earned abilities and upgrades are tangible, immediate evidence of character growth in the game world that create a positive feedback loop. They both reward the player’s efforts and allow them to progress further, thereby attaining even greater rewards. Unlockables are so ingrained in all genres of gaming today that it’s easy to forget they’re the direct descendants of rudimentary progression systems from early RPGs like 1987’s Dungeon Master. And, of course, those games were themselves attempting to replicate the excitement of leveling up found in their tabletop progenitors. By the late 80s the roster of tabletop RPGs had expanded beyond D&D to include a huge variety of new games like Runequest, Metamorphosis Alpha, and Call of Cthulhu, each with their own spin on character progression.
Combat
Like the historical wargames it grew out of, the first Dungeons & Dragons combat system was (along with most early TRPGs) slow and tedious to resolve. It required detailed knowledge of the rules, as well as a significant amount of arithmetic to determine whether an attack would hit, and how much damage was dealt if it did. This wonkish devotion to complex combat continued for decades across the entire industry. Though D&D combat has gotten much more intuitive — especially with the advent of Fifth Edition — it hardly seems like the sort of thing that would lend itself to high-intensity video games. When IGN spoke to Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk RPG, about his work on CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, he explained that there were “things that were easy to describe in pen and paper that would be amazingly difficult to do in [a video game].”
The earliest video games derived their excitement from the application of quick reflexes and accurate control, and the same remains true for many modern shooters and fighting games. Tabletop role playing games, on the other hand, by their very nature can’t simulate combat in real time. They rely on structured rounds of combat with abundant time for planning in between actions. As a result, the challenge becomes maximizing your character’s prowess instead of your own skill. No matter how experienced you are as a D&D player, if your character isn’t strong enough for the encounter they’re facing, without some extreme good luck they’re in serious trouble.
Most early video game RPGs adopted this focus on strategic turn-based combat. Some modern games like Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire still use pure turn-based combat. Knights of the Old Republic even takes this a step further, adhering so rigidly to tabletop combat rules that players can literally view their virtual dice rolls during pauses between rounds. Even in this more cerebral, slowed down format, though, fights remain engaging and suspenseful – just as they were in tabletop settings 40+ years ago.
World of Warcraft’s auto attacks and pre-planned ability rotations provide perhaps the quintessential example of how rewarding a character’s abilities rather than the player’s reflexes. While that system has waxed and waned in complexity over the years, in every iteration the goal has been to mimic the way tabletop games simulate heroic deeds through random number generation. Those numbers are increased or decreased based on character abilities and equipment, then compared to predefined probabilities to determine not just hits and misses, but also the specific type of hit or miss. (Incidentally this not only emulates but actually outpaces most tabletop RPGs in terms of combat detail. Tabletop games usually specify the requirements for critical hits, but treat further distinctions as little more than flavor text.)
As advances in technology have allowed for more complex actions on the part of the player, many RPGs have adopted combat mechanics that incorporate aspects of first or third person shooters. But even those often retain at least an optional alternative that slows things down to echo the tabletop style. Sometimes the slowdown is literally just that, like in Red Dead Redemption 2’s Dead Eye Mode. While Dead Eye Mode gives the player additional time to select targets, it still relies on the player’s aim to paint targets before Arthur begins firing.
The Elder Scrolls series takes things a step further. As long as the targeting reticle is aimed at a target, the combat system engages a pair of contrasting probability formulas to determine if an attack hits or is blocked in real time. The Fallout games combine a default first person shooter mechanic with the option to enter the V.A.T.S. targeting system, which makes attacks transparently percentage based. The likelihood of success is totally divorced from the player’s hand-eye coordination and reaction time. Instead, success is a product of careful planning and smart decision making. None of this is to say that high-speed, coordination based games like Fortnite are a bad thing, only that the slowed down, meticulous style of combat pioneered by tabletop RPGs continues to have its own unique appeal.
Party Up
Perhaps the most familiar translation from the tabletop to the television (or monitor) is the adventuring party. Almost every tabletop game out there is meant to be played by a group of players with characters whose abilities and personalities combine in interesting ways. It may seem natural now, but when Dungeons & Dragons was first developed, as gaming historian Jon Peterson’s states in his truly excellent book Playing at the World, the shared storytelling of cooperative gaming was a novel concept. It quickly became clear, however, that a shared adventure was more fun than going it alone.
To capitalize on that innovation, video game RPGs have leaned into the adventuring party mechanic to varying degrees. In modern MMORPGs like WoW, higher-level raids can only be successfully completed by guilds of players, often requiring coordination among different classes of characters. This allows players to express and empower themselves through their characters’ specialties. The fighter and the healer are both important but in different ways. They each have their own opportunities to shine and, dare we say, roles to play. That’s a wholly different experience than being part of a Halo fireteam where everyone has pretty much the same abilities. This concept of party coordination draws directly from tabletop RPG parties, in which solid party balance and adaptability are essential survival tools.
Morality
Even the earliest version of Dungeons & Dragons contained the concept of Alignment (which you’ll probably recognize from a pile of years-old memes) to help guide characters’ decisions and govern their relationships with NPCs. Many video game RPGs (as well as a slew of games from other genres) adopt a similar system. They can range from something as simple as Fallout 3’s Karma meter (which really only rewards good acts) to the complex moral questions in the Mass Effect series, for which no single answer is optimal, but each choice has its own outcome. If you play your character in a particularly virtuous way, certain NPCs will interact with you more favorably. A high (or low) moral standing in Mass Effect or Skyrim can open up dialogue options and even abilities that would be unavailable to a character that had made different choices. Again, this is designed to simulate the way tabletop Game Masters present their players with the consequences — both good and bad — of complex moral decisions. Stakes like these force players to really invest in their characters and take responsibility for their actions rather than just slaughter everybody they meet (though that happens sometimes, too…).
The best GMs present their players with difficult decisions and ensure that – no matter what choice the players make – there will be ramifications later on. This adds a layer of verisimilitude and allows the player’s actions to have a measurable impact on the game world, even if it takes some time to see that payoff. Video game RPGs have adopted this technique as well. If you release the super mutant Fawkes from his cell in Fallout 3, for example, he’ll resurface later in the game to help the Lone Wanderer. If the player has enough Karma, Fawkes can also be recruited as a companion. Some decisions even have ramifications that aren’t felt until later games. If the player spares the spymaster Thaler in the first Witcher game, he resurfaces with a gift for Geralt in the sequel, Assassins of Kings. (Weirdly, Thaler returns in the third installment of The Witcher regardless of whether he lived or died in the first game. Maybe that goes to show how hard it is to replace a good GM!)
It’s impossible to understate just how high a standard tabletop RPGs have set for their video game counterparts. Video games continue to get more and more elaborate with bigger maps, sharper visuals, deeper stories and smarter AI. And yet, no matter how advanced the technology and production values become, game developers will still strive to reproduce the “go anywhere, do anything” feeling of tabletop role-playing games. And who knows? Maybe one day a video game will actually be able to replicate a good GM’s ability to generate custom adventures tailored to even the weirdest player choices. It might even be advanced enough to seamlessly blend a fully integrated narrative with truly infinite player freedom.
It’ll never replace the feel of a good set of dice, though.
PlayStation has just released the Heartman character trailer that debuted at SDCC, showing Heartman speaking with Sam, Norman Reedus’ character. Heartman explains how his strange medical condition works, while pontificating on the things he can do with each 21-minute cycle. Check out the trailer above.Original Story:
Hideo Kojima and Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Too Old to Die Young) took the stage at Comic Con 2019 to talk Death Stranding
, storytelling, and more.
Among the anecdotes shared was some new information on Refn’s character Heartman, first revealed in Death Stranding’s release date trailer which debuted during PlayStation’s pre-E3 2019 State of Play presentation.
According to Kojima, Heartman has a “unique” heart, which stops every 21 minutes. He is hooked up to an AED and occupies himself with music and film that can be consumed within that 21 minute window. When he dies, he spends three minutes on the other side, searching for his family, before being resurrected. Heartman dies 60 times a day.
During the panel, Kojima also discussed how he reached out to work with Refn because he was a fan of his movies, Valhalla Rising and Drive in particular, but also because he wanted to meet Mads Mikkelsen, who stars in Valhalla Rising and will also play a major role as the character of Cliff in Death Stranding.
According to Kojima, when he mentioned his interest in casting Mikkelsen in Death Stranding, Refn actually recommended Keanu Reeves for the role instead.
“That would’ve been a threesome,” Refn joked.
While Reeves is not playing a role in Death Stranding that we know of, he will play a role in Cyberpunk 2077, as revealed during the Xbox briefing at E3 2019.
Official Death Stranding box art was also revealed via the PlayStation blog.
On Friday at QuakeCon, Bethesda and id Software treated fans to a surprise announcement that all three original Doom games are now available on Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. Unfortunately, the positive reception to the new ports was dampened a little bit when it became apparent that players were required to create and login into a Bethesda.net account to play them. After a day’s worth of outcry, Bethesda has confirmed it is working on a way to make the login optional for all players.
“The BethesdaNet login requirement was included for the Slayers Club, to reward members for playing the classic DOOM
games,” Bethesda told IGN in a statement. “The login should be optional, and we are working on changing the requirement to optional now. We will update everyone when a fix is ready.”
Doom and Doom II both required players to login just once before accessing the games, but Doom III required players to login each time in order to unlock all features and content.
The Slayers Club is Bethesda and id’s official fanclub for the Doom franchise. Members earn points that lets them unlock skins for the Doom Slayer and demons in the Doom games, as well as merch coupons.
E3 2019 Screenshots – Doom Eternal
The reaction to the Bethesda.net login requirement led some fans to mock it by photoshopping similar text over unrelated games, like Mortal Kombat, Castlevania, and Kirby’s Adventure.
There were almost too many earth-shattering announcements from Marvel’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con, but one in particular rocked all nine realms. Love and Thunder, the fourth movie worthy of the title of Thor, is not only bringing back Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, and director Taika Waititi, but also Natalie Portman. And this time, she’ll be wielding the title and hammer of the Mighty Thor.When Waititi introduced Portman and she took the stage, he mentioned the comic book storyline he’d been reading while Thor: Ragnarok was in production: the Jason Aaron run of Thor. Comic fans familiar with Jane Foster knew immediately what that meant for Portman’s character, but do you? Here’s the rundown on who Jane Foster is in the comics, why she takes up the hammer, what happened to Thor, and what else we might see in Thor: Love and Thunder.
(Note: In the comics and in this article, Thor, son of Odin, is referred to as Odinson for clarity.)
Marvel Phase 4: Official Lineup
How Did Jane Foster Become Thor?
Jane Foster has been part of the Thor comic books since the 1960s. In her original incarnation, Jane was a nurse who later became a doctor, and she worked with Dr. Donald Blake—Thor’s mortal form. She’s been Thor’s longtime love interest, but over the years the pair have had an on-again, off-again relationship similar to the one we see in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jane remained a steadfast ally of both Thor and other Marvel superheroes through it all. In Thor: God of Thunder #12, Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer, and started treatment.
During the 2014 event storyline Original Sin, Nick Fury whispered something he learned from the Watcher in Thor Odinson’s ear. Years would go by in the real world before what Fury said to him was revealed, but the effect was immediately devastating and long-lasting. Odinson dropped the hammer, unable to pick it up again, no matter how hard he tried. Thor was no longer worthy. As Frost Giants unleashed a ferocious attack on Earth, a dark figure bent down and picked up the hammer as it called to her—a woman, and the only name she would give was Thor, Goddess of Thunder.
Thor’s face was masked, her identity hidden from all, even Odin, but we learn in time that it’s Jane Foster who has been deemed worthy to wield the hammer.
Should She Be Worthy?
As Thor, Jane had the same superhuman strength, speed, endurance, flight, and lightning powers as Odinson. When she first picked up the hammer, she didn’t quite know how to use those powers, although her years with Odinson gave her a few clues. As she flew to Earth to find the Frost Giants after she transformed into Thor, she felt Mjolnir guide her both in flight and in battle.
Her connection to the hammer only grew stronger with time. The Goddess of Thunder was able to change Mjolnir’s direction mid-throw, an ability that not even Odinson had, something he noted himself in their first battle together. He understood then that the hammer chose a new Thor, a worthy hero, and trusted its judgement.
Marvel Phase 4 Comic Con Panel
Foster Faces Her Foes
Like Odinson, Jane found herself embroiled in momentous battles rather quickly. Her first time swinging the hammer was against Malekith the Dark Elf and the Frost Giants, followed soon after by the Absorbing Man, Titania, and The Destroyer from Asgard.
Every time Jane picked up the hammer of Thor, however, the transformation purged the chemotherapy treatment—a “poison”—from her body, leaving her human self wracked with untreated cancer. Her biggest enemy would prove to be time as her human body continued to fail.
Thor would go on to play a role in the Secret Wars (2015), battle a power-hungry Odin one-on-one, join the Avengers, and team up with Doctor Strange, until she ran out of time. One more transformation into Thor would kill her, Strange warned her. But when a foe appeared that only she could defeat, Jane completed that final transformation, and died a true hero. She was resurrected by the combined power of the All-Father and Odinson, who was once again worthy to wield the power of Thor.
The Goddess of Thunder in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
With just a movie title and a quick tease in the Comic-Con panel, there’s not much to go on to speculate what that comic book history might mean for Natalie Portman’s incarnation of Thor. Whether Jane will be stricken with cancer, or if Hemsworth’s Thor is suddenly deemed unworthy (which seems unlikely given his story in Avengers: Endgame), are both complete mysteries for now. But no matter the reason Portman picks up the hammer in Thor: Love and Thunder, she will be worthy.
Kelly Knox is a freelance writer who also contributes to StarWars.com, Marvel.com, Nerdist, and more. Follow her on Twitter at @kelly_knox to talk Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, comics, and more.
Horror puzzle-platformer Darq will launch for Steam on August 15.First-time, one-man developer Unfold Games made waves by turning down 12 publishers to make the game himself, and a Reddit post about that situation became one of the most upvoted posts in the site’s history. Darq is also one of the most wishlisted games on Steam.
Darq – New Screenshots
The game centres around Lloyd, a boy trapped inside his own nightmare, but who uses lucid dreaming to force his way out.
That involves perspective and gravity puzzling, as well as a healthy amount of terrified running away from horrifying threats.
The launch version of the game will include full controller support, trading cards, achievements, cloud saves, and will support 19 languages. A simultaneous release is hopeful but unconfirmed for GOG, and console versions are also planned for a future release.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s UK Deputy Editor, and he can’t think of many Lloyds in games. Follow him on Twitter.
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Amazon has announced the creative team for their big-budget Lord of the Rings TV show.In addition to previously announced showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, director and executive producer J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom), and executive producer Belén Atienza, the Lord of the Rings series has added executive producers Lindsey Weber (10 Cloverfield Lane), Bruce Richmond (Game of Thrones), Gene Kelly (Boardwalk Empire) and Sharon Tal Yguado.
The show has also firmed up its writers room with writer/executive producer Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad); writer/executive producer Jason Cahill (The Sopranos) writer/executive producer Justin Doble (Stranger Things); consulting producers Bryan Cogman (Game of Thrones) and Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4); producer Ron Ames (The Aviator); writer/co-producer Helen Shang (Hannibal), and writing consultant Glenise Mullins.
Kate Hawley (Suicide Squad) has also joined the series as costume designer, in addition to Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s production designer Rick Heinrichs, visual effects supervisor Jason Smith (The Revenant), Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey; and renowned illustrator/concept artist John Howe.
“This team is our Fellowship – assembled from around the world, all walking the road together to try and accomplish something far greater than any of us could on our own,” said McKay and Payne in a statement. “We feel humbled and extremely lucky to be surrounded by such inspiring and talented women and men.”
“As our journey into Middle-earth begins, we are in excellent hands with J.D. and Patrick at the helm, with this incredible team of talent that they’ve assembled,” said Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios. “The depth and breadth of the experience of this writing and production team is truly awesome, with a real respect for and knowledge of Tolkien lore. We’re so happy to have them on board and to see this exciting series start to come to life.”
When looking at Tamarin‘s debut trailer, fans of classic 3D platformers from the Nintendo 64 will know the type of game they’re in for. Coming from Chameleon Games, the self-published throwback platformer is a tribute made in collaboration with former developers from Rare. Aiming to recapture the same stylings of games from yesteryear, Tamarin channels the same vibe found from games like Donkey Kong Country 64 and Jet Force Gemini, the latter of which showed somewhat of a darker edge to Rare’s 3D action-platformers.
Taking on the role of the titular Tamarin, a new-world monkey that resembles a squirrel, you’re tasked with defending your home from bug-like invaders seeking to take the land for themselves. This conceit entails exploring different levels and areas of your homeland, while also utilizing weapons acquired from the invaders to fight back. While this concept seems to be treading on well-worn ground, that’s a part of the appeal that game director Omar Sawi is going for.
We recently had the chance to speak with the development team working on this throwback 3D platformer. During our chat, Sawi talked about his collaboration with former Rare level designer Richard Vaucher and lead composer David Wise, and how it pushed them to approach this throwback a bit differently.
“So yeah, I started the game and what I wanted was for it to not be too much in one box,” said Sawi. “Rare had these games that were very cute and charming. Yet some other platformers and shooters they made felt different. Tamarin is trying to capture a bit of that spirit. We’re trying to have something that doesn’t necessarily cater just to kids, but also has a wider appeal and has a bit of an edge to it.”
In recent years, there have been several games that have sought to emulate the same style and atmosphere from classic Rare games. These games include 2017’s A Hat in Time and Yooka-Laylee–the latter of which was developed by Playtonic Games, a collective of former Rare developers. Whether it’s the upbeat musical tracks or the somewhat self-aware humor, these games often try to evoke nostalgia for an era that reveled in exploring a colorful world filled with knick-knacks and other collectibles. And Tamarin is no exception.
Wise, who’s worked on games like the original Battletoads and the Donkey Kong Country series, is also responsible for one of the most iconic themes of the Super Nintendo music library: Donkey Kong Country 2’s Stickerbrush Symphony. While working on Tamarin, Wise spent time revisiting themes from Rare’s earlier years and has a particular view on why people still have an attachment for these this style of games.
“There are certainly still people that like the kind of nostalgia element to it,” Wise said. “It can remind them of when they were a bit younger, and jumping back into games like that. Hopefully, Tamarin can take it a little bit further, as it’s revisiting the genre and stretching it a bit more. I think there’s a lot to be said for that kind of thing at the moment. Again, there are only so many styles of game. So it’s nice to jump in and jump out of different styles and different genres. I’d say both myself and [Banjo-Kazooie composer] Grant Kirkhope are very fortunate in the fact that we’ve made a lot of games. We’ve been making music for so long; it’s almost like we’ve set the expectations for the genre [of platformers]. Fortunately, a lot of people look to our style of music to evoke a kind of video game feel, which has worked out quite well for us over the years.”
Former Rare level designer Richard Vaucher also chimed in, adding that there’s an appealing quality to the setting of Tamarin. A clear focus the developers had when making Tamarin was that they wanted to keep things interesting for players looking for a more familiar experience.
“With Tamarin, we’re mixing different kinds of Rare games,” Vaucher said. “It’s adding a bit of variety to that familiar experience, and not just sticking to one type of game in terms of style. I guess for my part; it’s mostly about the visuals, or like players discovering the new environments, and seeing what they think of the animations of the main character. But in my view, it’s about the exploration [of that world]. I’m quite excited to see what players make of it, like discovering the new levels and seeing what’s there.”
Set for release this year, Tamarin wears its influences on its sleeve, trying to emulate what classic Rare did best during the SNES and Nintendo 64 eras. We’re still in the dark about how much variety is to be had in Tamarin’s adventure. However, it does look to keep its focus on bringing back that particular charm from yesteryear. Considering how much Rare’s imprint on the platforming genre has endured over the years, perhaps there’s still room for more experimentation with this particular genre.
Today we’re giving away One Piece: World Seeker for PS4. To enter into this sweepstake, fill out the form below. You must be at least 13 years old and a legal U.S. resident to enter. Today’s sweepstake will end at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Entries entered after this time will not be considered.
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Play as Luffy and discover an all-new island and story in One Piece: World Seeker. Use Luffy’s Gum-Gum powers to swing, jump, bound and stretch all over the new island to uncover new sights and defeat enemies. And of course, all of your favorite One Piece characters make their own appearances too!
Today’s Daily Win is a physical copy of One Piece: World Seeker for PS4.
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