Latest Huxley Cinematic, Ruminations
Cinematic CGI trailers are all pretty and everything, but for the purposes of blogging they're something of a waste of time. I want information, and when we're faced with the cinematic trailer there's really not much to go on. Give us in-game, or give us death!
Anyway, German site PCGames has the latest Huxley cinematic trailer up, and it's rather pretty. There's not a great deal that we can infer from it, other than people will probably have speed and stealth powers as the game goes on. And that it's The Reds versus The Blues, again.
After the jump: what we know about Huxley so far.
We know that the game is going to be a mix of PvP and PvE. You're going to be fighting for one of the two big factions - humans, and not-quite-humans - as well as battle AI monsters. (There's something of that in the cinematic too.) It's also going to be level-based, with the endgame, clan-level stuff starting at around level 30. I suspect all this is going to disappoint those of you (and me) who were hoping that Huxley might just slot into the role that Planetside has slowly vacated over the past few years. It's looking rather more like Huxley is part World Of Warcraft, part Gears Of War, and part City Of Heroes. It's going to have a small number of classes, with your character able to buy weapons and armour, as well as develop skills such as super speed. You'll even be able to earn your way to owning bits of the faction hub cities, or gaining particular rights and titles.
It's a Korean game, of course, and I don't really expect it to throw off Korean tastes or expectations. There's bound to be some large element of grind, although this might be more interesting if its delivered as a shooty. FPS players don't tend to complain if they have to gun down a large number of enemies. The game is also set for release in 360, so it's got to have a degree of accessibility that certain other PC MMOs lack.
What's most interesting is that although Huxley is "massive" in the sense of the number of players having a go at each other, it seems like the PvP realms are to be broken down into lots of smaller maps, rather like how we play traditional FPS games. These "battlezones" are to be fought over in 20 vs 20 games, allowing the two sides to struggle for dominance over various resources. If this can be set up comprehensibly, and have a genuine impact on the game (I'm looking at you, RF Online) then it could be a motivating and compelling motor for the game as a whole.
Topping it all off, of course, is the fact that the Unreal 3 engine makes it look fantastic. The game is dripping in visual intricacy. Some reports have it that the game even feels like Unreal Tournament in play, making you forget it's an MMO. If this is the case then it could just be the perfect blend. I'm not getting my hopes up...