343 Industries head Bonnie Ross and Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill say sexist behavior on Xbox Live is unacceptable; also say developers have a responsibility to wipe out sexism in the industry.
We speak to 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross and Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill about the challenges of taking on one of the industry's biggest franchises.
Bonnie Ross is a forward-thinker. As the head of Microsoft's 343 Industries, she's the woman in charge of protecting the future of Halo and guiding a legion of loyal fans through the next ten years of the franchise. It's a daunting prospect any way you look at it, but Ross is confident that her team is right for the job. On November 6, the day of Halo 4's release, she hopes that the world will prove her right.
343 Industries was first established in 2007 to support Microsoft's Halo business, following the publisher's split from original franchise creator Bungie. While Bungie would go on to develop two more Halo titles for Microsoft--2009's Halo 3: ODST and 2010's Halo: Reach--the establishment of 343 confirmed the publisher's intentions to keep the three billion-dollar franchise going long after Bungie had left the building.
Ross was chosen to lead the 343 team after a long career as a producer on Microsoft sports titles and key franchises including Gears of War and Mass Effect. She's not the nervous type--her 18 years industry experience has seen to that--but she's not shy to admit the prospect of taking over one of the biggest gaming franchises of all time was initially intimidating.
"My biggest fear was that I was going to be the person that ruined Halo," she says. "I wanted to spend as much time as possible making sure 343 had the right foundations of the franchise so that we could be the right guardians of the Halo universe."
Bungie's decision to stay onboard for two more Halo titles allowed 343 to spend its first 18 months as a studio doing just that. The studio worked in collaboration with the original Halo creators to learn about the franchise, its history, and the various elements that made up its vast universe. The first thing that was immediately clear to Ross was how differently the two studios worked. In Bungie's case, the team presided over development of the Halo games but left the fiction and consumer products side of the business to another branch within Microsoft, which Ross says led to misunderstandings between Bungie and the Microsoft over the future of the franchise. Her solution was to bring everything under one roof. As a result, 343 now looks after the entire Halo franchise including software, consumer products, toys, apparel, and fiction.
The next thing Ross wanted to focus on was building a studio culture. Microsoft's financial backing allowed her to hire developers who she believed fit her idea of what she wanted 343 to be: a highly creative and collaborative environment where employees could feel comfortable in speaking up and sharing their opinion across various departments. Her first stop was Kiki Wolfkill, the former Microsoft Studios art director whose 17-year industry career has spanned franchises including Forza and Gears of War.
"It was an interesting time at Microsoft," Wolfkill says. "We had decided to take on a challenge as big and ambitious as you can possibly get. Not that we didn't understand what we were getting into. We're not scaredy-cats. There's an underdog mentality at 343 that I think is pushing us to great things."
***
343 began work on Halo 4 in 2009 after getting the all-clear from Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer, who was heavily involved in the decision to push ahead with the new series. (Spencer once joked at E3 2012 that he wouldn't be ready to call 343 a proper studio until after they shipped Halo 4.)
The first problem was working out what to keep of the old Halo and what to throw out. When Wolfkill and Ross identified what aspects of the canon needed to be reinforced before any additions could be made, the pair found themselves coming back to the same constant: the Chief.
"It was clear when I joined 343 that Bonnie's vision for Halo centered around the game's universe," Wolfkill says. "When we started to map out what we wanted to do with Halo 4 there was no question about it not being focused on Master Chief."
Wolfkill and Ross both know the Halo universe contains a great deal of untold stories, but they couldn't imagine Halo 4 without the hero at the centre of this universe. They decided the new Halo would be a personal story, one that gave Master Chief more dimension, more humanity.
"Heroes are made through trials and tribulations," Wolfkill says. "We wanted to turn Master Chief into a character that players connect to."
That's where Cortana comes in. Wolfkill says the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana plays an important role in this regard. Players will learn to view both characters in a new light, and come to a new understanding about the importance of their bond.
This is also partly the reason why 343 Industries refers to the new Halo series as a "saga". In exploring the Halo universe to uncover new stories, the team found more than they'd bargained for: enough to feel that they didn't want to be restricted with how they develop the franchise in the future. The story arc developed by 343 spans across a number of games, but that's all Wolfkill and Ross will say on that subject for now.
***
Giving Master Chief more depth was a relatively easy decision compared to the conversation regarding what Halo 4 should innovate on. Ross realized she had to be deliberately cautious in this regard: while a lot hangs in the balance if the game doesn't succeed--343's reputation, the future of the Halo franchise, and the personal sacrifices of over 300 developers who have given the last five years of their life to Halo 4--it was the thought of disappointing Halo fans that played most on her mind.
"Halo 4 is a work of art, but ultimately what we wanted to do was prove to Halo fans that we've stayed true to the franchise," she says. "The universe forms the foundation of the franchise and it means a lot to people. It's our first time taking the keys to the car and we don't want to mess it up."
It's true that Halo has acquired a passionate and dedicated fanbase since the release of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001. The games are valued for their narrative-driven campaigns, polished multiplayer, and the overall canon itself, which has been explored through multiple bestselling novels. Not for the first time since starting work on Halo 4, 343 developers found themselves going back to the things that made Halo great to find inspiration.
Ross and Halo 4 development director Frank O'Connor wanted players to experience a new side to the Halo story, one that would explore the complexities of the Forerunners and their technology. Of course, you can't have a new playground without new companions. The introduction of a new enemy class in Halo 4--the Prometheans--is a huge change for the franchise, and something that 343 is confident will change the gameplay experience for the better.
"We wanted a new enemy class that would work together so that encounters could change dynamically," Wolfkill says. "This changes how players approach these encounters, and of course gives them some new weapons to play with."
The 343 team has also tweaked aspects of Halo's multiplayer. Players will be able to customize their own Spartan and make their through the different modes in the game as a career, earning Spartan Points (SP) to unlock weapons, armor, and upgrades and progressing through the ranks. The studio has also added a story-driven game mode, Spartan Ops, which aims to weave a narrative thread through Halo 4's multiplayer.
"We knew we were taking a leap of faith by introducing all these new elements, but we had to do it," Wolfkill says. "We wanted to develop our own voice while respecting an IP we all care about. We know we're making an investment, but we're certain it's the right one."
"We've had to make a lot of hard decisions on Halo 4," Ross continues. "I didn't agree with all of them, but I think that's okay. Halo 4 is an expression of a whole range of different voices. It's exactly what we wanted it to be."
Halo 4 will be released on November 6.
Aveline de Grandpre is a fascinating character. Not only is the heroine of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation the series' first female protagonist, but her backstory deals with one of the darkest periods in American history. This is a woman born from the romance between a wealthy father and a slave mother, someone who has overcome her uncertain upbringing to find a new life in the Assassin Brotherhood. She's the sort of figure capable of anchoring a truly special game--making it all the more disappointing that Liberation, taken as a whole, is a bit dull.
It's not that Liberation lacks for new ideas. In fact, this Vita spin-off introduces a number of intriguing concepts. Rather than one of Desmond Miles' trips through the Animus, the narrative in Liberation is framed as a piece of historical entertainment delivered by Abstergo Industries, the illusive corporation that serves as the series' overarching antagonist. It is, in other words, a story about Assassins as told by Templars.
There's great potential here for the type of storytelling unique to an unreliable narrator, yet Liberation takes little advantage of its own narrative format. Though the story deals with such heavy themes as slavery and the cultural identity of a city transitioning from French to Spanish rule, it's a largely aimless and hastily delivered plot that sees Aveline bounce around like a pinball from one enemy to the next for the bulk of the game. There are occasional flashes of excitement when a mysterious hacker infiltrates Abstergo's narrative to offer you the "truth" about these events, but they amount to little more than a handful of extended cutscenes back-loaded toward the end of the game.
The greatest casualty of Liberation's muddled storytelling is Aveline herself. She's introduced as an intriguing and strong-willed character, but Aveline's personality is hardly explored beyond that initial introduction. Her recruitment into the Assassin Brotherhood is quickly glossed over, while her gender and mixed ethnicity only occasionally factor into the story. These are interesting traits that you wish the game would explore in more detail, but it's more concerned with a dizzying roster of villains and side characters than spending much time on the heroine at its center.
Where Liberation shines brightest is its re-creation of the city Aveline calls home. This is a brilliant version of 18th-century New Orleans, one that beautifully reflects the diverse cultural ambience formed over years of operating as a French trading port. You often venture outside the city too, spending time with smugglers in the bayou as well as journeying to a couple more locations well beyond Louisiana (though to name them would be spoiling things). These locales look terrific, easily rivaling the rich vistas of Liberation's console counterparts. It's enough to make you stop and soak up the atmosphere during those moments you're scaling a church tower to synchronize the world map.
Unfortunately, you really do have to stop to appreciate the world around you because when things get moving, the Vita hardware tends to struggle under the weight of Ubisoft's graphical ambitions. The frame rate drops precipitously when you hit a dead sprint, and large-scale fights against more than four or five enemies will make things chug as well. It's too bad, because these frame rate issues severely impact the fluid and freewheeling style of urban parkour that has long been the greatest strength of this franchise. Likewise, these visual hiccups don't do any favors to an otherwise refined combat system, which disposes of manual lock-on in favor of a more flexible and intuitive approach to swordfights.
jayd02 Underground 3, minus the cheesy acting from all the other games. UG2 was good only for vehicle customization and tuning, but gameplay wise it was sparse and empty and I handily smashed the AI the instant I got my hands on the Pontiac GTO, never looked back once I put my foot on the gas.
If they kept the open world Burnout style, have the tuning of UG2, the seamless switching from SP to MP like Paradise, tight controls and physics(arcade of course) and make the police tenacious like the level 6 monsters from the original Most Wanted. Make the streets much more populated Midnight Club 3 style and for once use an actual real city, it worked well for MC3. In fact they should have multiple cities at most 3 to become the Most Wanted racer in the game. Oh and they should also add the one on one downhill races from Carbon(that was the best part of that whole game)to unlock special cars/parts. Oh and ease up on the damn exotic cars, those things are freaking boring, that's all I see in every driving game who can shove the most exotics in your face. Most Wanted had a nice balance, lets not forget all the sleeper cars rolling around on everyday streets eh?
Vehicles glide along invisible roads in the sky. Cars are borne out of twitchy, twisty clouds of darkness. Groups of police cruisers perform coordinated donuts, twirling about like dancers in a Busby Berkeley musical. In the creative and unusual pre-race sequences throughout Need for Speed: Most Wanted, you get the sense that the city of Fairhaven is a surreal land with dreamlike logic that might allow anything to happen at any moment. It's striking, then, that the actual game here is so typical and unsurprising, and that although it delivers plenty of the hard-hitting, white-knuckle racing Criterion is known for, it doesn't do so quite as well as some of the studio's earlier games.
Some cars are well-suited to street racing and eluding the police. This is not one of them.
The first game Need for Speed: Most Wanted may make you think of isn't a Criterion game at all; it's Need for Speed Most Wanted, the 2005 game with almost the same name. But while both games take place in open-world cities and involve plenty of police chases, the similarities aren't as significant as you might expect. One of the earlier game's most memorable elements was its hilariously over-the-top tale, told using some cheesy cutscenes, of a newcomer to the city of Rockport who has a personal vendetta against local street racer Razor Callahan. The premise gave you a terrific motivation for rising through the ranks of Rockport's street racing scene and taking Razor down.
Here, you also have the goal of defeating a number of street racers, but there's no narrative to back it up. The 10 racers on your list are identified only by their cars--they don't have names or faces or personalities--and without a personal investment in defeating them, doing so isn't nearly as satisfying here as it was in the 2005 game. It is merely a structural hoop to jump through; you do it simply because the game tells you that this is what you are supposed to do.
Well, that and the fact that driving, racing, and eluding the police are really enjoyable, for the most part. If you've played Criterion's earlier Need for Speed game, 2010's Hot Pursuit, the handling here will feel immediately familiar. Despite the stable of real-world cars, the driving isn't realistic. Cars have a great sense of weight and momentum to them, while still being extremely responsive, and as you'd expect from a Criterion racer, judicious use of the brakes and a bit of practice will have you blissfully drifting through corners at high speed.
Unexpectedly, cars don't start out with boost, but fear not; boosting is a big part of racing in Most Wanted. Each vehicle has five events associated with it, and by taking first place in the easiest of these, you unlock the burn nitrous mod for that car. This enables you to boost after you build up your nitrous bar by doing things like drifting, taking down cops and rivals, and driving in oncoming traffic. Victory in each of a vehicle's events nets you speed points, which you need to earn a set number of before you can challenge each of the most wanted racers. Winning events also gives you access to other mods, including chassis that make you more resistant to impacts, gears that increase your acceleration or top speed, and tires that reinflate if popped by spike strips.
Winning events and making a good car better is rewarding; curiously unrewarding is the process of building up your car collection. In Most Wanted, you don't buy cars, and with the exception of the 10 cars driven by the 10 most wanted racers, you don't earn cars by winning events or doing anything else of significance to advance through the game. You simply find them all over Fairhaven. They're easily spotted thanks to the illuminated headlights and the manufacturer logos that hover in the air above them; you just pull up to a drivable vehicle, and it's instantly added to your collection. After that, you can warp to its spawn point and get behind the wheel, no matter where you are. The fact that you can and will so easily find yourself with a sizable stable of cars simply by cruising around Fairhaven, without having to do anything to earn some of the game's fastest rides, means that car collecting in Most Wanted lacks the sense of accomplishment so many racing games instill by letting you gradually gain access to better vehicles.
The upside of having cars waiting at set points (called jack spots) across Fairhaven is that if you get the cops on your tail as you're roaming about the city, you can pull up on a car's jack spot and, provided that you've got a bit of distance between you and your police pursuers, hop into the other car, reducing your heat level a bit. Your heat level determines just how much effort the police are putting into bringing you down. At the lowest level, you might have a few cop cruisers on your tail. As it increases, the police start setting up roadblocks in your path, and more and better law enforcement vehicles join the fray. Heavy SUVs might try to ram you head-on, and Corvette Interceptors speed along in front of you, deploying spike strips that, if hit, can seriously diminish your car's handling.
All is not lost, however; repair shops are all over the city, and driving through one instantly fixes up your car and gives you a fresh coat of paint to boot. Like using jack spots, speeding through these repair shops reduces your heat level. Your heat level increases automatically as a pursuit goes on, and taking down police cars with a satisfying shunt into oncoming traffic, a swift T-bone collision, or whatever aggressive, effective option presents itself, makes it go up significantly faster. If you get enough distance between you and your pursuers, you enter cooldown, during which your heat level declines. Stay in cooldown long enough, and the police call off the pursuit.
You earn speed points during police pursuits, but you get to keep them only if you eventually escape; if you get busted, you earn nothing, so the stakes can get quite high. Escape from the cops, and you feel great; see the speed points you earned over the course of several risky minutes disappear as you get busted, and you may be crestfallen. It's a good risk-vs.-reward system that leads to some extremely tense moments. Unfortunately, shaking off your pursuers can often feel as much a matter of luck as of skill. Police are tenacious in their pursuit of you--maybe a little too tenacious, because it sometimes seems as if no amount of changing direction, catching big air, going off-road, or anything else is enough to lose the cops. In the game's faster cars, speed can often be your savior, but in the more everyday models, it often feels like you don't have a fighting chance.
Vehicles glide along invisible roads in the sky. Cars are borne out of twitchy, twisty clouds of darkness. Groups of police cruisers perform coordinated donuts, twirling about like dancers in a Busby Berkeley musical. In the creative and unusual pre-race sequences throughout Need for Speed: Most Wanted, you get the sense that the city of Fairhaven is a surreal land with dreamlike logic that might allow anything to happen at any moment. It's striking, then, that the actual game here is so typical and unsurprising, and that although it delivers plenty of the hard-hitting, white-knuckle racing Criterion is known for, it doesn't do so quite as well as some of the studio's earlier games.
Fairhaven's finest are always up for a little hide and seek.
The first game Need for Speed: Most Wanted may make you think of isn't a Criterion game at all; it's Need for Speed Most Wanted, the 2005 game with almost the same name. But while both games take place in open-world cities and involve plenty of police chases, the similarities aren't as significant as you might expect. One of the earlier game's most memorable elements was its hilariously over-the-top tale, told using some cheesy cutscenes, of a newcomer to the city of Rockport who has a personal vendetta against local street racer Razor Callahan. The premise gave you a terrific motivation for rising through the ranks of Rockport's street racing scene and taking Razor down.
Here, you also have the goal of defeating a number of street racers, but there's no narrative to back it up. The 10 racers on your list are identified only by their cars--they don't have names or faces or personalities--and without a personal investment in defeating them, doing so isn't nearly as satisfying here as it was in the 2005 game. It is merely a structural hoop to jump through; you do it simply because the game tells you that this is what you are supposed to do.
Well, that and the fact that driving, racing, and eluding the police are really enjoyable, for the most part. If you've played Criterion's earlier Need for Speed game, 2010's Hot Pursuit, the handling here will feel immediately familiar. Despite the stable of real-world cars, the driving isn't realistic. Cars have a great sense of weight and momentum to them, while still being extremely responsive, and as you'd expect from a Criterion racer, judicious use of the brakes and a bit of practice will have you blissfully drifting through corners at high speed.
Unexpectedly, cars don't start out with boost, but fear not; boosting is a big part of racing in Most Wanted. Each vehicle has five events associated with it, and by taking first place in the easiest of these, you unlock the burn nitrous mod for that car. This enables you to boost after you build up your nitrous bar by doing things like drifting, taking down cops and rivals, and driving in oncoming traffic. Victory in each of a vehicle's events nets you speed points, which you need to earn a set number of before you can challenge each of the most wanted racers. Winning events also gives you access to other mods, including chassis that make you more resistant to impacts, gears that increase your acceleration or top speed, and tires that reinflate if popped by spike strips.
Winning events and making a good car better is rewarding; curiously unrewarding is the process of building up your car collection. In Most Wanted, you don't buy cars, and with the exception of the 10 cars driven by the 10 most wanted racers, you don't earn cars by winning events or doing anything else of significance to advance through the game. You simply find them all over Fairhaven. They're easily spotted thanks to the illuminated headlights and the manufacturer logos that hover in the air above them; you just pull up to a drivable vehicle, and it's instantly added to your collection. After that, you can warp to its spawn point and get behind the wheel, no matter where you are. The fact that you can and will so easily find yourself with a sizable stable of cars simply by cruising around Fairhaven, without having to do anything to earn some of the game's fastest rides, means that car collecting in Most Wanted lacks the sense of accomplishment so many racing games instill by letting you gradually gain access to better vehicles.
The upside of having cars waiting at set points (called jack spots) across Fairhaven is that if you get the cops on your tail as you're roaming about the city, you can pull up on a car's jack spot and, provided that you've got a bit of distance between you and your police pursuers, hop into the other car, reducing your heat level a bit. Your heat level determines just how much effort the police are putting into bringing you down. At the lowest level, you might have a few cop cruisers on your tail. As it increases, the police start setting up roadblocks in your path, and more and better law enforcement vehicles join the fray. Heavy SUVs might try to ram you head-on, and Corvette Interceptors speed along in front of you, deploying spike strips that, if hit, can seriously diminish your car's handling.
All is not lost, however; repair shops are all over the city, and driving through one instantly fixes up your car and gives you a fresh coat of paint to boot. Like using jack spots, speeding through these repair shops reduces your heat level. Your heat level increases automatically as a pursuit goes on, and taking down police cars with a satisfying shunt into oncoming traffic, a swift T-bone collision, or whatever aggressive, effective option presents itself, makes it go up significantly faster. If you get enough distance between you and your pursuers, you enter cooldown, during which your heat level declines. Stay in cooldown long enough, and the police call off the pursuit.
You earn speed points during police pursuits, but you get to keep them only if you eventually escape; if you get busted, you earn nothing, so the stakes can get quite high. Escape from the cops, and you feel great; see the speed points you earned over the course of several risky minutes disappear as you get busted, and you may be crestfallen. It's a good risk-vs.-reward system that leads to some extremely tense moments. Unfortunately, shaking off your pursuers can often feel as much a matter of luck as of skill. Police are tenacious in their pursuit of you--maybe a little too tenacious, because it sometimes seems as if no amount of changing direction, catching big air, going off-road, or anything else is enough to lose the cops. In the game's faster cars, speed can often be your savior, but in the more everyday models, it often feels like you don't have a fighting chance.
Everybody has a chance to assume a double identity this week, with the release of Assassin's Creed III and 007 Legends. Will you be donning an assassin's cloak and revisiting the American Revolution, or do your preferences demand the subtle suaveness of an MI6 agent?
Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed III hits Australian shores this week for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, whilst its spinoff title Assassin's Creed III: Liberation will see release for the PlayStation Vita.
Set during the American Revolution, Assassin's Creed III features a new protagonist named Connor who will involve himself in the ongoing struggle between the Templars and the Assassins. The game was built by Ubisoft Montreal and six collaborating studios on a new engine called Ubisoft-AnvilNext.
Assassin's Creed III will enjoy Ubisoft's biggest marketing campaign in company history, the firm's vice president of sales and marketing Tony Key, said in March. Additionally, the executive called Assassin's Creed III the largest launch in the publisher's history and noted that, by the time it arrives, the game will have been in development for three years.
Are you a fan of the Bond universe? 007 Legends is also out this week for Xbox 360 and PS3. The game includes missions from the newest Bond film, the yet to be released Skyfall, as well as five other Bond flicks: Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Moonraker, License to Kill, and Die Another Day.
On top of its story campaign, 007 Legends features the single-player MI6 Ops Missions mode, which made its debut in last year's well received GoldenEye 007: Reloaded. Additionally, the new game sports a local four-player split-screen mode, as well as a traditional online competitive play.
Other titles out this week include Transformers Prime: The Game, Angry Birds Trilogy, and Moshi Monsters: Moshlings Theme Park. Check out the full list of new releases below.
October 31, 2012
Assassin's Creed III (360, PS3)
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (Vita)
007 Legends (360, PS3)
Angry Birds Trilogy (360, PS3)
Moshi Monsters: Moshlings Theme Park (3DS, DS)
Pool Nation (360)
The Trash Pack (3DS, DS)
Transformers Prime: The Game (3DS, DS, Wii)
November 2, 2012
Football Manager 2012 (PC)
A PlayStation 3 user has reportedly discovered a hidden benefit to Sony's PlayStation Move Racing Wheel peripheral.
According to Albert Chen, whose discovery was reported on iWaggle 3D, the peripheral appears to add motion control to any game, even those that do not necessarily support Move.
Chen said that his tests with the PS Move Racing Wheel showed that it would work with any game, provided the Move was attached to the device and set to controller port 1. Chen reportedly tried the device with games including Need For Speed: Shift 2, Gran Turismo 5, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
He said that while the above games did not recognise the wheel peripheral, they were able to read the controller's inputs as those coming from a normal DualShock 3 controller. (Chen said that his console registered the wheel peripheral's face buttons as regular controller buttons, and the tilting of the peripheral as a normal controller's left analog stick tilt.)
According to Chen's reports, a PS Eye camera is not needed to make the wheel peripheral work with other games. His implication was that any racing game that uses the left analog stick to steer will already be compatible with the racing wheel peripheral.
The PS Move Racing Wheel peripheral is designed to work with racing, motorcycle, and flight games, and will support the upcoming title Little Big Planet Karting, as well as older titles, such as Gran Turismo 5, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Burnout Paradise, and MotorStorm Apocalypse.
The entire wheel is powered by the PS Move controller at its centre, and also features expanding handles, which can turn the peripheral into a motorbike racing handle; in this mode, the right handle of the peripheral features twist throttle.
It's available for pre-order now in North America for $39.99.
GameSpot has contacted Sony for comment and we will continue to update this story.
This week's Field Trip is packed with Halloween themed activities, contests, and information about the latest game industry community news along with ways to find free stuff or discounts on games.
Many game industry communities like Capcom, Bethesda, Sega, EA, Gearbox, and Blizzard are rolling out in-game content and contests around Halloween. This report is packed with ways for you to celebrate the spooky holiday, but don't worry, there's some regular happenings too!
- Bethesda Killer Dishonored Moves Contest ends Oct. 31
- Halo 4 Soundtrack Remix Contest ends Oct. 29
- Win a role in Activision's Walking Dead game
- Resident Evil 6 LampFree projector sweepstakes
- Turbine Pumpkin Carving Contest ends Nov. 2
- GameStop Assassin's Creed III Reward Giveaway ends Oct. 31
- Blizzard Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest ends Oct. 28
- Call of Duty Fan Megapack IV Giveaway ends Oct. 30
- Blizzard Comic Contest ends Oct. 31
- Amazon.com Halloween Gamer Costume Contest ends Oct. 31
- Capcom Design your own Darkstalker ends Oct .31
- World of Tanks Trailer Contest ends Oct. 28
- Unreal Games Wallpaper Contest ends Dec. 10
- Capcom Okami Pumpking Carving Contest ends Oct. 30
- Reddit Pumpkin Carving Contest ends:Oct. 29
- Borderlands 2 Halloween Masks you can print!
- Ravaged $10 off only $14.99 for a limited time.
- Borderlands 2 Golden Keys Giveaway at Gearbox.
- SEGA Halloween Sale on Mobile platforms.
- Lord of Ultima 50% off Castle Themes sale ends Nov. 2.
- Sonic the Hedgehog Toy Collection by Erector.
- XBL: Resident Evil 4 HD, Dead Rising 2 on sale.
- Guild Wars 2 Gems Cards Available at select retailers.
- Minecraft: Halloween Skin Pack for the Xbox 360.
- PSN SFxT Swap Costumes 50 percent off.
- End of Nations Original Soundtrack coming soon.
- Paint your own Dragonborn figure
- Guild Wars 2 Halloween Guide
- ClapTrap blue edition
- Gears of War and Fortnite Twitter headers
- Capcom store has 10% off when you donate towards charity; also earn a chance to win a Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Chess Set.
- Command & Conquer Nod Pie
- Team Fortress Doomates Digital Comic
- Line of Defenses Digital Comic
- Street Fighter Car Spotted in Miami
- Epic Jack O'Lanterns
- SWTOR Fan Art - Movie Poster
- Brick Force Comic Episode 12
- Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel, Now and Then
- Treyarch Bloody Office Makeover
- Gears of War Wall Sculpture
- Plants vs. Zombies:: Stop Zombie Mouth!
- World of Tanks Fan Art Spotlight
- Starcrafts, the animation
- Dragon Ages III: Inquisition Concept Art First Look
- Resident Evil BGS2012 Cosplay
General
- Barcraft Gatherings
- Need for Speed Halloween Community Event
- Rift: Storm of Legions Beta event November 2-7
- Secret World Halloween Celebration
- The first annual Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo
- Team Evil Geniuses reveal some Starcraft 2 pro tips
- Team Fortress 2 Scream Update
- Wicked Weekend Celebration over at BrickForce
- Play BioShock Infinite: Industrial Revolution to earn rewards
- Pixar visited the Blizzard office report
- EA Breast Cancer Walk 2012
- Official Dishonored Mapp App
- Free-to-Play Shooter Hits Home
- SOE October Gamer of the Month
- Community Creation of the Week: A Bard's Song
- BrickForce's Community Spotlight
- Concept Artist Spotlight: Naomi Baker
- PSN Community Spotlight – The Joy Of Horror
- GameSpot Senior Software Engineer
- Amazon recruiting 10,000 extra Christmas staff
- Gamasutra Hiring Report : PopCap, Riot, and Retro Studios
Photos of what appears to be a promotional poster for Rockstar's upcoming title suggests the game will be out early next year; Xbox 360 and PS3 are the only platforms listed.
A Polish fan site has posted photos of what appear to be promotional posters for Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto V, which seem to suggest that the game will be out early next year.
According to the photos posted on the site GTA-Five.pl (currently down), and spotted by Kotaku, Grand Theft Auto V is set to be released in spring 2013.
The photos of the posters also indicate only two platforms--Xbox 360 and PS3--with no mention of the PC or the upcoming Wii U.
Last week, Rockstar released the official artwork for the game, and promised that more details would be released in November.
It has been previously confirmed that the GameStop-owned Game Informer magazine will feature the game in its December issue.
GTA V was announced in October 2011, but the game remains largely a mystery. Some analysts expect it to be on store shelves by March 2013, while others disagree. For more on GTA V, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.
Laura Parker is the Associate Editor of GameSpot Australia. She loves adventure games, sparkly stuff, Trivial Pursuit, cake, Master Chief, earthworms, and rhetorical questions. She once stole a sandwich from Peter Molyneux.
