Rockstar's 1940s crime thriller LA Noire may change how actors are captured and recreated in games for ever.

Developer Team Bondi is using groundbreaking technology developed by sister company Depth Analysis to capture all aspects of a performance at once - audio, visual and movement - and recreate them quickly and en-masse to characters in-game.

"Traditionally, one minute of facial animation could take a couple of animators a month. The idea is that we can mass-produce. We can produce about 20 minutes of final footage a day, and it's seamless - I don't even have character artists or animators working with me," Depth Analysis' Oliver Bao told Game Informer (via VG247).

Getaway creator and Team Bondi boss Brendan McNamara said even games like Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect 2 have characters that look like "goldfish" in comparison. And lip-synching is a problem no longer.

This time-consuming method has allowed McNamara to realise a 2000-page script that calls for performances by over 300 actors. When you consider that an average film is between 95 and 125 pages long, the scope of this game is staggering. Hollywood director Michael Uppendahl is on hand to help, and will direct stars like Aaron Staton.

And for LA Noire, this technology represents far more than bragging rights.

"It's obviously cool technology, but the key thing for us is that when you're interrogating someone, you can read their faces and tell if they're lying," said McNamara. "That is a key component of the gameplay."

Interrogation is a cornerstone of LA Noire. Evidence can be gathered at crime scenes and witnesses interrogated. Anything of interest will be recorded automatically in a notebook. Eventually, lead character Cole Phelps can sit down with suspects and challenge their statements, choosing between coax, accuse and force responses - like in Mass Effect 2, these options represent the general tone of your dialogue choice, not the words themselves.

The game of LA Noire follows Phelps through the ranks of the LAPD, where he'll progress from beat cop to the desks of traffic, vice, burglary and arson. Eventually he'll make it to homicide detective.

Along the way he'll have to work with different partners, and he'll come to realise that the force itself is filled with people that have far less than saintly dispositions.

"Who he is at the beginning is completely different from who he is at the end. There's a journey. In most games - even my old games - who someone is at the beginning is who they are at the end. You don't get that in movies or literature - people change. We want you to go on a journey with him. We're trying to pull that off," McNamara explained.

LA Noire's painstakingly recreated world of 1947 Los Angeles is another talking point. It's the biggest and most detailed areas Rockstar has ever made - and Rockstar makes some big and detailed worlds (GTAIV). Over 180,000 photographs of post-war Los Angeles were sourced and scanned, producing a city as accurately recreated as is humanly possible.

What's more, 90 per cent of the crimes in the game are based on real capers of the time. And they're far from slapstick romps.

"Some of them were too wild to use," realised McNamara. "One was about a preacher walking down Broadway with a bullwhip, whipping non-believers. [Laughs] We thought that was a great story, but we didn't know how to work it in.

"There was a guy in Santa Monica who was driving a four-engine plane down the street at midnight. He had an accident because he didn't have lights on the plane - if you came up with that in a design meeting, people would throw you out!"

LA Noire is in development for PS3 and Xbox 360 and will be released this autumn. That's the plan.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/fi...details-appear ...

Rockstar's 1940s crime thriller LA Noire may change how actors are captured and recreated in games for ever.

Developer Team Bondi is using groundbreaking technology developed by sister company Depth Analysis to capture all aspects of a performance at once - audio, visual and movement - and recreate them quickly and en-masse to characters in-game.

"Traditionally, one minute of facial animation could take a couple of animators a month. The idea is that we can mass-produce. We can produce about 20 minutes of final footage a day, and it's seamless - I don't even have character artists or animators working with me," Depth Analysis' Oliver Bao told Game Informer (via VG247).

Getaway creator and Team Bondi boss Brendan McNamara said even games like Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect 2 have characters that look like "goldfish" in comparison. And lip-synching is a problem no longer.

This time-consuming method has allowed McNamara to realise a 2000-page script that calls for performances by over 300 actors. When you consider that an average film is between 95 and 125 pages long, the scope of this game is staggering. Hollywood director Michael Uppendahl is on hand to help, and will direct stars like Aaron Staton.

And for LA Noire, this technology represents far more than bragging rights.

"It's obviously cool technology, but the key thing for us is that when you're interrogating someone, you can read their faces and tell if they're lying," said McNamara. "That is a key component of the gameplay."

Interrogation is a cornerstone of LA Noire. Evidence can be gathered at crime scenes and witnesses interrogated. Anything of interest will be recorded automatically in a notebook. Eventually, lead character Cole Phelps can sit down with suspects and challenge their statements, choosing between coax, accuse and force responses - like in Mass Effect 2, these options represent the general tone of your dialogue choice, not the words themselves.

The game of LA Noire follows Phelps through the ranks of the LAPD, where he'll progress from beat cop to the desks of traffic, vice, burglary and arson. Eventually he'll make it to homicide detective.

Along the way he'll have to work with different partners, and he'll come to realise that the force itself is filled with people that have far less than saintly dispositions.

"Who he is at the beginning is completely different from who he is at the end. There's a journey. In most games - even my old games - who someone is at the beginning is who they are at the end. You don't get that in movies or literature - people change. We want you to go on a journey with him. We're trying to pull that off," McNamara explained.

LA Noire's painstakingly recreated world of 1947 Los Angeles is another talking point. It's the biggest and most detailed areas Rockstar has ever made - and Rockstar makes some big and detailed worlds (GTAIV). Over 180,000 photographs of post-war Los Angeles were sourced and scanned, producing a city as accurately recreated as is humanly possible.

What's more, 90 per cent of the crimes in the game are based on real capers of the time. And they're far from slapstick romps.

"Some of them were too wild to use," realised McNamara. "One was about a preacher walking down Broadway with a bullwhip, whipping non-believers. [Laughs] We thought that was a great story, but we didn't know how to work it in.

"There was a guy in Santa Monica who was driving a four-engine plane down the street at midnight. He had an accident because he didn't have lights on the plane - if you came up with that in a design meeting, people would throw you out!"

LA Noire is in development for PS3 and Xbox 360 and will be released this autumn. That's the plan.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/fi...details-appear ...

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will be supported by day-one downloadable content in line with EA's Project Ten Dollar plan.

Senior producer Patrich Bach from developer DICE toed the new line in an interview with WorthPlaying.

"We have an in-game store where you get free content or you can buy new content to the game, so it's a very integral part of the game that we will have a long post-launch campaign," he said.

"I think people will be thrilled to see what's in that already. On day one, you will get some really cool stuff."

Last month DICE executive producer Karl Magnus Troedsson said that the game would provide "a good bit of stuff for free", as well as paid DLC.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is due out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 5th March.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ba...ing-launch-dlc ...

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will be supported by day-one downloadable content in line with EA's Project Ten Dollar plan.

Senior producer Patrich Bach from developer DICE toed the new line in an interview with WorthPlaying.

"We have an in-game store where you get free content or you can buy new content to the game, so it's a very integral part of the game that we will have a long post-launch campaign," he said.

"I think people will be thrilled to see what's in that already. On day one, you will get some really cool stuff."

Last month DICE executive producer Karl Magnus Troedsson said that the game would provide "a good bit of stuff for free", as well as paid DLC.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is due out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 5th March.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ba...ing-launch-dlc ...

Activision's revealed a March multiplayer beta for Bizarre Creations' new driving game Blur.

Mike Griffith told Activision inquisitors as much last night during an earnings call, but offered no further details about when the testing will begin.

"In March, we planned to launch a multiplayer beta that will enable media and consumers to sample how fun the multiplayer experience is and we're very excited about this title and believe that it delivers a level of competition not seen before in a racing game," said Griffith.

Germany's age-rating board USK blew the whistle on the demo last month. Mind you, only an Xbox 360 sampler was mentioned and there's been no clarification on PC or PS3 offerings since then.

Blur was delayed earlier this year to an unspecified point in 2010. Griffith mentioned that Blur would be a second quarter (calendar) 2010 game, which means any time after April. And he's quite excited.

"The racing genre is large and we have a distinctive and compelling proposition. Blur blends the fun and power ups like those in Mario Kart with the realism core gamers appreciate with real cars and real locations. The result, the unique combination that beyond its single player mode redefines competitive online racing action in a way that genre has never experienced," he spewed.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bl...demo-for-march ...

Raven Software's new time-bending shooter Singularity will be with us in June.

The date tumbled out of Activision boss Mike Griffith's gob during a post-earnings conference call with investors last night. Well, he said "May" and then a spokesperson for the publisher told Joystiq "June".

That "May" date, however, also applies to the new Transformers game subtitled War of the Cybertron.

This, you'll remember, is in no way linked with a Michael Bay money-splash Transformers film. Developer High Moon Studios will instead look to the old television series for inspiration, both in terms of plot and visual style.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/si...nsformers-soon ...

Systems like Mass Effect 2's Cerberus Network, Dragon Age's DLC network and upcoming launch add-ons for Bad Company 2 are all part of something EA calls "Project Ten Dollar".

That's according to a report in BusinessWeek talking about CEO John Riccitiello's plan to reduce second-hand sales, which the company makes no money from.

The idea, apparently green-lit last autumn, is to include a coupon or redeemable code with every new game which gives the buyer another chunk of content. Without that code, second-hand buyers will have to spend $10 to obtain the missing extras.

Riccitiello told BusinessWeek that despite 11 straight quarters of losses EA is on the up again thanks to its 2010 line-up and strategies like Project Ten Dollar. "You see a six-foot hole that we're in. I'm telling you that we were in a 20-foot hole and we've climbed 14 feet out of it," he said.

As well as providing consumers more reasons to buy games new rather than second-hand, EA also plans to try and stop people trading their games in by tacking multiplayer onto everything - something that rival Ubisoft this week said it was also planning to do.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ea...llar-explained ...

Activision, perhaps understandably, is not expecting the new Call of Duty game to top Modern Warfare 2's record breaking performance.

Boss Mike Griffith said the publisher has "not planned on repeating the same level of success on this year's title", partly because of tougher competition expected around Christmas - last year's flock migrated to Q1 2010.

Nevertheless, Activision is still "bullish" with expectations of both performance and quality from the new Call of Duty 2010, reported GamesIndustry.biz.

Modern Warfare 2, developed by Infinity Ward, smashed most game-related sales record. The title has gone on to become Activision Blizzard's third billion-dollar game in the space of two years.

Activision also announced plans to release a new Guitar Hero game and DJ Hero 2, as well as an additional Tony Hawk title that will use the new skateboard peripheral. Griffith noted that ratings for Tony Hawk Ride were "not as high as we'd hoped for" and said the peripheral "could potentially have different applications in the future".

Activision said there will be new games in the James Bond and Spiderman franchises later this year, too.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ca...t-2009-highs_1 ...

Sony has announced a new 3D Blu-ray Disc player and upgrades to existing players so that they will be able to show high-definition 3D movies too. The company introduced the BDP-S470 Blu-ray Disc model and upgraded existing home theater systems, which will be able to play Blu-ray movies when related firmware for the devices is released later this year. Movies based on the Blu-ray 3D specification, which was finalized by the Blu-ray Association in December, can be shown on the players

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/1...y-Disc-Players ...