X10 event provides a glimpse of Xbox things to come: Dead Rising 2, Halo: Reach, and more

At a press event in San Francisco last week, the Straight got a taste of things to come for Microsoft's Xbox 360 video-game platform.

On display were the upcoming games Alan Wake, Crackdown 2, Dead Rising 2, Fable III, Halo: Reach, Left 4 Dead 2: The Passing, Lost Planet 2, and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, and—coming to Xbox Live—Perfect Dark, the Game Room, and Scrap Metal (from Vancouver's Slick Entertainment).

Capcom's Dead Rising 2, being developed by Vancouver's Blue Castle Games, is a follow-up to the raucous survival horror game released in 2006. In the demo, the main character, Chuck, was not only slaughtering zombies, but was combining objects to create new weapons. The pinnacle was attaching two chainsaws to the handlebars of a motorcycle, and creating mayhem while driving down the strip of a Vegas-like city.

It is very Evil Dead, although producer Shinsaku Ohara, with Capcom Japan, said, "We watch a lot of zombie movies," but said any similarity between the Sam Raimi films and Dead Rising was coincidental.

Set for release on August 31, Dead Rising 2 will be prefaced with a playable prologue entitled Dead Rising: Case Zero, which acts as a story bridge between the two main games. Ohara described it as, "a taste of Dead Rising 2. It'll have all the game mechanics, but it won't be a demo; it's a complete game of its own."

Rob Barrett, president of Blue Castle, said that the time mechanic is back. "We think that was integral to the first game. It's part of what made it unique. The world doesn't pause, waiting for the hero to arrive. There's consequences to being late or to missing certain events."

But the saved game system that so many gamers became frustrated with—the first game would only allow games to be saved at specific locations—is being reconsidered, said Barrett. "We're going to improve the save system but also try to keep a sense of dread."

Peter Molyneux, who heads up Lionhead Studios and is the designer of the Fable series, told the assembled that he believes games should make players feel powerful. His next game in the franchise attempts to do this by making you the ruler of Albion, and by giving you the ability to touch.

"It makes you feel different about every single relationship," said Molyneux, as he demonstrated how a character could pick up and embrace their daughter, and drag a beggar by the hand to be sold to a factory.

Fable III is set 60-odd years after the events of the second game, and the country of Albion—modelled after Molyneux's England—is entering the industrial revolution. Molyneux said that Albion in the new game is inspired by Charles Dickens and the London of Oliver Twist.

Crackdown 2 executive producer Peter Connelly told the Straight that coming up with a sequel to the wild run-and-gun action game was nerve wracking, but that the development team had "stayed true to the spirit of the first game".

During the demo of the game, which included the kind of action that made the first Crackdown so much fun to play, lead tester John Noonan had to scramble to match his description of events with what we were seeing on the monitors. Said Noonan: "Anything can happen in Crackdown. It is not a scripted place."

Halo: Reach is likely to be the final Halo game developed by Bungie, the studio that created the series. When Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, the rights to the Halo franchise were included. In 2007, Bungie split from Microsoft to again become independent and Microsoft has set up an internal division, 343 Industries, to control the Halo property.

Reach is a stand-alone prequel to the trilogy that stars Master Chief. Marcus Lehto, creative director for the game, said that it takes place just prior to the events of 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved. The characters in this game are Noble Team, a group of Spartan III marines (Master Chief, who does not appear in the game, is a Spartan II).

Bungie, said Lehto, redesigned the animation engine for the game, so the environments are more expansive, the detail finer, the visual fidelity beyond anything we've seen before on the Xbox 360.

In a promotional video screened at the event, executive producer Joe Tung said that one priority was to make the creatures that are part of the enemy Covenant, to whom gamers have become very familiar over the years, seem more threatening, more "alien". So they won't be communicating in English, and they will be behaving differently than fans have come to expect.

Community director Brian Jarrard said that he thinks Reach is the most ambitious title Bungie has ever developed. Given the studio's track record, that's quite an accomplishment.