Source: Canada.com
After three years of intensive labour, dinosaur-fighting Turok can emerge from the Propaganda Games cave.
The first-person shooter game, first title from Disney Interactive Studios’ Vancouver office, will be in stores Feb. 5, exactly three years after the Propaganda Games team, which now numbers 150 people, began work on it.
Based on the 1950s comic book Turok, Son of Stone, the video game — released through Disney’s more adult-oriented label, Touchstone — updates the comic. Instead of pitting cavemen against dinosaurs, volcanoes, giant scorpions and other dangers, the game puts a crew of humans with modern technology (including weapons) in a futuristic jungle planet teeming with, well, dinosaurs, volcanoes, giant scorpions and other dangers.
Not only does hero Joseph Turok have to battle creatures and the environment, he has to battle his former mentor, Roland Kane, whose renegade army is also equipped with modern weaponry. Another twist on the original is the way Turok can manipulate the dangerous critters around him to fight against Kane, or to create a diversion for his enemies so that he can slip through their lines.
“A lot of people remember the classic Turok games that came out in the 1990s for the Nintendo 64,” says Josh Holmes, vice-president and studio manager of Propaganda Games. “Over a period of time, the series got more and more ridiculous and it lost a lot of its fan base. What we’ve tried to do is freshen the franchise.”
For single-player participation, the story is almost entirely seen through the eyes of Turok, although there are moments where a third-person point-of-view occurs. When a dinosaur attacks, there are occasional overhead shots to put things in perspective. For multi-player online play, different head-to-head battles and special co-op missions are available.
The game has been made for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 consoles, as well as for personal computers.
Hollywood actors provide the character voices for the English-language version of the game. These include Powers Boothe (Kane), Gregory Norman Cruz (Turok), Ron Perlman, Timothy Olyphant, William Fichtner and Donnie Wahlberg. The game, released around the world this month, will be dubbed in different languages for each market.
Holmes is very happy that his three-year journey has reached its destination.
“This means a lot to our studio to see our first release, and to have such a major release,” Holmes says.
Graham Hopper, executive vice-president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios, agrees.
“It’s rare that a new studio produces such a good game for its first title,” says Hopper, on the phone from his Disney office in Glendale, Calif. “One of the things that attracted us to the [Propaganda] startup team was their focus on creating more cinematic games. That will be an important part of their focus as the studio grows.”
And that focus, says Hopper, is “broad, sweeping, cinematic, epic gameplay.”
Disney-Touchstone and Propaganda will update the online game with new “maps,” which provide new environments for the game.
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