Ryse: Son of Rome introduces five new maps, two gladiator character skins, one new mode of play and with the Mars' Chosen Pack. It's $8.99, or free for those who bought the game's season pass for DLC.Read more...
We've covered the work of German studio Karakter before here on Fine Art, but since the company just finished up some work on Xbox One launch title Ryse - not to mention the third season of HBO's Game of Thrones - now's as good a time as any for a fresh look at their stuff.Read more...
After a couple of weeks of silence, we're finally hearing from people who worked at Crytek, the game development studio where more than 11,500 dinners were proudly served to "crunching" developers. Two people on the game are saying that Crytek is a pretty good place to work, despite a recent controverisal Tweet about those dinners sent out to hype their Xbox One launch game Ryse.Read more...
If Ryse's main character, Marius Titus, is on a truth-finding mission, as this live-action trailer for the Xbox One game suggests, then he has a rather confrontational approach to conducting an inquiry.Read more...
Many people really latched onto Ryse: Son of Rome's execution system when Crytek showed off the game at E3 earlier this year - but probably not in the way the developer wanted them to. Ryse's executions, which grant the player various in-game perks - and see protagonist Marius stabbing, gouging, slicing, bashing and otherwise maiming barbarians - are performed via short quick time events. Even though the majority of Ryse's combat has an ebb and flow similar to the Batman Arkham games - flurries of attacks sprinkled with timely parries - many prospective players, myself included, worried about the QTE-infused combat getting stale.
Crytek has responded to those concerns, and the build of Ryse being shown at Gamescom has a significantly altered execution system. Gone are the garish button prompts. Instead, enemies are subtly highlighted with the color of the appropriate button: Yellow for the shield (Y) and blue for the sword (X). By watching Marius' animations and keeping an eye out for each color, I easily slipped into the rhythm of various executions, something I can't say about the E3 build I played in June.
The E3 reaction didn't directly inspire the changes to the execution system, design director Patrick Esteves tells me, but it definitely played a part. "We were already down a course. We already knew where executions were going. And, of course, in game development, we have to figure out what's the best way to do something."
"People don't like the idea of a QTE-based combat system. Thank God we're not a QTE-based combat system," says Esteves, alluding to the fact that there is more to Ryse's combat than people may have perceived from the E3 demo. Just as I did in June, players will eventually discover that the combat is more about a dance-like back-and-forth between Marius and foes than it is about executions. "That was the first thing," says Esteves, "and the second thing is, is the communication language good enough for the game?" Crytek decided it wasn't.
Last Thursday night at the 2013 Xbox Comic-Con Media Showcase, I got my first hands-on time with the Xbox One. I was pleased — well, mostly pleased. Read more...
When I saw Crytek's Ryse: Son of Rome demonstrated during Microsoft's E3 press briefing, I was worried. The once Kinect and now controller-driven game, apart from being visually impressive thanks to an Xbox One upgrade, looked pretty generic. When I sat down to play it at an event later that night, I learned something that improved my outlook dramatically: Ryse has no block button.
It's still too early to tell whether or not Ryse's hack-and-shield-bash combat will hold up over the course of an entire game, but this one simple fact is enough to give me hope.
Ryse, an Xbox-exclusive action game from Crytek, isn't ready to be shown beyond the concept trailer released during E3 2011. I asked Phil Spencer, corporate VP of Microsoft Studios, about the game's progress since Microsoft revealed its partnership with Crytek two years ago under the banner of "Codename Kingdoms."
"We're just not at a point right now to show the game, and instead of ... we're still working with Crytek, we're still extremely committed to the relationship, but we want to make sure that we're putting our best foot forward every time we show the game," Spencer said. "You'll see more about that game, no doubt."
Ownership of Ryse was rumored to have shifted between studios, from a downsized and redirected Crytek Budapest to Crytek's Frankfurt studio. Ryse is alive and well, Spencer assured, though I got an inkling that the brutal, first-person combat shown in the initial trailer may not be entirely relegated to Kinect when we see it next. When asked if Ryse was still "a Kinect game" as before, Spencer replied, "Kinect will be part of the game, absolutely."
This year Microsoft highlighted several more games that are "better with Kinect," even when you're slouched in the couch. The most prominent example comes from Capcom's mech action game, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, which pairs several seated gestures with a traditional controller.
A resume posting on LinkedIn by a former Crytek designer seems to indicate that their upcoming brand new IP game, Ryse, will be coming not to the Xbox 360 as originally believed, but rather to its successor. The resume indicates that the designer worked on "Ryse (X-Box Next Gen)", but doesn't give m...
A CEO with a big personality? A game with a high-profile delay? Disgruntled employees? You'd think we were talking about LA Noire and soon-to-be-defunct studio Team Bondi - or, uh, Red Dead Redemption, now that we think about it - but you'd be wrong! Nope, this time it's German developer Crytek in the crosshairs of an anonymous Tumblr account alleging a whole host of unsavory management practices.
According to Microsoft's Phil Spencer, the company was once in talks with Crytek to turn the German developer into a first-party studio. Speaking to the UK Official Xbox Magazine, Spencer noted that Microsoft first started talking to Crytek around eight years ago and "started talking about what it'd mean for them to become first party."
At the time, Crytek was dead set on creating the motherboard-melting sci-fi shooter, Crysis. Unfortunately, the title would have clashed with Microsoft's then full slate of "militaristic future shooters" (which one, we wonder), so the deal never came to be.
Fast forward a few years and Crytek is developing Ryse -- an Xbox exclusive -- with Spencer saying that Crytek has "fallen in love with the Kinect" and that the project is "a perfect marriage" between the two companies. So remember, kids, true love does exist!
#boottothehead
They might not be able to spell for shyt, but Crytek sure knows how to put together a compelling trailer, like this one for the hardcore-aimed Kinect battler Ryse. It's madness! More »
Unfortunately, the first teaser for Ryse, Crytek's Rome-based Kinect title, isn't much more than a concept video, showing off the game's graphic engine, and then a little bit of what the gameplay might be like, with a Kinect player using arms, legs, and even his head to throw down with a Roman countryman.
The game looks pretty precise when faced with actual shield-bashing and front-kicking movements from the player. But we'll have to wait and see just how it handles our standard Kinect operating procedure: Randomly flailing our various limbs around.
