A Brief History of Dead Rising 2
A low resolution video surfaced February 6th, 2009 on Youtube apparently showing what seemed to be a trailer for a Dead Rising game. Some questioned the video's authenticity which led to quite a bit of controversy over the intertubes. Capcom officially announced Dead Rising 2 three days later on February 9th confirming that the video was indeed a very clever viral promotion. Dead Rising 2 will be available for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. A release date has yet to be announced.
Capcom has passed the developer's reigns over to Blue Castle Games of Vancouver, Canada who have worked on projects such as The Bigs and Major League Baseball Front Office Manager. Several members from the original Dead Rising team are overseeing development and Keiji Inafune will again serve as the game's producer. Blue Castle Games was chosen in part because Inafune wanted Dead Rising 2 to be a "true penultimate western game design experience". Blue Castle Games has also mentioned that the game will retain some of it's eastern sensibilities that made the original so unique.
Not much is known regarding the plot of Dead Rising 2 at this point. The protagonist is Chuck Greene, a former motorcross champion who is apparently searching for his daughter, Katey, in the casino town of Fortune City. Chuck being a contestant in a zombie killing hit reality show called TIR (Terror is Reality) somehow plays a role in his quest to get Katey back.
This photo shows a zombie rights activist named Stacey Forsythe. Surely we'll find out more about her character in the coming months. Notice the vial of Zombrex underneath the picture. Zombrex is apparently an injectable medication used to suppress the zombie infection and was first mentioned in the viral video.
Dead Rising 2 Coverage
Game Developer's Conference 2009
(From IGN) March 27, 2009 - Capcom has been very tight lipped about facets of Dead Rising 2, with much of the information about the zombie-killing action sequel released in one press release and a few screens. We were keeping our fingers crossed that there would be something -- anything -- released about the upcoming game at GDC and luckily, we managed to glean a few little nuggets from the show. During the Platform Independent Shader Development panel, Izmeth Siddeek, the character art lead from Blue Castle Games, detailed how the development team needed to focus on creating a large number of characters that had to be lit and shaded properly on screen, as well as a number of other design hurdles. Thanks to the program's shaders, the Blue Castle team was able to create unique eye and cloth shaders, as well as skin shading that looked natural and could be applied to numerous characters and zombies at one time.
However, it was mental mill Product Manager Laura Scholl that caused the most buzz. Mentioning a conversation that she'd had with Siddeek about the use of the program, she noted that Siddeek confirmed that Dead Rising 2 will frequently track at least 800 separate clothing textures to provide the sense of unique zombies onscreen. What's more, thanks to the elements that Blue Castle are using from mental mill to quickly mass produce characters for the game engine, players could experience as many as 6000 characters onscreen during multiplayer sessions.
Capcom Captivate 2009
(From Gamespot) Capcom's Captivate 09 event featured a slew of games, but the highlight of the show was undoubtedly Dead Rising 2. The original game was one of the Xbox 360's early standouts and a knowing homage to American zombie movies, and it's hard to believe that the game is now almost three years old. Capcom R&D head and Dead Rising 2 producer Keiji Inafune has entrusted development of the sequel to Canadian studio Blue Castle Games, which was on hand at Captivate 09 to walk us through the game. Dan Brady, CEO and general manager of Blue Castle, gave us a tech demo that offered highlights of a few key features that will be in the sequel. Like in the game's predecessor, anything and everything can be used as a weapon, but the team is keen to up the ante with even more zombies and new weapons. Brady talked about maintaining the constant feeling of dread and being "out of your element."
In another post I'll detail impressions from the Terror Is Reality Capcom event sponsored by Microsoft at Ebisu in Shibuya, Tokyo.
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