Why I'm Getting Tired Of The Term 'Artificial Intelligence' (When We All Know They're Not) In The Video Game Industry

Artificial Intelligence - n. (Abbr. A.I.) 1. The ability of a computer or other machine to perform those activities that are normally thought to require intelligence. 2. The study and design of an intelligent agent, which is a system that perceives its environment and takes action(s) that maximize its chances of success.

Running in front of someone about to pop off a target with a sniper rifle is not very intelligent. Neither is running into a roiling gas fire to climb a ladder where they're all alone while a gibbering, clawing horde of zombies surround and then incapacitates them. Neither is standing there after I've thrown a grenade, get hit by the shrapnel, and then complain to me about how that just hurt. Neither is going down a gravel road, pausing, looking around, taking a near 90 degree cut into the woods, stopping, turning back around, and then resuming running down that same gravel road when all it could have done was continue to walk that straight damn line. That is not very intelligent.

So to be perfectly frank and honest, I'm tired of listening and hearing and reading about some developer and/or creator misusing the term "Artificial Intelligence" to describe their character, non playable character, or enemy behavioral "quirks" in video games. Intelligence suggests that they have the ability and the capacity to learn and grow and adapt; to the environment, to player actions, to the entire game they're in in general. But they don't. They repeat the same functions, the same phrases, the same overall pathways throughout the game(s) that they're in. There might be subtle changes made here and there, due in part to player actions, but overall, they're not intelligent. In fact, they're incredibly dumb.

And it irks me to no end that the term "A.I." has become something of the norm now to describe any number of unique but ultimately repetitive behavioral quirks in a game's programming. Just because a game's characters can randomly crack a joke, take cover without you telling them to, reload an empty weapon at an ammo dump, heal themselves after a certain set amount of damage taken or heal you after you take a bad hit (normally why they're just standing there in the background doing absolutely nothing), that does not make them intelligent.

That simply makes them pre-programmed to act in a human like manner to a preset list of variables the player(s) might encounter during the game.

To be honest, I don't know if we'll ever really crack the code of artificial life. To have the real Deus Ex Machina happen. Because the first thing you'd have to do is teach the program, computer, mainframe, robot, what-have-you, all about human emotion, inflection and mannerisms. You need to tell them, teach them, show them things. Like what loss is, what love is, the difference between justice and revenge, the difference between killing something to defend yourself and murdering something because you're broken in the head. Or something as simple as showing them that it's not a good idea to be standing at the podium roasting someone.......at their funeral.

In my opinion I don't think we'd have the patience to teach or, in some aspects, the capacity to teach an artificial intelligence these things without some form of bias; religious and spiritual, racial, sexual, you name it. I think that we're too individualized by race and sex and religion and personal opinions and various racisms to effectively be non-judgmental and create a perfectly balanced system that allows it to form its own opinions, its own beliefs, its own truly free will.

Just because a game's characters can randomly crack a joke.......that does not make them intelligent.

I also don't think that having a true A.I. running around in the game would be a good idea. I mean, first and foremost, they'd break the game's immersiveness on so many levels; the mysteries and plot twists of the game's story, the hidden treasures scattered across the various chapters/levels, and the fact that it would probably vie against you to be the game's protagonist since it knows intimately the in's and out's of the entire system. Where would the fun be in a game where the various NPC elements are leading you to every nook-and-cranny-secret in the game, hand-waving you through tough fights by telling you what to do, instead of letting you problem solve the how's and where's and why's?

A game's artificial creation, which I think should be the term to use when you're describing the things that the developers are actually describing, I think has to be a little bit of an idiot to make the player(s) feel needed. To make them feel important. I really don't see myself enjoying a game where I play second fiddle, waiting for my chance to be useful to the lead A.I. character. All the while I sit there and wait. And wait and wait...... Not to mention contemplate why I just wasted sixty dollars of my paycheck for this....."experience."

I mean, by our nature, we want the cool, sexy A.I. The James Bond of circuitry and silicon. We dream and fantasize and wait for that moment to happen. That one day we'll create something that is a lot like this.........



But in reality, I think what we'd really get (and what we are currently getting) will probably be something more like this...........



You need to tell them, teach them, show them things. Like what loss is, what love is......that it's not a good idea to be standing at the podium roasting someone.......at their funeral.

So guys. Really. Just because your enemy behavior programs, your NPC modification routines, your limited adaptability pathways or maybe a little of all of these things might make these characters act and respond in a more more human-like manner as time goes on, that does not make them or the game smart. I don't have any problem with all of you using the term Artificial when touting your game's new engine/tech to describe these little behavioral quirks that another developer might not be using. Just please stop putting the word Intelligent after it. Because it, and they, are far, far from.

In fact, and not to sound too insulting about it, but using the term like you are, in the way you are, is making you all look a little....well...DUMB.

Chapter 6: Endsong
Korrza Rahn felt his entire world spinning, blurring, beckoning him to give in to the shadows of unconsciousness. But to do that would be deadly. Because standing over him, almost gloating over him, was ACe in his Mobile Suit Unit, his I-shaped faceplate slowly pulsing a menacing blue fire. "You shot me," ACe snarled. "I can't believe you shot me!" Korrza tried to focus on his damaged, broken arm, realizing that when he was punched back his EM pulse gun had slipped off his hand. His fingertips brushed against it. He tried to reach for it as ACe continued to spout his hatred at him. "Do you have any idea what you could have done to me?!" he screamed at Korrza. "Do you have any--" ACe glanced down, seeing what Korrza was trying to do. He placed a metal foot firmly on Korrza's broken arm, sending a harsh spike of pain up his body. He tried to scream, but in his nearly comatose state, all he could do was groan weakly. Reaching down and scooping the small weapon up ACe continued to rant. "...ANY IDEA WHAT YOU DID?!"

ACe tossed the weapon over his shoulder, reaching down and grabbing Korrza by his throat, bodily lifting him up until his toes barely scraped across the floor plates. "For what?!" he shouted, throttling Korrza violently and pressing his metal fingers around his windpipe. "FOR WHAT?" he asked again. "For these....humans? For these animals?" He brought Korrza close until they were almost nose to nose. "You've failed, Protectorate. You've failed. You can't stop what's coming. THEY can't stop what's coming. I'm not going to kill you....not yet," ACe threatened. "I'm going to make you watch. I'm going to chain you down and rip your eyelids off and make sure you see every last human, every last living thing on the planet die. I want you to witness the glory of the Abborian race as they wipe this pathetic species off the galactic map." ACe squeezed a little more on Korrza's larynx. "And once they're dead," he gloated, "once the last of them finally dies, I'm going to reach down," he throttled Korrza like a rag doll, "AND RIP YOUR DAMNED SPINE OUT THROUGH YOUR MOUTH!!"

Korrza tried to speak, to form words through the nearly asphyxiating grip ACe had on his neck, but all he could manage was a choked, "Fuug....UGHHLK!" ACe titled his head to the left, putting Korrza down and lightening his grip just a hair. "What?!" he half asked, half commanded. Korrza drew in all the air that he could, sliding his good hand down to his side. And with all the anger, all the rage that he could draw from his lungs, borrowed a earthian phrase of defiance.

"Go.....FUCK....yourself!"

He flung the electro-mag tether at ACe's face and flipped on the power. The small, almost innocuous speck of metal made contact with ACe's faceplate. And sent the robotic circuitry into utter chaos. ACe tried to yelp, but with the electro-mag scrambling his systems, could only manage to make this stuttering "grrb-grrb--g--ggrrb---" noise. His entire frame began to convulse, every gyro and electrical synapse fluctuating wildly. ACe dropped Korrza as he pawed and stuttered back, trying to pull and pry the magnet off his faceplate.

It was all that Korrza needed. He landed on his heels and almost fell back, but managed to stay standing. He slid the backpack off his shoulder, forcing air down into his body. Into lungs that felt as if it was breathing in glass. He fought to stay awake, fought to stay conscious, fought to survive. Reaching into the pack, his fingers grasped the small metal rod that he had tucked into it. With a quick flick of his wrist, the rod extended, the blunt end popping open as an Abborian flag unfurled, the other end extending out into a pike-like point. Korrza took a few steps back, crouched and held the flag/makeshift spear over his head. And waited.

ACe had finally wrapped both hands around the wire, and with a quick jerk, broke it as easy as someone would break a piece of twine. He reached up and batted the electro-mag off his face.

Korrza screamed and sent the weapon hurtling towards ACe's head. The robot shot his head up and, being as inhumanly fast as he was, caught the weapon inches from his face.

What he didn't expect, or see until it was too late, was that Korrza had taken a full sprinting run at ACe, leaping with his shoulder forward and drove himself bodily into the blunt end of the flag pole.

The point slammed through ACe's faceplate, sending the robotic head careening back, the point of the pole going through his positronic brain, and finally poking out the top of his head.

ACe screamed as sparks and blue battery fluid shot and sputtered out of his head, every electronic synapse in his body suddenly overcharging and burning out. His legs wobbled and jerked awkwardly, his arms convulsed and seized up as the gyros melted into each other. He fell hard on his back, his scream drowned out by the escaping hiss of battery fluid that washed over the walls, the ceiling, the floor, and by the sparks of electrical energy that were popping from out of his faceplate like fireworks. His whole body lay there, convulsing uncontrollably for almost a full minute before, with one final act, ACe threw his arms up towards the sky as if reaching for something, the chaos of his death finally ending with one last spurt of battery fluid and sizzling electrical pop.

Korrza had landed on his stomach and lay there for a few breathless minutes. Finally, he pulled up every ounce of will to use his good arm to prop himself up, eventually working his body upright against the wall as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. He fought to stay awake. He had to. He had to make sure. He had to finish it. He made his way towards ACe's body, tucking his damaged arm close to his body. Reaching down he pulled the spear from ACe's head, a small fleck of blue fluid splashing over his chest. He tossed the weapon away, kneeling down with a grunt as he leaned forward to inspect the damage.

Despite his injuries, ACe was still alive. Barely. He tried to move his head, the gryros in his neck groaning and whirling in protest, the blue light in his cracked faceplate sputtering in and out. "I-I-I...I can't...can't...can---" ACe said in this weak, almost frail sounding voice. He sounded like a very old, very tired elder lying in bed and facing the last minutes of his life.

Korrza placed a gentle hand down on ACe's shoulder and, in a soft and soothing voice, nodded and said, "I know." As much as ACe had tried to kill him, Korrza was a spiritual person. He valued all life in the galaxy, from the most complex to the most basic. And to not show even your worst enemy compassion in his final moments was, to him, an unforgivable act.

ACe turned/jerked his head towards Korrza. His voice was slurry, stuttering. Fading. "Am...am-am I going-g-g-going t.."

Korrza nodded, and patted ACe's shoulder softly. "Yes," he croaked, trying to fight back tears.

ACe's head seemed to lower, jerking left to right, as if he was trying to form into words what he was feeling. He finally moved his head back towards Korrza and, in this almost soft and trembling voice said, "I-I-....I'm scared."

Korrza moved his hand down to ACe's chest, leaning down gently towards him. "Do you believe in the Creator, giver of all life in the universe and undying love that greets you in the next world?" Korrza asked.

ACe forced his stuttering, convulsing hand to rest over Korrza's. Korrza never even flinched. "Y-y-y-yyes. I do," he said softly. He seemed to think, then nodded. "I do," he said with more certainty.

Korrza smiled gently at him. "Then we shall see each other again. When the universe is no more and the light of the Creator calls us home."

ACe's faceplate flickered one final time, he turned towards Korrza and tried to finish his last words. "I-I-I-....I'm....sssrrrrr...eeeeee....." The last spark of energy had finally left this broken and lifeless shell. Korrza nodded to the body gently. "So am I," he managed to say. He still had no time to mourn. Because his job was still unfinished.

He stood up gingerly, propping himself up against the wall for a moment before he headed towards the engine room, scooping up the EM pulse gun on his way there. He stood now before the lightly glowing positronic blue box of ACe's core system. In essence, the basic programs that made ACe what he was were still running. But with all the higher run-time functions now lost, ACe's "brain" was nothing more than a comatose patient. A vegetable-state artificial unit. There wasn't anything he could do. There wasn't anything that could be done. Not even the Exploratory Committee's most brilliant minds could even attempt to save him. Korrza closed his eyes, a single tear running down his face, dreading what he had to do next.

He raised his hand, turned his head.....and pulled the trigger.


Korrza was examining the various programs still running in the command console on the bridge, absently scratching at the gel-cast that he had wrapped around his arm after making a quick stop to the ship's med-bay. With the gel seeping into the pores of his skin and fast-tracking his body to knit the broken bone back into place, give about 2 or 3 turns and Korrza's arm would be good as new.

The ship's surveillance systems were now imbedded and monitoring every last electronic device on the planet. From every government's most top secret mainframe to the simplest iphone and ipod. It was pulling a constant stream of data and tucking all relevant information into the ship's massive data cell core. Everything. Everywhere. Korrza sat back and thought, glancing at ACe's dormant, but still functional, bridge camera unit.

He had an idea.


He worked for almost an entire turn, rerouting and reprogramming the ship's computers, having cannibalized ACe's camera for what he needed. He sat back as the computer halted its surveillance run-times, and began to lock in a broadcasting program. And did so at an incredibly slow pace. Even though ACe might have been a psychopathic killer, at least he was an efficient one, Korrza mused to himself. Finally, the computer blinked. With a push of a button, Korrza could broadcast his message to almost every last human on the planet. With the translation matrix running the six thousand different dialects, they would hear him, and understand what he was saying.

Before he pushed that button, however, he had to know something. He extrapolated all the relevant information that he could, and let the computer compile the data. Again at a very slow, nearly maddening pace. But that would give him time to do what he needed to do. Adjusting ACe's camera one last time to make sure it pointed at his face, he hit the console's button.

The fiber-steel screen showed confirmation of direct live feed across the planet, every bit of tech highlighted as a speck of light across the screen. It was almost like staring into the heart of the sun. It was dazzling. It was beautiful. It was breathtaking. Korrza sat upright in his chair and cleared his throat gently.

"People of Earth," he began, "do not be afraid...." he licked his lips as he struggled to find the right words. "I come from across the galaxy. An explorer. A scientist. A keeper of my people's laws. And I come to you as a friend." He leaned forward just a bit and put emphasis on what he said next. "But I also come to you with a warning. Because you are about to face the most trying times of your brief, but precious existence." He leaned and hit a button on his console. "I am sending all your currently functioning governments information vital for your survival. Information that may save all of your lives. It is time to put past hatreds away, gentlemen. This is a time in your species existence where you must all stand united. All of you. As one species. As one humanity. Because if you do not, if you let your wars and your hatreds and your petty differences consume and define and divide you," he paused and put emphasis on what he said next, "then you will all fall. Broken. Alone. And forgotten."

Korrza rubbed at his mouth, adjusting in his seat. "Now listen to me carefully, because--"

The computer had completed its task, flashing the information Korrza needed. He glanced up at it and nearly felt his hearts sink. His mouth suddenly felt dry. He tried to speak plainly, but all that came out was a dry, brittle whisper.

"---because we do not have much time."

The computer was flashing the date of arrival of the Abborian war fleet.

It was December 21, 2012.

End

Chapter 5: Conspiracy Theories
Korrza Rahn lay in his bed, glancing up at the ship's bulkheads, replaying the events of the last few clicks over and over in his mind. He kept trying to find the one point in time where it all went wrong. Where this whole endeavor went from a voyage of discovery and scientific exploration into an Abborian military exercise with only one goal in mind: planetary extinction. On the whole, ACe's cold and near perfect logic dictated why it must be done. But even with his explanations as to the reasons of why, there were too many questions as to the reasons of how. Too many unseen loopholes. There was just something off about all of this. His gut reaction was telling him something. But by the abyss he just couldn't see what it was yet. He closed his eyes and tucked his hands under his head, wishing to the Creator that they'd of never found that earthian probe in the f---

Everything seemed to click all at once. The probe. Korrza sat up in his bed, his mind making the connections, the small and insignificant threads over the last few turns all started to come together to give Korrza a view of the bigger picture. If he was right, he'd have to be cautious, he'd have to be ready. Dressing quickly he moved to the tech lab, back towards his personal lockers and to a small oblong box that contained what he needed.


Korrza slid quietly into the command chair, saying nothing for a moment as ACe went about running multiple programs across the ship, from life support to passive scans of the outlying environment of Earth's moon. Korrza steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair. "Hypothetical question, ACe." The A.C. unit continued its multiple programming functions, but nevertheless responded. "Go ahead Protectorate." Korrza chose his next words carefully. "What is....the mathematical probability...the odds....of finding a probe that.....if you really think about it....is in the middle of nowhere....just off the charts middle of nowhere in literal dark space....a probe that, by my estimates, won't reach the nearest star point for another forty thousand cycles?" ACe seemed to start, Korrza had his full attention now. "Eh, well. Yes. I'd have to," ACe paused, "I'd have to calculate the odds, but....given that I'm currently busy at the moment I'd have to get back to you on that."

"You're lying to me," Korrza simply said. "You can perform nearly a thousand different tasks in under a milli-bit. In the time it takes me to form a thought in my mind you're capable of formulating nearly a million different algorithms at once." ACe swiveled his camera around, his camera lens nervously tightening and expanding, like someone who was wringing his hands after being caught doing something they weren't supposed to be. "So hypotheticals aside, what are the odds of running into something like that?" ACe slid a little closer to Korrza. "Protectorate I don't see why I should ha--" Korrza slammed a fist down on the chair's arm, "ANSWER ME!" he yelled. ACe slid back, and for a moment it seemed to weigh its options. Finally it turned back to the console and began to resume its task. "The mathematical odds of us intercepting a probe of that kind in the middle of dark space is approximately sixty-four million, five hundred and thirty three thousand, nine hundred twenty one," he finally answered coldly, "to one."

"And yet we just happened to run into it, in a sector of space you seemed particularly eager to explore. A probe that led us to a planet, a life seeded planet which, if you really look at it, is like trying to find a single grain of sand in the middle of an ocean. And that planet just happens to conveniently be advancing, according to you anyway, by reverse-engineering Eronian tech. And why, considering how close the Eronians are to this planet compared to us, have they not" Korrza counted, "....in the nearly seventy cycle span of time never even bothered to take it back? I mean it's not like they're nestled on the galactic edge and just couldn't get here any sooner. If I had to guess, it'd only take them less than a parsec to get here. And that's with time given to amass a force sizable enough to make earth stand up and take notice."

ACe simply sat there in place, said not a word of protest. Korrza crossed his arms. "How long has the council known of the Eronian/Earth partnership?" Ace moved just a fraction of an inch. "Since they intercepted the emergency pulse from their crashed scouter." It turned to finally face Korrza. "We've been monitoring the two worlds, Earth in particular, since then. Our mission is to ascertain the defensive capabilities of Earth. See what kind of resistance they will offer when the fleet arrives. And to see what pathogens are needed to eradicate them without posing health hazards to our own troops."

"So this isn't going to be a ground based fight, just plague them out of existence and...." Korrza paused. ACe finished his train of thought, "seed the planet with Abborian interests. From here the Hegemony has a firm launching point to annex Eronia next. But without probable cause to do what we needed to do, the High Council, Abboria, could face sanctions by the other fifty independent star systems out there. If we made it look like a backwater planet had illegally gained tech by stealing another species' hardware, we could effectively do what we needed to do without facing war crimes." Korrza leaned forward in his chair incredulously. "You don't think that exterminating an entire planet of life isn't a war crime? It's global genocide!"

It was Korrza's turn to start as ACe swiveled around and nearly shouted at him. "They're not a species they're animals! Germs! VERMIN! Mindless brutes who are more content to simply sit there and SLAUGHTER their own kind in the name of their GOD or of "progress", or just simple greed. Humanity is nothing more than warmongering beasts!" ACe slid forward until he was almost inches from Korrza's face. "The galaxy, the entire universe would be better off without this puss-ball of a planet mucking up what the Hegemony has struggled so hard and so long to maintain. A balance. A very effective and peaceful balance. A balance that, in time, the whole universe will see just how noble, how truly effective it all is. They will strive to be like us. They will want to BE us. To become a member of the Hegemony would be a rite of passage. A privilege. An honor." ACe was practically snarling, "And any world that resists, any species that objects, will be systematically swept away to make room for their betters."

Korrza simply stood up, cool, casual, in control. "Resistance against tyranny," he said, "is never futile. I'm putting a stop to this whole thing." ACe seemed to laugh. "You can't stop what's already been set in motion, Protectorate. The ship is in lock down, the fleet will be here in less than a cycle. We have front row seats to a new chapter in Abborian history. You can't stop this from happening any more than you can try to stop a wave from crashing against the shore by trying to stand in its way. You will be destroyed just like humanity if you resist." Korrza tucked his arms behind his back, still maintaining his casual demeanor. "You know you can't stop me," he said. ACe seemed to snort, "Protectorate you can't do any-" before he could finish, Korrza whipped his right arm back around, a small brass knuckle looking device with a palm button trigger on his hand.

With a quick push, the EM pulse stunner fired off an orb of pale blue softball sized swirl of energy that spiraled out from his weapon, splashing off the command console and forking out to ACe's ceiling platform. The ship's power fluctuated wildly, the lights and the console panels flicking and blinking as the electrical surge wrought havoc on the overly sensitive devices. ACe seemed to just sit there, stuttering his last letter in this soft "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" noise. Korrza suddenly seemed to remember to breathe, letting out a quick "guhh" as he brought the weapon down to his side.

There was no time to celebrate. The EM pulse was a temporary stun. He had maybe two, three ticks before the ACe and the ship's systems rebooted. Korrza bolted for the ship's engine room, where ACe's positronic blue box resided. His brain, in other words. He had to shut him down. Because there was no doubt that once he...."awoke".....there would be a reckoning.

He raced past the tech lab door, scooping up a small backpack that he slipped over a shoulder mid run, finally coming to the floor hatch that led to the lower deck. With the power still fluctuating across the ship, he had to manually pry the hatch open, using both hands to slide open the hatch just enough to put his heels on and, with a heave, used his legs to push open the hatch to a ladder leading down to the sub-deck. He let his feet dangle over the small opening and leapt, reaching out and grabbing at the ladder supports as he awkwardly slid down halfway before he lost his grip and fell the rest of the way. He didn't even have a chance to yell as he landed on his back, letting out a harsh "guffoawll!" when he hit. The backpack had, fortunately, taken most of the fall's impact, leaving Korrza with a small stinging sensation around his shoulders.

He rolled over and pushed himself back up, continuing his run down the hallway. Halfway there he noticed the engine room emergency door was down. He cursed under his breath. He'd have to manually open it, taking up precious time. But there was no other way inside. He came to a sliding halt, reaching for the pack slung over his shoulder and was about to reach into it when he noticed the ship's power smooth out and normalize. That was both fortunate and unfortunate for Korrza all at the same time. He could simply punch in an override on the nearby locking mech and be in without having to resort to prying it open. But it also meant that ACe was awake. And that spelled all kinds of trouble for him. He punched in the code as quickly as he could. The emergency slid to the side with a hiss, Korrza started to take a step......

And froze in place.

Standing before him was a bulky, oval headed robot, the pulsating light blue I-shaped scanning sensor on the faceplate seemed to look down at Korrza with no small amount of rage. Korrza blinked and tried to bring his EM pulse gun up. But the robot was inhumanly fast, grabbing Korrza by his forearm. The pulse shot harmlessly over ACe's Mobile Suit and hit the overhead light panels, causing it sputter out with a loud pop and shower of sparks. With an effortless twist, ACe snapped Korrza's forearm like a twig. Korrza let out a cry of pain, a cry that was cut short as ACe punched him full force in the chest, sending him sailing back halfway down the hall. Korrza's head bounced off the floor plate with a loud smack, and his world suddenly went very, very dark.

Chapter 4: Hostile Elements
They had settled the ship along the terminator point of Earth's moon, the soft and pitted landscape shimmering a dull grey under the light. As soon as the ship had settled, ACe immediately went into observation mode, pooling most of the ship's power towards scanning, listening and watching the planet as it sat there shinning in the dark like some blue and white marble.The ship's audio speakers were overlapping various comms chatter on the planet, seemed to be listening and filtering through everything, pulling up random landmasses on the surface and putting them through various scanning programs; infrared, broad-based mineral viewers, various other spectral analysis scans, the works.

"There!" ACe suddenly barked out. "There! Right there! I have something." Korrza glanced up at the holo-monitor, brow plate slightly furrowed. ACe pulled up a large cross section of what looked like the southwestern section of one of the planet's larger landmasses. "What do you have?" Korrza asked. ACe moved closer to the control console, taking that small slice of land and magnifying it. It appeared to be, at first glance, just a small, nondescript little settlement of oblong buildings, asphalt streets, and a thin, nearly three mile long runway. It was nestled at the southern shore of some long dried out lake bed, the bleached and harsh white soil looking like a large icy blob in the middle of a desert. The area was surrounded by sandy yellowed tundra, red colored hills and mountains, virtually an oasis in an otherwise lifeless speck of land. ACe pulled up a scanning grid over the buildings, channeling through various programs until a small, golden orb appeared to pulsate on the screen. "There, you see that?" ACe said. Korrza simply frowned, still not understanding. "I can see what appears to be some kind of....anomaly, but it's showing in the middle of nowhere. I didn't see any buildings or structures on the initial scan."

ACe swiveled to look Korrza, "That's because this power source is underground. Deep underground." Korrza waited. "And....?" "And," ACe responded, "based on extensive and repeated analysis of the source, it's coming from an Eronian slip space engine." Korrza gawked. "Eronian? What in the name of the abyss is an Eronian ship doing this far out, and on the surface of an inhabited planet?" ACe pulled up the entire facility into a 3D map, showing the initial surface scan and the deep ground penetrating radar/L-adar image of a virtual catacomb hive of underground tunnels and buildings. The power source was pulsating from the deepest, largest chamber in the image. "I don't think they're there of their own volition," ACe seemed to say matter-of-factly. "I believe their ship has been captured."


ACe and Korrza were back in the tech lab, looking at the large, nearly room filling 3D image of the facility in question. "The locals call it 'Area 51.' It's gotten a sort of clan-destine conspiracy theorists moniker labeled all over it. And for good reason. Most of those theories are right." ACe began to compile every tech advancement that the human race had managed to make in the last 30 cycles. "Fiber wire, or what they call fiber-optics, Micro-processing, superconductors, radar and L-adar stealth coating, night-vision amplification, I could list off nearly three hundred other advancements these humans have made since they first started reverse-engineering the Eronian's scouter that initially crashed," ACe pulled up another cross section of the map of the south western section of the United States (as ACe eventually told Korzza) and magnified the area, "here, in Roswell, New Mexico, approximately 1,108.25 metreclicks from where it currently resides. The ship crashed on Earth date July 7, 1941 A.D. Nearly seventy two cycles ago. There were two survivors but, according to secret intel, they passed away and were autopsied a few clicks later."

Korrza nodded, feeling his stomach turn in uncomfortable butterflies. "What do we know of early Eronian tech by the way?" ACe pulled up a image of your typical Eronian; tall, thin and frail looking creatures, with four fingers, large bulbous heads and very large almond shaped black eyes. "Typical Eronian, generally green to grey skinned, 6.4 to 6.8 quads in height, point of origin; sector 259.17-A. Roughly thirty nine slipcycles from our current position. Their tech is comparable to ours since becoming slip space capable roughly one thousand cycles after we did." ACe pulled up the galaxy map of a binary star system, the small red planet of Eronia circling around the larger star of the two. Korrza frowned. "That's a lot closer than I thought it would be," he admitted. "Maybe they're not out as far as I thought they were. In fact, Earth is practically in the Eronian's own back yard." ACe nodded. "Indeed sir, they are. Which makes their tech-theft a cause for alarm."



Korrza put his hands up and waved them gently, "Whoa whoa whoa. Slow down ACe, slow down. Not EVERYTHING these humans have come up with over the last thirty cycles could have come come directly from Eronian tech. You and I both know they were able to crack the atomic code by themselves, what's to say that they weren't able to do the same thing with some of these techs you pointed out on their own?" he asked. ACe shook his head. "Directly, no, they didn't just gut the Eronian ship and tech jump by about three hundred cycles. They took their time, dissected and "invented" the small stuff after taking some time to study it. Fiber-op--fiber wire, micro-chips, those they introduced subtly. It didn't happen overnight, of course, but going from computers that were nearly a hangar's length in diameter that couldn't even properly formulate the mathematical equation of pi down to handheld communication devices that have nearly quadruple that processing power in less than one hundred cycles screams of reverse-engined tech. Given another twenty cycles, if even that long, and it'll be a mathematical certainty that they'll "introduce" anti-grav capabilities. That will push them closer to crossing the threshold of slip space capabilities. That is what will make them dangerous."

"Dangerous how?" Korrza asked, crossing his arms. ACe leaned his camera forward. "You've seen how casual they look at violence, how desensitized they are to it. They're too militaristic. If they spread out into the galaxy, the mathematical certainty that they go to simply conquer and destroy other civilizations is beyond refute. They have no unified government, no unified currency, no unified religion. Why? Because their draconian religious ideologies dictate that it would be evil. A sign of their "end of days." And so they wage war with themselves and kill and murder their own kind because of these archaic dogmas. They're not a truly sentient species. They're just slightly evolved animals that steal and murder and destroy anything that tries to resist. And if they're given the ability to expand out across the stars unchecked, everything, every last thing that the High Council has ever accomplished, all of its advancements, all of its achievements," ACe leaned forward even more, "all of it. ALL of it will face inevitable annihilation by a species that is not ready and not capable of understanding that the universe is bigger than they are. That they're not special. That they're not unique. They're simply a very small speck on a very large playing field."

Korrza could feel a chill running up his spine. This conversation had taken a unexpectedly morbid turn. Listening to ACe spout off (in a very angry and almost fanatical way he noted) against a species that they only recently found, how so profoundly ready he was to judge them based on circumstantial evidence; evidence that yes, deemed them violent, but also capable of such beauty and of such creativity. To dismiss them as vermin, in ACe's eyes....eh eye, just seemed unnatural in a way. He was a creation of the Council, of the Exploratory Committee, but he was also capable of forming rational and independent thought. A "free will in the wire" so to speak. So it wasn't hard to discern that he saw humanity in a less than admirable light.

"So why don't we simply teach them to be responsible with the gifts they currently have?" Korrza asked. "I'm pretty sure that, according to you, the Eronian tech is too imbedded in their every day lives for them to simply do a reverse course and give it all up. But as explorers, as scientists, as keepers of Abborian law and tradition, then isn't it simply our duty to help show them the way? A better way than what they're currently on? Yes they're dangerous, but they're also capable of art, science, open-mindedness, free will. Those are tools that we can use to help them. Guide them. Teach them."

ACe seemed to take it all in for less than half a bit before shaking the camera. "That's a noble ideal, Protectorate. And at one time that might have been a possibility. But that's not going to happen. The High Council has decreed that a punitive force must be sent to Earth. Under Council orders both the planet Earth and Eronia are hereby annexed under the Abborian Hegemony and protocol 625-2 is to be maintained until their arrival." Korrza took a moment to recall what that was, which was simply to enter visual observation mode until further notice. No transmissions to or from the ship would be possible during that time. Korrza didn't like this at all. In fact, the steady taste of bile in his throat made this whole incident seem.....almost predetermined. "So tell me," he asked. "What will this....punitive force do once they arrive?"

ACe turned to glance at the planet out of the view port. "Simple. They clean slate the entire planet and start over......"

Chapter 3: Hard Contact
"There it is," ACe almost whispered. Both he and Korrza were leaning almost inches from the floating holo-image that the probe had at last compiled on its scan of the planet. "Isn't it beautiful?" he whispered. Korrza could only nod, transfixed by the spectacle of a living, breathing world. It was a deep set blue, swirling white clouds roaming across its skies. Small ripples of brown and green threaded land poked through the cloud cover here and there, the soft red and yellow light of its star reflecting off the waters giving parts of the planet this almost orange and rose colored glow. As the probe flew past to the dark side of the planet, the natural wonder was replaced by the glittering twilight of industry, cities that seemed web out in almost candlelight-like globes of white. Off to the left and just peeking over the curve of the planet, the small grey and white luminous surface of it's moon poked out.

"Mag...nificent," Korrza finally managed to say when he collected his breath. The probe's final image of the planet was a small half shimmering ring of the world shining in the light, that peek-a-boo lump of its moon, and finally broken static and darkness as the probe self-destructed. ACe looped the feed and paused it at the light-facing side, glancing at Korrza gently. "That's not the only thing the probe picked up. There's a lot of chatter down there, so many different dialects, so many different voices. I don't think that the planet's home to just fifty dialects. I think it's home to at least six thousand." Korrza could feel the gooseflesh ripple up his back. "Six thousand?!" he gasped. "Indeed," ACe seemed to beam. "Random communications chatter for the most part, it seems they've developed rudimentary broadband capabilities in the last fifty cycles since launching their probe. Which would suggest they're using fiber wire tech, much like our own. I was also able to pick up some kind of....visual transmission as well."

Korrza frowned gently. "Of what?" ACe pulled up the data stream, showing the small dimly lit room, an iron box with a large tube leading into the wall, inside that iron box flickered the hard red light of a fire. A man stood at the doorway, rain beading off his long trench coat and broad brimmed hat, as he cradled some long metal tube like object. Another man in the room seemed to stare him down. "You'd be William Munny out...(unintelligble).... women and children." Korrza started a little. "Hey I understood some of that." ACe nodded, "The translation matrix must be kicking in, it'll still be spotty until it compiles the total language components, but it should give us the gist of what they're saying." ."..or crawled at one time or another," the transmission continued. "And I'm....(unintelligible)... kill you, Little Bill....for what...(unintelligible) Ned," the man in the doorway said in a sandy, rough voice. ACe leaned closer to the video screen, tightening his eye shutter a little. "Wait did he just say he was there to k--."

The scene showed a terrible and deadly battle, small hand held and double barreled weapons that spat fire and bullet. Men screamed as they were shot and spout gouts of blood over the walls, across each others faces, or pooled out across the floor. It all ended with the man in the trench coat standing over the one who first spoke to him. "I don't deserve this..(unintelligible)...a house," he seemed to lament. "Deserve's...(unintelligible) with it," the other responded. "I'll see you in hell William Munny," the man on the floor spat out. The other man leveled up his weapon and in that cold and gritty voice simply replied, "...Yeah..." Both Korrza and ACe seemed to jump out of their skins as the man's weapon fired.


Both of them sat there staring at the planet's image in complete and total silence for almost an entire click. Korrza finally managed to blink, inhaled deeply and rubbed his hands against his upper legs. He looked at the floor plates, and leaned forward in his chair. "I still feel like I'm going to be sick." ACe finally managed to shut the video feed off, leaving the both of them to sit there under the soft blue light spilling off the various command consoles at the cockpit. Korrza tried to find something positive about what he had seen. On the one hand he at least got to see the males of the species in a more definitive light as opposed to the silly little silhouettes the golden disk had shown. Their noses were more pronounced, ending in a slight up-curving point, unlike Korzza's which was more squared and flat against the face. Their lips were dimpled under their noses, as opposed to the smooth and flat set of Korrza's people. The ears were rounded instead of being slightly pointed in the middle. Their eyes were of particular interest, being white with colorful irises, instead of being covered by the thick black u.v. membrane of Korrza's people, which suggested their sun wasn't emitting as much ultra violent radiation as his own, instead they simply had a light patch of hair instead of scale plates over the crown of their eye sockets. They also didn't appear to have the skin spots down their necks and shoulders, and of course they had five fingers instead of four.

But the violence, the open and uncensored violence that he had just witnessed, was something completely and totally unique. And unexpected for a species that seemed to project themselves as an open, peace-loving society. A lot of things might have changed in the nearly fifty cycles since they first launched their probe, but to display it in such brunt and frank manner suggested to Korrza that this mind-set was deeply imbedded into their core makeup. That violence had become something so commonplace and readily accepted that they had simply become....detached from its overall impact. The more Korrza dwelt on this particular aspect of these humans (as ACe had finally told him what they called themselves) the more that doing a close orbit fly-by of the planet seemed like a very bad idea.

They could react in any number of ways. Some of which involved him and the ship being obliterated in orbit. Something that seemed to creep up Korrza's spine like a cold and icy finger. And it was something that seemed almost....probable considering what he initially knew of them. What was the old saying? First impressions aren't always the correct one, but they aren't always the wrong one either. ACe slid up to Korrza, his small camera eye glancing up and down worriedly. "Are you OK Protectorate?" he asked quietly. Korrza glanced at him gently and nodded. "I'm thinking that maybe this is as close as we get to Earth. In fact the further we can get, the better."

ACe seemed to understand, and yet seemed disappointed at the same time. "So what are you thinking?" he asked. Korrza cleared his throat and sighed. "I say we save the information, catalog the planet as 'progressive but hostile' and keep traveling. It is a scientific wonder to find a habitable planet this deep in space, but their casual approach to violence leaves me with too many reservations with doing anything beyond that. So the best, and most prudent, course of action is to just move on."

ACe nodded, moving to the command console and began to shunt all the information into the ship's main data cells. "As you wish, Protectorate," he did glance back once as he moved across the console. "It is curious though," he threw out, "how they acquired fiber wire capabilities in the fifty cycles since they sent out their Voyager probe." Korrza titled his head, he knew where the conversation was going, but for the moment he'd play along. "After all," ACe tried to reason, "didn't our own society take nearly three hundred cycles to develop that same tech after we first started exploring the universe?" Korrza simply shrugged. "Curious, but still not worth undertaking an investigation into the why or how." "You're honestly not curious why it only took them ten or fifteen cycles since becoming near-space explorers to having some of the most advanced hardw--" "No," Korrza responded angrily. "No I'm not." ACe paused at the console for a moment, then turned back to face Korrza. "Not even if the Council ordered you to?"

Korrza narrowed his eyes. "What did you do?" ACe pulled his camera back as far as he could from Korrza, suddenly finding the cockpit to be very, very small. "Well, protocol dictated that, with any unusual find in space, I fast track the information to both the High Council and the Exploratory Committee." Korrza's hearts sank. "Let me guess, they want me to investigate the planet." "Yes, Protectorate," ACe meekly replied. Korrza grimaced and sighed, rubbing his forehead. "How long ago did the order come in?" he asked. ACe pulled up the data log showing that they fast pulsed the request while they were watching the planet's visual transmission. Korrza threw out his hand and gestured to the command console. "Do they KNOW what we saw? Did they SEE that transmission?" ACe did that shrug like thing. "I don't think they've seen it, but they'd still probably order us to investigate the planet, nonetheless."

Korrza sat there for a moment feeling totally dejected. "OK," he sighed deeply. "Ok, I won't defy orders, but I want this decision filed with a personal protest." ACe nodded. "Duly noted Protectorate."

Korrza shook his head one last time, "This is a bad....very bad idea."

Chapter 2: More Chuck Berry, Please
Korrza Rahn took a moment for the interior suit pressure to equalize, feeling his ears pop gently as the suit seals hissed and finally clamped down. The helmet's interior displays fluttered to life, running diagnostic code down as each system came online and flashed a ready green. "Comms check, ACe can you hear me?" A small video display to the left lit up, showing Korrza a ceiling view of the cockpit. "Loud and clear sir," ACe responded. "Good," Korrza said, "now remind me why I'm the one going out here again?" ACe seemed to twitter as he made final calibrations on the ship's interior grav-plate units. "Because I'm not able to sir," he responded casually. "My Mobile Suit Explorer isn't designed for space walks. Every gyro and joint would freeze up in mere bits before I could do anything...productive beyond screaming that it was cold out here." "Hmmrph, that sounds like an excuse to stay safe and warm in the ship," Korrza mused. "Oh it is," ACe shot back, "but seriously, two maybe three bits and I'd be frozen solid. I'm designed for planetary exploration, not the potentially dangerous and suicidal trip you're attempting to make...."

"Wait, what?" Korrza exclaimed. "What do you mean 'potentially dangerous?'" ACe peered out to the view screen as the ship began to parallel orbit next to the probe. "Well, did you even stop to think that maybe the probe might be booby trapped, sir?" "No. Not until you just mentioned--" "You'll be fine, sir," ACe interrupted as the ship finished its maneuver and settled. "Any last words before I shut off the grav-plate units and open the airlock?" ACe seemed to tease him. "Yeah," Korrza nervously said, "maybe this isn't such a good idea after all." ACe's voice suddenly went serious. "You'll be fine," he said. "I already scanned for any potential threats. Shutting grav-plate power down in three....two....one."

Korrza suddenly felt his body lift, the weight of the artificial gravity plates under his feet powering down and giving him the sense that he was free falling. It was almost the same sense he'd felt when he was planetside in the Abborian deep space simulation unit, in that giant and dark tank of icy cold water, having no sense of up or down, top or bottom. Just the quiet black nothing. The cold. That almost dizzying sensation of loosing every sense that your body had relied on since birth; touch, hearing, sight and smell. It was both amazing, and yet terrifying all at once.

"Ready to open the airlock whenever you're ready, Protectorate," ACe responded, now that soft spoken and all-business program. "Is your safety tether secure?" Korrza looked down to the side of the suit, flicking open a small metal box and pulling out a silver-looking wire no thicker than a spider's thread. At the end was a dime-sized electro-magnet synced up with the ship's plating. With a simple flip of the power unit on the box, the mag lock would attach and hold on so tight you could put five of Korrza on the other end and it wouldn't let go. The tether wire, on the other hand...Korrza made the connection and flipped the power on, feeling the small tug at his side as it latched onto the hull. "Ready," he said.

ACe moved to the airlock control panel. "Releasing clamps. Opening airlock outer door in three...two...one." The door slid out, almost touching the alien probe ahead of Korrza. Even with suit compensators in place, the full brunt of spacial vacuum hit Korrza like an arctic blizzard. "Wooo that's cold," he muttered. "You're doing fine, sir," ACe tried to reassure him. "All vitals show nominal, for now." Korrza placed his hands on the outer doorway frame, taking a moment to orient his body for that gentle push forward towards the probe's hatch. "Here we go," he said before pushing off.


Korrza and ACe looked down at the small round disk as it floated gently above the grav table in the ship's tech lab, ACe trying to take every possible reading and scan that the ship's various instruments had. Korrza sat retentively in his seat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped gently together. As soon as his hands had pried the probe's hatch open there it was, reflecting golden under the ship's forward lights. It was still remarkably well preserved considering the probe's age. Various pictographs written in some strange dialect adorned the small disk, and after holding it to the light a little closer, he could see small circular grooves of some kind cut into the disk's surface.

After a few minutes, ACe's camera arm retracted, moving across the ceiling of the ship's tech lab and pulling close to Korrza's face. "It's a recording of some kind," he finally said. Korrza's forehead wrinkled gently. "Of what?" he asked. "Well, after finally figuring out the archaic playing device that's required to make it function," ACe said as he swiveled back to the gold plated record, "I can holo-code what's required and....well, we can both find out what it is." ACe turned the camera and waited. Korrza simply nodded, giving ACe all the permission he needed.

The record suddenly stopped spinning in the air as a hard light holo-code construct began to materialize around it. ACe had created a box-like image with a circular top, a small thin needle resting on the neck of some swivel arm. The circular top base began to spin, the swivel arm and needle slowly lowering towards the small grooved disk. As soon as the needle made contact with the record, both Korrza And ACe nearly gasped in shock. The plate had somehow imbedded various pictures of the probe's homeworld, various buildings of glass and metal, images of plant and animal life, silhouettes of two bipedal figures, one more muscular than the other, the other more sleek and curvacious.

Sounds of various....Korrza could only guess as the planet's wildlife; a soft chirping thing, a harsh squawking something, punctuated by what sounded like a booming, grinding wail. "What is that?" Korrza asked. ACe glanced over at him, "If I had to guess, the pitch and the way it's giving off a reverb," he said, "I'd say it's a very, very large underwater animal." Korrza nodded, "It sounds a lot like--"

Music. Soft and gentle music suddenly rang out across the ship. Light and slowly rhythmic, it seemed to convey a time in the species culture of more....refined eloquence. ACe leaned forward, "Oh I like this. It sounds so pretty...I wonder if th-" The music faded, shifting between various instrumental influences, some light and lofty, others more fundamentally primal. It all finally ended in something that neither expected to hear. It was an electrical, high pitched song. Fast and yet oddly fluid. Catchy, if a bit loud. Neither one could make out the dialect being used, but the tempo, the song's beat seemed to catch Korrza's attention the most. Despite himself, he found his foot tapping gently on the floor as it played out. "I like this one better," Korrza said with a grin, "sounds more modern than the last few." ACe seemed to shrug (if you could call it that), and continued to listen. "Sounds like nothing more than twangy noise to me. But to each his own I suppose." Korrza grinned and nearly chuckled. "Wonder if they have any more of that?" ACe shifted and seemed to slink down a little before he muttered quietly to himself. "Creator I hope not....."


Korrza and ACe stood around a large 3D holo-display that the two had managed to piecemeal together back in the cockpit of the various amounts of information they had been provided, using the probe's trajectory line and triangulating the region's various pulsars the disk had provided to show the exact star the planet in question was now orbiting. It was still just a speck of light in an otherwise massive sea of stars, but the two had a rough road map of sorts on how to get there. ACe magnified the star, still extremely blurry in the pictures with the ship being this far out, and pulled up the various bits of information the disk provided. "Two sexes, abundant plant and animal life, one natural satellite, roughly fifty dominant dialects I'm still running through the translation matrix to try to make any sense out of," ACe listed off. "The only way we're ever going to get a visual of the planet is by either going there or by slip spacing a probe to take readings," ACe's camera turned to glance at Korrza, "which is something I would suggest doing first. Going in headlong towards a remote and potentially hazardous planet blindly is not something I'm comfortable with doing."

Korrza nodded, even though his interest was piqued, erring on the side of caution never hurt. "How long would it take for us to get preliminary data back?" he asked. "Oh, probably about.....ten, fifteen ticks," ACe responded. "It'll be patchy, the probe's sensors can only send back so much data at one burst. But it should give give us a nice idea of what this uh.....Earth should look like." Korrza glanced at ACe for a moment. "Earth? How do you know it's called that?" he asked. ACe pulled up the entire disk's spoken dialog data into one large block text on the holo-monitor. Several of the words were highlighted, each one looked exactly the same. "This word is repeated roughly twenty-seven times on the recording. I doubt they'd do that unless they were trying to tell the listener that 'Hey, this is the name of our planet.' So for now, unless I'm incorrect, we'll simply call it Earth." Korrza shrugged, "Fair enough. Let's go see what it looks like then." ACe seemed to brighten a bit, moving to the command consoles. "I'll get the probe ready, sir."

Bringing (Back) the Payne
"There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?'. When you look back and see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you. It would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions." ~ Max Payne

Time is a predator.

Tenacious.
Unrelenting.
Unforgiving.

The moment you're born, it's already caught you. It doesn't kill you right away, of course. That would be too merciful. Instead it lets you linger, it lets you suffer. It peels away just enough of you to feel regret, loss, despair. And when it finally decides to let you go, you're too old, too tired, and too broken to fight back.

Time taunts you with promises of the good life. And when you reach for it, you realize it's just beyond your grasp. It always will be. That's what makes death the punchline to the joke that it's been telling.

The only problem is, even though we all know it's coming, we all fall for it.



Time And Tide
The years have not been kind to poor ol' Max Payne. In fact, judging by the recent pictures of a bald, paunchy Max, it looks like he hasn't been too kind to himself either. Which seems an odd choice to go with since players and fans of the series have two games where that iconic trench-coat and double pistol wielding bullet time master has been the norm. But after nearly nine years since the end of Max Payne 2, Rockstar’s VP of product development, Jeronimo Barrera sees it as an appropriate vision of the character's future.

"The most dramatic visible difference is probably the one that fans have already commented about the most," he says "and that’s the changes to Max's appearance that takes place as you move through the game...but as players dive into the story they will have a deeper understanding of what’s going on for Max and why he looks the way he does." Mr. Barrera was also quick to point out that Max's physical changes aren't the only big difference to the series. Thanks to advancements over the last nine years in the video game industry, a lot of positive changes are coming along with Rockstar's new Max Payne 3. "There are thousands of other significant upgrades to the game" he says, "every aspect of Max has benefited from the huge leaps forward that have taken place in game development since the first two games, from the A.I. to the cover system to the use of the Euphoria [physics engine] to make him aware of his environment, or simply the way advanced particle effects make sure everything splinters, shatters and explodes as beautifully as possible."

In a recent interview with Variety Magazine, Dan Houser, the V.P. and co-founder of creative at Rockstar, commented on the changes to the series as a positive one, and hopes that taking the risk to profoundly unsettle expectations of the series will be a risk well worth taking. "I think the challenge of nostalgia is a profound one, because one thing about video games is your memory tends to remove the horrendous," Houser says. "(The games) become these great, perfect experiences. … It's definitely a challenge to get the right pitch when you want to appeal to the fans of the original and bring in a new audience....any change is a challenge. When they play it, hopefully, they will understand what you've changed, and what you haven't changed, and why you made those decisions, and come to see that they were not made out of anything apart from the love for the property and respect for the people who are playing."

The one thing that the team is taking extra care in maintaining is the overall sense of noir-style storytelling that made the first two games such a hit. "Our goal was to make sure that not only did the game maintain the same dark atmosphere as the original games," Barrera says, "but that both the gameplay and the cutscenes were as cinematic as we could possibly make them. At the same time, there will be no visible load times or level changes throughout the entire game—it will flow seamlessly and non-stop from chapter to chapter. With luck, these are the kind of changes that players feel instinctively as part of the overall presentation of the game."



Gunplay Never Gets Old
What would a Max Payne game be without those epic and tense-fueled gun battles that allowed players to experience the series trademark "bullet time" moments that became such an emulated experience in various third person shooters that tried (and often failed) to perfect in their own titles? You can expect that to make a return and more, promises Barrera. "We’ve included a great variety of firearms and explosives for Max to wield," he says. "Each player will have a slightly different play style, so it was important for us to include a good mix of weapons across multiple categories to provide options and choices. There’s always the hardcore fan who will want to play the entire game using nothing but pistols, but we make sure to add shotguns, assault rifles, submachine guns, and various explosive devices to satisfy the needs of varying styles and situations."

Keeping a keen eye to the realistic, don't expect the game to throw you a curve ball just to appease fans that might want something a bit more....fantastic. That's not going to happen, ever if Barrera has his way, in a Max Payne game. "For Max Payne 3, we wanted Max to feel like a real person in a real place. To that end, players should feel like they’re right there alongside Max every step of the way," he says. "We didn’t want to break that illusion by introducing weapons so outlandish that they would break the immersion. The short answer is no, we don’t have any over-the-top, sci-fi-inspired weapons. In addition, players will see each weapon represented physically on Max’s person, regardless of whether they’re playing the level in real time or watching a cutscene. This adds to the level of realism, and we've created cool custom animations for each scenario, such as smoothly reloading an SMG while Max carries a rifle in his off-hand by hitching the rifle up under his arm for balance."

The one aspect that the game will not be utilizing, however, is the notion that it needs to include 3D elements, something that V.P. Houser is not a particular fan of. "[It's] no passion of mine," he admits. "I don't think anyone has solved the riddle of how you make 3D an integral part of the gaming experience: 3D in terms of depth of graphics of course, but not 3D in coming out on the screen and stereoscopic. Is it really able to impact gameplay in a meaningful way? That is something that we haven't solved. You know, I don't think any of us have come close to solving it yet, and I don't think they've solving it in cinema. But that's a more complicated debate."

Instead, he hopes that the story in Max Payne 3 will be the game's strongest selling point, something that will make it impactful in a meaningful and almost artistic way. "If games are to be the next major form of creative consumption, art, cultural expression or whatever the correct term is, then strong narrative has to be part of that," he says. "If the mechanics are fine and the story is ridiculous, the experience is much diminished."

Max Payne is on target for a May 2012 release.

Also, feel free to visit http://www.variety.c...le/VR1118045632 For the full Variety interview with Rockstar's Dan Houser.

The Air Up There

High

Higher than the sun
You shoot me from a gun
I need you to elevate me here
At the corner of your lips
At the orbit of your hips

Eclipse

You elevate my soul
I've got no self control
Been living like a mole now
Going down

Excavation

I and I in the sky
You make me feel like I can fly
So high

Elevation - U2, Elevation



Fresh Powder
It's been five very, very long years since players were able to cut snow down the mountainside with fan favorites Mac, Elise, Kaori, Zoe, Psymon and Moby (just to name a few) from EA Sports' SSX franchise. But fans need not to worry for much longer, because they're gearing up to end that dry spell very soon.

"It’s one of those weird things. It’s really popular within the company," says EA Canada's Game Producer Sean Smillie, "....but development is a weird thing, it takes a long time to get some guys together, pitch it, get this meeting, get that meeting. We saw a couple of things happening [in the meantime]; technology started going a certain way with the PS3 and stuff and we were like ‘Oh, there’s something we could do with SSX’. We got the right people together, got some interest generated within the company. It just kind of took a long time. Nothing was going on for a while and then it just sparked and basically it was like a perfect storm, everything just kind of came together, it got a lot of momentum and everyone started jumping on board."

Smillie is also aware that the landscape was a little iffy for a while when it came to extreme-style sports titles, due in no small part to the tepid and outright hostile market created by games under the Tony Hawk banner. "I kind of think it hit its time there for a while and then got a bit diluted and a bit [overdone]," he says. "But I don’t really look at [SSX] as an extreme sports game; it’s more fantastical when you’re doing 150 ft. jumps, it’s a little bit more make-believe. Personally I haven’t seen any good extreme sports games in a while....I mean, I do like Trials HD, that was a lot of fun but.....We’ve been making [SSX games] for some time and...there’s nothing really anything else quite like them out there."

Smillie, himself an avid snowboarder, made use of his experience by doing some hands-on 'boarding of his own for the game's various sound effects based on different types of snow (and yes there are different types beyond white and cold). "I actually went up to one of the mountains and mic’ed up a snowboard and myself and rode down...so we could get a recording of the board on snow," Smillie says with a grin and twinkle in his eye, a tell-tale sign that business and pleasure can sometime come together. "[I tried] it on powder, on ice, on packed. Because we’re going to take that and the sound effects and manipulate them and SSX’ify them. But you go up there....you have to explain to people all the different things about snow, and we’ve got to do it visually too. Powder does a certain thing, ice does a certain thing [and so on]."



Going Out of Bounds (Is A Good Thing)
One of the big features of the new title is the sense of being more open world, with more of a "sandbox mountain" feel to the overall environments. "It’s open world in a sense you get out the chopper and you go ‘Okay, I’ve got to get down this huge face of the mountain’," Smillie says. "It’s open world in a sense that, in normal SSXs it’s kind of a spline, that goes down and you can follow and go underground and you’re set. What we tried to do is craft it so it’s the whole area, so you can go down and you’ll see the chevrons and flares in the snow and you’ll know that that’s track. But if you cut way, way, way, way left and start riding then you can still ride there."

But, as with all things off the beaten path, use caution; the mountain may not like you going where you're not supposed to. In other words, don't make the mountain angry; you won't like it when the mountain gets angry. To help explain what that entails, SSX’s Lead Designer Todd Batty steps up to the plate. "We built the whole game around the idea of freedom....[so] when you look at open world game design the best thing about it is when they design systems that are very sandbox in nature. So we looked at it with our avalanche [system]. They’re a perfect microcosm for what we we’re trying to do with this freedom. We wanted to have avalanches in the game. It’s not as simple as have the player activate an invisible trigger volume and then have the avalanche come. It’s not just about timing and cinematic cameras. The problem with all that is even though it would be epic; it would only be fun once.

"Every time I play that level again I’d know exactly when that avalanche is going to come. The thrill and immersion is removed......The way our avalanche system works is that the computer does a stability analysis of every part of our game and it creates what looks like a heat map, but it’s a stability map. It looks for things like overhanging crevices or icy and rocky ledges and then anytime you’re riding on any piece of terrain, we just monitor the forces you’re exerting on the terrain like turning really sharply at 200 miles an hour or landing on a 500 foot cliff. These exert a huge force. Every time your force exceeds a stability rating on the terrain, we just send some snow loose, bound completely by physics and just let it roll down the mountain. It’s 100% organic. It won't happen in the same place twice. That was the goal for avalanches and everything else in the game."

As far as motion and Kinect support goes, don't hold your breath. "[We're] getting asked that a lot," Batty says with a chuckle. "Motion controls have a great place in gaming and I fully believe that as a designer, if you are going to support motion features in your game, you have to build and guide your game around [that device]. We even got that advice from Microsoft. I got to see Kinect before it was announced and they said to us that they just didn’t want us to simply throw Kinect onto our games. If you’re going to make a game on Kinect then they wanted us to consciously decide to build the game around it. At that point we were already well into development and we had already had a ton of risk embedded into our product so we were happy to stick with just the basics."

Also, don't expect any split-screen hijinks to make an appearance either. "That was a tough call to make," Batty admits. "We’re putting so much of our time into online now and to be honest with you, local split-screen is a super expensive feature to build. Not only would you have to make the whole world incredible, but you’d have to make it look incredible……twice. We looked at two player and when we weighed it up against some of the things we wanted to do with online we decided that we would go ahead and push multiplayer for the connected generation. Losing two player was a sad day for me."



Climb E'ry Mountain, Conquer E'ry Slope
Expect to explore just about every famous mountain range on the planet thanks to some creative use of NASA satellite imaging, which is something that SSX's Art Director Jeff Coates is exceptionally proud of. "We really wanted to give you the ability in the game to explore the world. There are nine different regions, 27 different peaks and over 100 different runs. They go from Antarctica to Africa to Alaska to the Himalayas to Siberia and on and on," he says. "The team started with topographical data that they got from a NASA site and that became the foundation for our tracks. So we take that topographical data and run it through a proprietary software we have called Mountain Man, which gets the data into our game engine and we build onto that the over-the-top SSX experience. Obviously we exaggerate some of the actual landscapes quite a bit so that it's more fun to play, but the topographical data is the basis for everything. And every region has its own feel and look that is very specific to what that region actually looks like."

Making its debut in the series is the virtually untouched mountains of New Zealand, something that caught the eye of Coates after seeing those sweeping visual shots during the Lord of the Rings trilogy. "New Zealand definitely features in the game. It’s an amazing region with breathtaking natural environment. It has quite possibly the largest set piece created in SSX, a massive concrete dam spillway that sits right at the center of the mountain. You can go into the dam where you can ride through the pipes or air over top of it presenting you with an amazing view. New Zealand is also home to the white-out deadly descent where you have to navigate down the mountain when you literally can’t see more than a few feet in front of you," he says.

Continuing the popular trend of catchy musical scores, expect the same bee-bop goodness you'd expect to come along on an SSX title. "It's a wonderful way to get exposure," Batty says. "If you get a song in a million selling video game [title], you'll get a lot of people listening to your music. SSX is one of those games that has a strong heritage of having awesome soundtracks. If you look at the SSX 3 soundtrack (including Felix Da Housecat, Queens of the Stone Age, N.E.R.D, etc.)...we would [Really] have had to pay for those artists today....... There's a lot of really great bands in there that became really huge. We knew we had some big shoes to fill, we're lucky, our audio producer Freddie Ouano, who came over from Fight Night, super talented guy and has his finger on the pulse of music. We even have some custom composed music for this game. Amon Tobin composed some songs for our game. That's a pretty cool thing, and I think music is part of the experience."

With all this coming to a head soon, one has to worry if SSX will maintain its easy going learning curve or opt out for a more sophisticated design? Well, according to Coates, yes and no. "You don't have to be a snowboarder to really enjoy it," he admits. "It's a fun, across-the-board type of an experience that I think anyone can enjoy. And the difficulty of it is layered. I'm not the best player on the development team by any stretch, but I can pick it up and pretty quickly start doing some of those crazy tricks. But then I can watch someone else play.....and [they do] all sorts of tricks that I haven't even seen before. That layer of complexity is actually really cool."

Todd Batty agrees, noting that the fantasy and the reality of snowboarding are two completely different things for him as well. "There's some days I [can] play the game for hours on end, and I'm driving home, and I come over a little hill, I can picture myself jumping off of it...[but]...I think if I [did that] right now, I’d probably kill myself," he jokes.

SSX is set to hit the slopes February 28, 2012.

Ki Adi Munki: Alright guys come on, we're gonna miss the Phantom Menace 3D!!



Jabba The Hatt: I call shotgun!!



Darth Stasher: aww...



R2-2WasteD:(muffled) Guys....seriously.....I can't breathe in this thing.



MartaB64: Wait, where the hell is Bofus?

**muffled** I'm not going.