Huxley: The Dystopia

[NotoriousM4^]

HD Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/v/PexcQtfTlv8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1
Gameplay Footage: http://www.youtube.com/v/MHQQIx81rTI&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1

This cutting-edge massively multiplayer online first-person shooter is taking aim at the PC and Xbox 360.

In what looks to be competition to Sony Online Entertainment's PlanetSide, Korean publisher Webzen is looking to dive into the fledgling massively multiplayer first-person-shooter genre with Huxley, an upcoming Xbox 360 and PC game. So what exactly is a massively multiplayer first-person shooter? It's essentially a shooter set in a persistent online world, and Webzen says that Huxley will combine the intense action of an online shooter with the vast scale and social aspects of a traditional online role-playing game.

Huxley looks incredible for an online shooter/RPG.

The game is set in a postapocalyptic world where humanity has evolved into two rival races: the sapiens and the alternative. These two races battle for the critical resource called lunarites, which is an energy source. You'll create a character based on one of the two races and take on quests that will help your side. In addition, your actions will have far-reaching repercussions, as everything you do can be linked to the survival of your race. And like an online role-playing game, your character can grow over time. You can learn new skills, obtain exotic weapons, and adopt different gameplay styles.

Huxley will feature large-scale battles, of course, and you can expect to participate to see plenty of player-versus-player action. Webzen says that the game is designed so that servers can accommodate "millions of users engaged in fast-paced, large-scale combat." Battles won't just be a test of reflexes, as you'll need to cooperate with your teammates and use tactics and strategy to survive. And in addition to human opponents, Webzen says that there will be computer opponents in the game with advanced artificial intelligence to give them cunning.

When not battling, you can relax, socialize, and go about your business in a huge virtual city. The environments in the game, and the graphics at large, are fairly impressive, and Huxley is being designed to take advantage of the hardware on both a PC and the Xbox 360. The screenshots released for E3 show a game that's roughly on par with some of the latest shooters. There's a large amount of bump-mapping and graphical effects at work, not to mention lots of detail due to the high polygon counts. Huxley certainly looks good, and it will be interesting to see if the shooter aspects of the game work as intended. Unfortunately, it appears that we'll have to wait until fall of 2006 for the game to launch.

LOS ANGELES--There's a lot of interest in Huxley, and that's understandable. This online role-playing game and first-person shooter is from South Korea's Webzen, and its next-generation visuals have been impressing gamers around the world. It's due out for the PC and Xbox 360 in 2007, and we met with Kijong Kang, the producer of the Huxley Studio at Webzen, to learn more about this intriguing game.

Let's get this out of the way. Huxley looks amazing. Kang created a human character for us and zoomed the camera in so we could admire the pores in the skin. The game looks incredible thanks to the Unreal Engine 3 technology. Huxley is easily on par with Unreal Tournament 2007 and other Unreal Engine 3 games. The main difference is the scale. You'll have firefights with up to 200 people in Huxley, and this won't be standard run-and-gun deathmatch. Kang tells us that the battle zones in the game will feature objectives. For instance, your faction may be tasked with capturing and controlling four radar stations in a city, and that means breaking up in teams and working together to seize each station and defend it from counterattack.

Huxley can support 200 players in a battle because while the visuals are handled by Unreal Engine 3, the networking backbone and servers are all based on Webzen's proprietary technology, and the company is one of the biggest players in South Korea's massive online gaming industry.

Kang showed us around Nostalomia, the city in Huxley. We saw a residential area that has room for 5,000 players, and told that you'll be able to purchase your own housing in the game. The online role-playing aspects really kicked in at this point, as you can walk around the city and buy and sell stuff with venders. And unlike in other role-playing games where talking to a vendor is handled by text boxes, Huxley switched to a face-to-face conversation with the vendor, and he looked as good as everything else in the game.

There will be a level 50 level cap in Huxley, and the goal, of course, is to accumulate experience and level up. The three classes are the enforcer, which is a close-range combat class, the avenger, which is the midrange combat class, and the phantom, which is the sniper class. You'll be able to buy lots of weapons, and there are three armor types: light, medium, and heavy. Armor has sockets in them, and you can insert socket skills, such as cloaking ability, into them.

The big question is, how do you avoid the problem of a level 50 player absolutely destroying a level 1 newcomer? Kang had an answer. Basically, the idea is that the levels are divided by class. The first 10 levels are the basic class, while the highest 10 levels (41-50) are the elite class. Level 50 characters will have more socket skills at their disposal, as well as more weapons and armor, and they'll usually battle other players that fall into their class. Meanwhile, lower-ranked players will battle in their class, so the disparity isn't so great.

Huxley really looks like it takes the fast-paced, twitch-based combat of Unreal Tournament and applies it on a massive scale, as well as adding online role-playing elements and persistence. What's really cool is that PC and Xbox 360 players will be able to interact on the same servers, though it also sounds like the Xbox 360 players will have separate battle zones--otherwise, PC players might eat them for lunch, given their superior mouse and keyboard controls. We should note that a lot of these details are subject to change, as the game still has a ways to go. We're told it'll launch sometime in 2007.

...Need I say anymore?

Edit: Added gameplay footage

[Pat]

Yea Ryuk has been going on and on about this one, it looks pretty sweet.
Just watched that gameplay video, the guns look so bad. They have no recoil and the guy can't aim for shit.

[NotoriousM4^]

Yea Ryuk has been going on and on about this one, it looks pretty sweet.
Just watched that gameplay video, the guns look so bad. They have no recoil and the guy can't aim for shit.

Keep in mind though, that video was released almost four years ago. They just released CBT about 3 months ago, so I'm pretty sure much of that has been fixed.

Edit: The trailer is much more recent though.

[Lingus]

My friend did PR for this game. I played it at E3 a few years ago when he was at the booth.

[EpicPhailure]

'PR'?

[ARTgames]

'PR'?

2 Big things PR mean's
press release
Public relations

Im sure he means Public relations.

Here the other stuff it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations

Have a good day.

[Lingus]

'PR'?

Im sure he means Public relations.

He does.

Thanks Art.

[EpicPhailure]

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

[Jake]

My friend did PR for this game. I played it at E3 a few years ago when he was at the booth.

You went to E3.... Dear God I'm jealous.

How was the game btw?

[NotoriousM4^]

I actually signed up for CBT, twice. I checked the first email which they had denied, then I went on vacation (forgetting to check the second email), only to realize the second email had been approved T___T. Too bad by then CBT was already over :/
Proof:

[stick d00d]

the blue thing around their neck on the armor looks pretty dumb, game looks good though

[Lingus]

My friend did PR for this game. I played it at E3 a few years ago when he was at the booth.

You went to E3.... Dear God I'm jealous.

How was the game btw?

Yea, it was before they got all strict about letting non-industry people go. I actually got in by using my friend's badge, but w/e.

The game was okay. I'm not all into FPS games though so yea...