Category: Gamespot

When open-world sandbox game Just Cause 3 is released next year for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, it will not include a multiplayer mode, developer Avalanche Studios has confirmed. 2010’s Just Cause 2 didn’t ship with multiplayer support, either, although a group of fans–with the blessing of Avalanche and publisher Square Enix–released a multiplayer mod after the game’s release.

In an interview with Game Informer, Avalanche co-founder Christofer Sundberg said he has nothing but love for the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, but explained that official multiplayer support for Just Cause 3 would have strained the developer’s focus on making a great sandbox world.

“The mod is absolutely fantastic,” Sundberg said. “We owe those guys a lot. They have actually supported the game and helped it stay alive so many years after it was released. We don’t expect the fans to make the multiplayer for Just Cause 3, but at some point you have to make a choice on where your focus is. Our strength is the sandbox experience, and we want to deliver a great Just Cause 3 experience.”

Though Just Cause 3 won’t ship with official multiplayer support, Sundberg teased that a multiplayer mode could be added to the game post release, in a similar way to how Grand Theft Auto V‘s head-to-head mode was launched in October 2013, following the game’s release a month prior.

“Maybe sometime down the line we’ll take Rico into the modern world of multiplaying,” Sundberg said.

One way Avalanche could introduce multiplayer to Just Cause 3 is through Square Enix’s new cloud gaming initiative, Shinra Technologies. Interestingly, Game Informer reports that some of developers working on that project are set up inside Avalanche’s office in New York City, suggesting that the companies might be working together on something new for Just Cause 3.

Shinra Technologies vice president of business Jacob Novak said one possibility that cloud gaming allows is to “enhance” games after their initial release. One example he provided was to introduce a multiplayer mode to a game that doesn’t have it out of the box, which lines up with Just Cause 3.

Asked directly if Shinra Technologies was working with Avalanche on a multiplayer mode, Novak said, “We’re working on a possible future collaboration with Avalanche Studios.” He added, “I think it does make a lot of sense.”

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In a new interview with Game Informer, key Just Cause 3 developers tackled the subjects of the game’s world size and destruction elements, as well as why the sandbox title even needs a story mode at all. About Just Cause 3’s world size, Avalanche Studios game director Roland Lesterlin said the game may not be larger than 2010’s Just Cause 2, though it certainly will be “denser.”

“Just Cause 2 was already enormous,” he said. “We really wanted to focus now on density and the feel of the world itself. So we didn’t necessarily just have to do increased land mass. But we have certainly gone a lot bigger when it comes to density of the world. And now it’s not just on top of the world–we also have caves and tunnels and all sorts of stuff there, too.”

As for environmental destruction in Just Cause 3, Lesterlin said the game will do much more than just let you shoot a whole in a wall. One example provided was that if you’re in a vehicle and you’re being chased, you can destroy a bridge behind you to send your enemies to their death. This is just one example of what Just Cause 3 will offer in the way of destruction on a wider scale, he said.

Also in the interview, Avalanche co-founder Christofer Sundberg was asked why the Just Cause series, which is know for its open-ended gameplay where players craft their own stories, needs a narrative at all. Sundberg said, “Everybody likes to hear a good story,” while Lesterlin said story can serve as the backbone that ties everything together.

Finally, Sundberg made it clear that while Just Cause 3 will have a more serious story than past games (it will give a deeper look into main character Rico’s history), it is not a story-driven game and players should still expect a high degree of insanity. He said the Just Cause series is best when it walks the line between being silly and fun. He added that Just Cause 3 will be around 70 percent wacky and 30 percent serious, which compares to the 80/20 split in Just Cause 2.

Just Cause 3 launches in 2015 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

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Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Nintendo’s upcoming puzzle platformer, was initially more like Legend of Zelda titles in terms of gameplay, according to producer Koichi Hayashida.

In Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, you control Toad or Toadette — Toad’s feminine counterpart — on their hunt for treasure. Each level is a small 3D box — what Hiratake described as a diorama or “garden-in-a-box” style stage — with one major end goal: get to the star at the end. Along the way, Toad can collect gems, coins, and turnips, the latter of which can be used to stun and ward off enemies.

Speaking with GameSpot, Hayashida said that during the early stages of planning Super Mario 3D World, the development team was experimenting with these “garden in a box” levels using characters that had jumping abilities. But having such mobile characters proved difficult when designing smaller levels; an agile character meant there were very few obstacles that provided a meaningful challenge.

“In the early stages of planning for 3D World, we were experimenting with characters who could jump in this diorama garden-in-a-box type 3D stages,” Hayashida said. “What we realized was it felt like something you could get inside of a Zelda game. In order to distinguish for [Nintendo designer Shigeru] Miyamoto the difference from that style of gameplay … [director Shinya] Hiratake actually created some miniature versions of stages at home and brought them to work to show Mr. Miyamoto.”

During days off from work, Hiratake would make clay sculptures illustrating the level designs he had in mind. These visually helped Miyamoto understand the direction Hiratake and his team wanted to take, and allowed them to create gameplay for Super Mario 3D World that was dissimilar to that in the Legend of Zelda games. The team also began scouring the Mario universe for characters with limited physical ability that would have a more challenging time getting through each level.

“When we were thinking about using characters that couldn’t jump inside of a Mario game, we were looking back through the series and realized that Captain Toad, with all of his heavy baggage that he carries around in the Galaxy series, would be a great choice for this,” Hayashida said.

So instead of choosing a character first and building levels around him, the Captain Toad team decided what kind of levels they wanted to have and then picked a character who fit the design. Having a character that can jump necessitates larger stages, Hayashida said, so the more handicapped a character is, the smaller levels could be.

“What we soon found out is that when your character can jump, you need to design very large stages,” he said. “So our big discovery was that once you introduce the limitation, like Toad not being able to jump, you are able to make very compact level designs. Now, that still did present some other problems — when faced with a character that can’t jump, enemies seem suddenly stronger, but I think we came up with a number of ways for Toad to deal with that.”

Hiratake explained that Toad can now pluck turnips and throw them at Goombas and Shy Guys — two of the game’s more prominent enemies — in order to stun or destroy them. In previous Mario games, enemies also tended to run towards the player character once you got too close, but the Captain Toad team also tweaked this behavior. Enemies like Shy Guys will only be able to see to the front and won’t react to Captain Toad sneaking up behind him. This adds another layer to each level, giving players the option to stealth all the way through and try to collect items without being seen.

“As it turns out, we were thinking about this kind of gameplay from the very beginning stages of Super Mario 3D World, and we were always hoping for the possibility of turning it into a full standalone game,” Hiratake said.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker will launch on December 5, 2014 in North America and January 2, 2015 in Europe.

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Who, or what, is Toadette?

On our Now Playing livestream earlier this week, fellow GameSpot Editor Peter Brown and I tackled one of the unsolved mysteries of the Mario Universe: What is up with the Toads? Do they have a gender? How does the race survive?

During an interview last week discussing upcoming puzzle platformer Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, producer Koichi Hayashida offered some illumination on differentiating between male and female Toads. Toadette is the most visible female Toad, so would that make her akin to Smurfette in being the only prominant female of her kind? There are other female Toads, as seen in the Super Mario Super Show cartoon and games like Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

As it were, Nintendo never really settled on a specific gender for the Toads, according to Hayashida. Toads are a genderless race that take on gendered characteristics. He also clarified that Toad and Toadette are not romantically involved.

“This is maybe a little bit of a strange story, but we never really went out of our way to decide on the sex of these characters, even though they have somewhat gendered appearances,” Hayashida said. “But I think what I can say is that Toadette and Toad are not siblings — perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are adventure pals. And that’s certainly true here [in Captain Toad].”

So if a Toad — a sentient anthropomorphic toadstool mushroom – eats one of Mario World’s popular and versatile mushrooms to become bigger or gain an extra life… is it cannibalism? While Toads may be mushroom-like, it’s unclear just how closely related to mushrooms they are.

Hayashida clarified that Toads are not mushrooms at all, but the resemblance and nomenclature is too uncanny not to wonder. “This particular riddle might stay unsolved,” Hayashida said. “That’s one of the great mysteries of the Mario universe.”

We didn’t get into the specifics of Toad reproduction, but that’s a topic for another day.

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The World of Warcraft subreddit has returned to operation after its top moderator took it down for a short period over the weekend in protest of server issues affecting the MMO following the release of the Warlords of Draenor expansion last week.

The moderator, nitesmoke, elected to set the page to private until he was able to log into the game, which was taking some time due to server strain resulting in long log-in queues. As you might expect, taking the subreddit down didn’t go over too well with some of the page’s fans, who said nitesmoke was being childish and spiteful, according to a report from Polygon.

“Nitesmoke made a mistake. It was a big one” — aphoenix

The WoW subreddit has now returned, though under the leadership of a new moderator who goes by aphoenix.

“Nitesmoke made a mistake. It was a big one,” aphoniex wrote. “I’m going to simply ask that you stop trying to get back at him. It’s over; he’s not on the moderation team here. Nobody here is on board with how he handled the situation. We will not handle the situation in the same way. Nitesmoke has apologized (to me, and through me, to you), and I apologize as well.”

“I’m not trying to sweep anything under the rug; I’m trying to put out the right message,” aphoenix added. “I think the right message right now is ‘Things got messed up. We understand that. Nitesmoke made a mistake. We’re working at setting things right.’”

Warlords of Draenor, released last Wednesday, is WoW’s fifth expansion. Among other things, it raises the MMO’s level cap to 100 and introduces many new zones and other fresh content. For more, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage of Warlords of Draenor.

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