To elaborate on a few things – you can follow the Official Battlefield Bad Company 2 Twitter here, and one of those sites giving out beta codes is… this one.

We’ll be giving out beta vouchers starting Thursday afternoon (PST) via our Twitter and Facebook accounts. So start following!

Beyond that, Capcom Senior Community Manager Seth Killian (a SF player so good he can beat you with one hand) walks us through some of the new features and moves we’ll be seeing when Super Street Fighter IV drops in 2010. Better yet, he promises to try and get hands on time for some of you readers (like last year’s Street Fighter Club and game launch). Go on, watch.

One of the reasons we built a scaled down version of Paris was to make sure we could create a world filled with stuff to do. Every block of Paris has content in it; in fact, it’s not just Paris but our entire world is filled with plenty of stuff. So what is all this our world is filled with? The Nazi occupation, which includes things like sniper towers, AA guns, Nazi tanks, SS generals, propaganda speakers, search lights, radar dishes, and more. These occupation targets are like a collections mechanic, but instead of passively finding these things in the world and walking over them, you’re blowing them up.

There are roughly about 1300 of these spread throughout our entire game, so you see I wasn’t kidding when I said every block has content in it. You also earn contraband for destroying these Nazi objects, which is our currency in the game because money was worthless during the war. Their destruction is persistent so taking these out in advance might actually help you with a mission in that area later on because you’re not getting attacked by a sniper anymore, for example. There’s a great risk/reward for destroying this stuff, though. If the Nazis see you, you’ll raise suspicion and someone will blow a whistle, setting off the alarms and bringing in Nazi reinforcements. So you should always make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into when deciding to destroy them, because you might get a bunch of Nazis onto your heels. You’ll then have to either escape the alarm area or cool down the alarms by using one of the game’s hiding spots like the rooftop shacks or public “pissoirs.” This is actually a good time to work on your perks.

Perks are a way for the player to improve Sean’s skills. You see, Sean’s a racecar driver by trade, not a soldier, and he gets better by doing things. Blow up enough Nazi installations and Sean will plant explosives faster. Kill enough guys with a machine gun and Sean will better understand how to hold the gun, reducing the recoil when firing. Shoot five guys with a scoped rifle and the drift will be reduced, making it easier to aim with a scope. Each perk has three tiers to it. The first tier is pretty easy, but tier two and three require the player to set more micro-objectives. Take sniping for example; tier two requires fifteen head shots with a scoped rifle. But the rewards get better the higher tier the perk. Perks sometimes improve skills, unlock all new mechanics (e.g. the ability to plant explosives in a car while driving, then bail out creating a car bomb), or unlock weapons in the black market shops.

The black market is the place where Sean can stock up with all kinds of gear by trading in the contraband he has earned. There’s all kinds of weapons: machine guns, rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, shotguns, explosives, etc — but it’s not just weapons. There are different upgrades to be found as well! For example, you can increase the different amounts of ammo Sean can carry or you can choose to equip the Resistance with better weapons. This is obviously useful because, like I mentioned in the previous post, the Resistance shows up in the High Will to Fight areas in the streets or at the fight-back zones. So helping them out with better equipment will actually help you in return. The black market shops also offer area maps, which will mark the locations of the occupation I mentioned above. As I mentioned earlier, there are about 1300 of these in the game, and having a map that shows you where to look will definitely help you destroy them all. These maps also mark locations of things like resistance supply crates (filled with contraband and sometimes bonus weapons), “sweet jumps”, monument postcards, and scenic spots. They’re quite helpful for those looking to earn some contraband or for those completionist types like me.

And you can do this stuff whenever you want, in or out of missions. It’s really up to you when you deal with it, but you might want to think about taking it out sooner rather than later; because it’s always there… watching and waiting.

Even if you’re not interested in hearing new details about Assassin’s Creed II, including Ezio’s Villa, customization, new features not present in the original, and PSP interoperability, you’ll want to stick around to find out your task for the Live By The Creed mission. Hint: it’s near the end of the video.

Paris in many ways is like one of the characters in The Saboteur. Paris is The City of Lights and Love. It’s vibrant and colorful, rich and cultural. People are constantly out walking the streets and nearby markets are filled with browsing shoppers. If you’ve seen the movie Amélie and you’ll know what I mean. That’s the “fantasy” of Paris we strove to have in the game — and do. It’s a beautiful and bustling city filled with incredible buildings and architecture. Building Paris was an extremely tough challenge to tackle because the city is so well known.

First and foremost, we had to be very cautious about how to bring the in-game version of it to life. We started out by thinking about how to create “the fantasy” of Paris. From a physical world perspective we’d have to make sure that we had all the major monuments in the game, and we do. The Louvre? Check. Notre Dame? Check. The Eiffel Tower? Too big to fit in the game, cut… OK I lied… absolutely! Check! They’re all there and built to their grand real world scale – waiting to be climbed and explored. All monuments have been placed where they belong in a scaled down map of Paris and filled in the twisting streets and buildings in between. It’s not a real map of Paris but it captures the spirit of what the city feels like. For example, from the storefronts you’ll be able to see the street level all the way to the amazing rooftop that inspired parkour. Parkour, for those who don’t know, is the gymnastic free-running you’ve seen in movies like Casino Royale or in games like Mirror’s Edge.

But the problem with trying to re-create a city like Paris is that, no matter how many Nazi soldiers you place in the world, it could never feel occupied.

To solve this, we had to do something drastic. The idea was to take this city and wrap it in chains, crushing the hope of the people. To represent this mood we literally suck the life out of it by removing the color from sections of the world. This is what we call the Will to Fight. These low Will to Fight areas have the harsh black-and-white, Sin City-style look you may have seen in a lot of our screenshots. In these areas Nazis patrol the world and people in the streets are harassed and even executed. These are grim times, but not for long…

As Sean fights back in missions against the occupation alongside the Resistance, successful grand acts of defiance against the Nazis will literally bleed color back into the world, inspiring the people inside of it.

While this could have just been an interesting visual gimmick in The Saboteur, this inspiration is where the gameplay of the Will to Fight comes into play. It’s not liberation; the Nazis are still in control of the country and exist in these areas. It’s that the hope and spirit has been restored to them. In these high Will to Fight areas it’s safer for Sean to exist. People will cheer him on when as he fistfights in the streets, even help fighting alongside you by providing black-marketweapon dealers that will give Sean access to all sorts of better equipment and gear for the resistance.

How does Sean accomplish these “grand acts of defiance” in the missions? What types of things will you be doing in these missions? Stick around for the next blog and I’ll answer these questions and more…

The live Q&A will be taking place here at 11:00 am PST (7:00 pm BST), so be sure to have your questions ready! This live chat will be moderated by Jem Alexander from sunny England, so if you see any extraneous letter U’s floating around – don’t worry. You’re still in America, land of the free.

Yesterday I had the privilege of talking with Insomniac’s Brian Allgeier, Creative Director on the Ratchet and Clank series. Brian took the time to answer all manner of your questions, ranging from difficulty to side missions to the art in the instruction booklet, along with video to back it up.

If you’re planning on attending this morning’s Insomniac Community Day #2 in Burbank, CA – here’s the info.

PROTIP: get there early.

UPDATE: Thanks again for all the great questions and for making this another successful live chat. Huge thanks to Neil and Travis from Naughty Dog for being here on UNCHARTED 2 launch day. We hope everyone has a great time playing this week. See you online!

The day has finally come. I’m willing to bet many of you have been up all night with Nate following the midnight launch. The rest of you are probably just getting started. Wherever you are, we hope you can press pause for an hour to chat UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves with Naughty Dog today at 2PM PT. Lead Game Designer Neil Druckmann and Lead Programmer Travis McIntosh are carving out an hour on launch day to answer your UNCHARTED 2 questions right here.

So now that you’ve had time to play, I’m sure you have some burning questions. Or just stop by to say thanks to Naughty Dog for delivering this masterpiece. And don’t forget about your chances to win the Fortune Hunter Edition. We’ll see you here at 2PM PT sharp!

I apologize for the fact that I’m practically yelling at Shibata-san; this dude over at the neighboring Alienware booth was incredibly, obnoxiously loud. If you were there, you know who I’m talking about.

Anyways, with a good deal more development to go, we’ll keep tabs on this game for you, and report back at the next milestone.

Let me tell you now, straight up, The Saboteur is not your typical WWII game.

In The Saboteur rather than playing what might as well be a nameless-faceless soldier in the war you play as Sean Devlin; a rough around the edges Irish race-car-driver who becomes a saboteur. While I know this idea might sound a bit unbelievable at first; let me tell you now that Sean is actually inspired by a real life person – William Grover-Williams. He was British/French grand prix champion who drove for the legendary Bugatti racing team back in the 30’s. Because of his daredevil nature and his ability to blend into the French culture he made prime candidate to be recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). He then became a saboteur working with the Resistance there. This idea of a larger-than-life hero that wasn’t fighting on the front lines really just felt like a great idea for a game character and we really wanted to make a game with less “history” and more “his story”. More Indiana Jones and less Saving Private Ryan.

We wanted to make our hero the action hero we all wish we could be in our hearts. Being a team of film geeks we looked to the heroes from the silver screen for inspiration; Indiana Jones for his big adventures and his desire to trade fists with Nazis for his personal rather than political reasons, John McClane from Die Hard who takes a beating and laughs in the face of danger, and finally Steve McQueen who was, well, one of the most classically cool men to ever walk the face of this planet. These are the types of heroes we want to be. To further ourselves from the typical WWII story we set out to make Sean’s story personally motivated rather than political. That’s why one of our first decisions with the character was to make him Irish. Sean doesn’t care about politics but when Kurt Dierker, a rival racecar driver and high-ranked Nazi official kills his best friend Jules, things get personal for Sean and he will have to fight all across Paris, the French countryside, and even into Germany to get revenge on those who wronged him.

We felt strongly that it was extremely important to let the player to step into the shoes of Sean Devlin and become The Saboteur right along side of him. You’ll get to play the origin story of The Saboteur, race in vintage race cars across the streets of Paris, scale the Eiffel tower, shoot your way through hordes of Nazis, sabotage their operations with explosives, chase through burning zeppelins, derail trains and that’s just a few examples of the big action moments The Saboteur will have for you. What are the cool features in the game? What can and does he do along the way? Why are some of the screenshots in black and white? I’ll be bringing those answers to you in up coming blogs so stay tuned, I’ve still got a lot to cover.