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.

My name is Marcus “Noken” Johansson and I’m one of the guys working at the DICE Video Crew in Stockholm, Sweden.

We got some really cool stuff to show you from the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Beta map, Arica Harbor, but it isn’t just a new trailer. It’s actually something a little different. Usually when we create movies there’s a lot of intense action which is always good, but this time we wanted to try something we haven’t done before.

The idea was to find action-filled moments and then capture them while the game was paused. This way the viewer can focus more on details and maybe imagine how he or she would play in that specific situation.

After showing a short test version to the team I got the green light to make the trailer. But how do you capture this kind of stuff? Well, what I like the most about Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is that we can show actual gameplay, so instead of staging scenes, I’ve been working with material recorded during our daily studio play tests.

After we’re done with our daily tests, we can replay the rounds over and over until we find the scenes we’re looking for. This way people can be sure that the game trailer they’re looking at represents the game they will get to play when it’s out.

So I flew around the level with my free cam, looking for some infantry fighting, some tank battles and of course some really cool destruction. After I was done capturing and editing, the sound team added the sound and music to set the mood and tone of the movie.

Render, ship it!

What you see below is the result and I’m really happy with what we created, and I hope you are too.

See you on the battlefield!

Noken

I’m Gordon Van Dyke and I’m the Associate Producer for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 here at EA’s DICE studio in Stockholm.

Today we’re excited to announce that our forthcoming multiplayer beta is coming exclusively to PS3, so you’ll have a chance to experience all the action, destruction and vehicular warfare ahead of our full release in March 2010.

Starting on November 19, the beta will feature the huge ‘Arica Harbour’ map where up to 24 players compete to secure valuable crates in the ‘Rush’ game mode as the action moves across a variety of different locations. From an initial vehicle assault on a military outpost the war winds through streets of a deserted town to an intense final fire-fight in an industrial harbour.

Check out our announcement video here.

For a preview on the beta itself click here.

Getting access to the beta will differ from country to country, but here are a few specific ways of getting hold of a key:

• We’ll be holding a special limited giveaway right here on the PlayStation Blog (details TBA)
• Pre-ordering the game at participating retailer
• Checking out selected gaming sites such as IGN or GameSpot in North America.

That’s it for now…although if you have any questions then let me know. Be sure to check back here tomorrow when we have a brand Battlefield: Bad Company 2 new trailer.

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…

Now that Rocktober of the year of our metal Lords 2009 is coming to a close, we at Double Fine Productions and Electronic Arts are taking the time to reflect back upon a pretty eventful year. Here are just a select few of the very many Brütal Legend highlights that have lodged into my memory banks:

1. Jack Black, Tim Schafer, and Rob Halford unveiling Brütal’s gameplay for the first time to the coalition of the willing PS3 gamers at the Spike VGAs.

2. E3 – staying up until 9am the day of the show loading builds (I may have never recovered from this all year), live Twitter chats, a banner 1/3 the size of a football field, debuting our talent trailer, the coalition of the unwilling finds its leader. Pandemonium!

3. Comic-con – the infamous Brütal Legend concert featuring 3 Inches of Blood and GWAR. Picture is pretty much self-explanatory.

4. Wherein Tim Schafer tries to solve a Rubik’s Cube in the time that it takes Emily Ridgway, Double Fine’s audio director, to recite the bands and titles of the 108 songs off of the (I would say EPIC) Brütal soundtrack.

5. Launch! Marketing and PR! Dancing monkeys! Jack Black makes the ultimate sacrifice to promote the game.

Skipping forward to the future, since I know fond memory #6 will be one of my highlights of the Brütal campaign:

6. Free DLC on PSN! The Tears of the Hextadon downloadable content pack launches on November 5 for the PS3…and did I mention it is FREE for two weeks exclusively on PSN?!

We love the PS3 and we’re excited that connected PS3 gamers across the world will able to enjoy 2 multiplayer maps, The Circle of Tears and Death’s Fjord, as well as the Blade of Ormagöden axe, courtesy of the fine folks at Double Fine, Sony, and EA.

We hope to see you online for a skirmish or two or three.

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.

I also think it’s likely become very obvious to sports fans of all ages – gamer or not – over the past several weeks how we intend to deliver “The Win” in a way unlike any other sports brand in the world. Whether you’ve watched the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Finals, Wimbledon, or most any other major sporting event this summer, our EA SPORTS brand TV spots, created in collaboration with our partners at PlayStation, have been everywhere sports fans live and breathe this spring and summer. These spots are celebrating the fun and emotion of sports video games.

Delivering access to “The Win” is at the heart of everything we do. It’s why we consume sports differently than anything else we do, and we’re excited that the PlayStation team shares our passion for “The Win” that makes the sports video gaming experience so unique. These new spots convey the passion and intensity of sports gaming differently than we have done in many years, and it’s a testament to our shared vision to develop a unique and innovative campaign that would merge the worlds of real sports with that of the virtual world. I hope you all agree the end result really nails the experience we all know and love when playing sports videos – the euphoria of “The Win”, which for the great majority of us will be the closest we will come to the “real” thing on the field, pitch, rink or arena.

When we think of the sports gaming experiences we’re delivering with Sony this year, it’s very clear that our partnership and our commitment to the PlayStation platforms has never been stronger. Consider that…

• In Madden, PS3-PSP integration will enable NFL fans to build their own formations & plays from scratch. Via connectivity with the PS3, fans can perfect their plays on-the-go and download them to their PS3 anytime.
• In the EA SPORTS Complex on PlayStation Home, Club Fight Night is now open and drawing in Fight Night Round 4 fans, while four new Red Tournament poker tables have also been added to handle the overwhelming interest (nearly 2 million games played to date).
• We’ve recently announced that this fall our revamped EA SPORTS Challenge Series will create a global online competition exclusively on the PLAYSTATION 3. In addition to the robust online competitions, our first live event is later this month in Dallas. Get in the action today and get all the details by visiting www.easportschallengeseries.com.

It’s clear that there’s never been a better time to be playing EA SPORTS games on the PS3 and PSP. Download your Madden demo today, and I hope PS Nation is ready to fight for every yard when Madden hits stores next week, as I know I will be with my beloved Patriots.

My sincere thanks to Rob Dyer, Pete Dille and Scott Steinberg of SCEA for their help and support in creating these ads, to our talented creative team at EA, and to the tremendous team at Heat/Freestyle.

Contestants will compete in a ladder tournament where portions of the competition will be broadcasted live, stadium-wide, throughout the day for the over 10,000 season ticket holders in the stands. The winner of the tournament will take home a prize package that includes a PLAYSTATION 3 system and a copy of Madden NFL 10. Second and third place winners will take home a PSP prize pack that also includes Madden NFL 10.

So here’s where you come in. We’ve got 25 entries to this event at Cowboys Stadium to give away…but you have to earn it. Commence the Touchdown, MADDEN! Photo Contest. The first 25 qualified photo entries will win access (including a guest) to the event. Here’s how to qualify:

• Your photo must demonstrate your favorite touchdown dance or pose
• You must be wearing NFL gear
• You must have something PlayStation in the photo (controller, game, etc.)

To enter, send your photo to PlayStationMaddenChallenge@gmail.com along with your full name and date of birth, your guest’s full name and date of birth (open to US residents only, age 13 years or older only), and if you are going to be in the Dallas area for the event on August 8th (you must provide your own transportation), located at:

Cowboys Stadium
1 Legends Way, Arlington, TX 76051
Saturday, August 8, 2009
10:00 AM- 5:00 PM

You must submit your photo by this Wednesday, August 5, 12:00PM Pacific. Winners will be notified by email.

Good luck! And keep an eye out later this week because we’ll have a special Flickr set hosting all the photo goodness.

Official rules are here.

We think you’ll be stoked to see that the long-awaited BUZZ! HQ is launching. Here, you can meet up with friends new and old and take part in a massive 64-player game of BUZZ! trivia. This content is fed into the space via MyBuzzQuiz.com – a site where you can create your own trivia questions for your fellow BUZZ! fanatics to tackle. So be sure to create an account and start uploading your trickiest trivia. Then get your butt into Home, hook up with your brainiest peeps, enter the BUZZ! HQ, and start racking up the prizes. Rest assured that we’ll be taking advantage of this sweet new space by regularly scheduling some truly awesome events. Keep your eyes on the Home Clubs and Events sub-forum over at PlayStation.com for more info.

EA SPORTS continues to demonstrate their leadership in the world of sports competition by updating their fan-favorite EA SPORTS Complex. This week they are dropping some new goods on us and opening up a space for their hit Fight Night franchise. This swanky boxing-themed night club space launches with an interactive DJ game, rewards, and plenty of places to chill with your nearest and dearest Home-boys and Home-girls. Note that this is just phase one of the Fight Night space (there are tons of mini-game updates and the new virtual items scheduled for near future deployment) so you’ll need to make sure that you check in on this here blog for the latest updates.

Those of you who pick up the Namco Museum Essentials from the PlayStation Store will find that these games are unlocking a bunch of rewards in Home. We’re talking Dragon Spirit and Xevious: Resurrection arcade cabinets, for Crom’s sake! And, yes, the Namco Bandai Arcade will be coming to SCEA Home at a later date, so have no fear. We’ll keep you updated on this here Blog thingy when the space is ready to launch.

See you in Home!

Out of the proverbial box, EA has two casual multiplayer mini-games for you to challenge your friends to: A whole floor of poker tables and the new EA SPORTS Racing game. The former allows for up to 8 players per table to indulge in high stakes tournament-style Texas Hold ‘Em and the latter lets you put the pedal to the metal and compete for the best time against 3 other users in a formula-style race.

The Complex – much like the PlayStation Home platform – will evolve over time. Currently scheduled updates include the EA SPORTS Golf mini-game (where users can test their stick skills at an indoor driving range) leaderboards, poker bracelets and a rewards system. As new titles are announced, content within the space and additional game-specific achievement rewards will be added.

To start, the EA SPORTS Complex will be available to the North American and European PlayStation Home communities. Future rollout of the space to other territories will be coming soon. So if you are one of those users lucky enough to live in the aforementioned territories, be sure to head over to the space and give it a test drive (pun intended). Home Community Specialist BuggieTechnica and I will be in the space throughout today challenging users to the Racing mini-game (and throwing cards at the Texas Hold ‘Em tables). Come up and say hi if you see us, and tell us what you think the next phase of the Complex should bring.