Black Powder \\ Red Earth Issue 1 is out!

The first issue of my graphic novel series has finally been released! I've been working on BPRE in some form or another since 2002. I've met so many people and learned so much writing this story, I hope I've been able to do them some justice in this work.

Click here to buy a copy! Thanks!

Revival

I've been watching a ton of anime recently. Captain Harlock(hulu), Gundam(original story arc stuff on DVD), Dougram, Votoms(DVD), Ideon(DVD) and the revised Full Metal Alchemist series is in my NetFlix cue. I loved the original FMA, other than the epilogue at the end of the series and the movie...it felt cheap after the intense drama of the series.

That didn't change the fact that FMA and Gurren Laggan were the stand out TV series of the 1st decade stretch of century double 0 for me ^_^

So much of anime and Japanese art has become saccharin in the past few years...I wonder if the quakes will change that? No people can go through such a catastrophe without some kind of catharsis. I know for myself, after 9/11, my work changed quite a bit. Actually, I didn't even know what to make after 9/11...that took a few years to figure out.

Pre 9/11 I was writing a series of short stories called "Sawtooth". After 9/11...I paused those stories and that's when BPRE was born. In the past few months, I've had a few ideas for a robot "war film" style anime. Maybe once I finish this next book in the BPRE universe, I'll finally be able to work on some science fiction stuff again.

Was I expecting too much?

I just watched a game demo of Deus Ex Human Revolution on Gamespot and apparently they've spent the past 3 years remaking the gameplay from the first Metal Gear Solid game at higher resolution. Yes, it's first person versus third, but MGS Integral and MGS4 played almost the exact same way from what I could see.

I'm sure there will be "trans-human" perks and buffs that are not in MGS but, honestly, those are just more weapons/items. Will they effect how I can interact with that world? Sure, but it's just another gun at the end of the day. Maybe the story will carry it. A good cyberpunk thriller isn't exactly common so they may hit that on the head.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was more than this. It might be a totally amazing game but after all the hype, teasers and interviews, I really was thinking this would be more than MGS 1.5. OK, back to the pixel mines.

Keeping busy

Quick update.

Graphic novel is up to page 30 with pencils and looking good. Seeing how my written pages convert to finished pages, I need to go back and revise issues 2-4 though or this thing would be well over 300 pages.

The novel. Act 1 is together as a rough. Taking my second pass through to add more depth and do rewrites as needed. It's 6 chapters. About 30k words, give or take. I'm debating posting pieces to the blog. Anyone interested in my work in progress?

Board game/RTS. Well I have one map cranked out and I am working on another. The funny thing is this started as the baseline for an FPS game, but considering our current resources, an FPS is probably a few years away still :(

Legos are by far my favorite way to prototype general flow of a map though. So fast to work with and it keeps you on a grid :-D

KillZone 3

Before you go any further, I enjoyed KillZone 2 quite a bit. The single player campaign, while featuring some less than interesting characters, at least had a good pace and felt like a decent war game. I loved the War Zone multiplayer, it was right along the same lines as the multiplayer system we had in the Black Powder | Red Earth FPS at the time, and I clocked man-months of time climbing the ladder within the game.

Enter KillZone 3. The intro movie is way too long. The menus feel cluttered. The single player...

I suppose I should pause to mention there will be minor spoilers here, but no more than the first hour of the game because I was so unengaged I just put the SP down and went straight for multiplayer.

The single player starts with a Call of Duty style shoot house level from the perspective of the Helgan only to find, wait you were the protagonist from the last game all along! How shocking. And you meet the leader of the enemy army, say some stupid one liner and then we are whisked back 6 months earlier till the end of KZ2. There's a bunch of terrible dialog, boring cut scenes and then we're dropped into a city that looks nothing at all like the cities I was fighting in during the last game. Everything has this shiny green/red tint...is that supposed to be radioactivity? When I came across my third giant hopping Helghan robot I knew I was playing a totally different game in a totally different world.

It was at this moment that I just dropped out. Why even call it KillZone?

Multiplayer while good, seems less exciting to me. I've played 4 of the War Zone maps and 2 of the Operations maps. They are good but I'm just not hooked in the way I was with KZ2. Maybe because I liked the campaign I had more attachment to the franchise but...I keep finding myself wanting to play Medal of Honor's campaign again.

I'll keep at it. If someone wants to try the campaign in co-op I'd be willing to give it another go, but 2011 is already setting me up for disappointment. I've got my fingers crossed for Crysis 2.

HaleyStrategic.com

For those who are interested, Echelon has partnered with former Magpul Dynamics founder and Magpul Industries CEO Travis Haley in his new endeavor Haley Strategic Partners. Echelon will be doing the creative heavy lifting for the Companies training and marketing packages. We have worked with Travis since 2007, during his days with Simply Dynamic Tactical. It's good to be working with such an energetic and positive individual again.

We are looking to explore photography and film on a level that is more gritty and in the moment than some of the other "war" films/games on the market. More to come :)

On a totally unrelated note, the novel is coming together. Act 1 (should I think of novel's as acts?) is just about complete. I am debating if I want to add a B and C story line to the book or should I just focus on my protagonists. I like books written both ways and I'm not sure which way to go. My graphic novel has a B storyline - which was necessary to tell the story. With the novel, I can fill in the blanks without bringing a bunch of other characters into the spotlight...but that might change.

In the novel, I am writing something a bit more personal. Then again, what started as a first person account has switched gears to a third person narrative, so you never know where things will take you.

Non-fantasy RPGs

I was bummed when I heard Deus Ex Human Revolution was getting bumped to later 2011. So much so that I went to Steam and grabbed a copy of the original. My original copy was for OS9 and there was never an OSX port so this was pretty much my only option :\

I had very different memories of this game. I seemed to recall there being far more branches than there are. The game comes down to very basic choices.

Good/evil

Diplomat/warlord

This is reflected in the level design as well where making diplomatic choices can open backdoors and being violent can close them, though at the end of the day, it's the same missions. Mass Effect has this to some extent as well, though it is more neatly divided into social areas and combat areas, whereas Deus Ex does not separate them at all. You can basically start shooting and blowing up stuff whenever you want.

I'm not sure what I like better.

As I begin planning for a new Black Powder Red Earth campaign, probably to be called Black Powder Grey Skies, I am trying to figure out a smart way to build/track a "branching" narrative from a purely story perspective. I picked up a few of the Bioware GDC lectures on the subject and have gotten some good ideas. We'll see how it progresses.

As much as I enjoy making the Facebook game, I still have my eyes on a high speed FPS multiplayer game and a longer story experience set in the world of BPRE :)