Some new details have been revealed on Ubisoft’s upcoming first-person action adventure game I Am Alive that seeks to be the ultimate “disaster”-movie style experience.
The game is being developed by Darkworks who isn’t very well known and is the company who developed Cold Fear, which was a survival horror game released back in on PS2 and Xbox.
GamesTM talked to senior producer Alexis Goddard who not only said that the game is NOT being developed by Jade Raymond (who was made famous for her role in developing Assassin’s Creed) but also that the game will draw from a number of high profile disaster movies, to quote:
“Disaster has been a recurring theme for entertainment since the beginning of time. We’re not really reinventing that here. We’re putting it together for the first time in a totally new package. Most of what we’re doing will remind you of tidbits that you’ve seen or heard here and there — Robert Neville in I Am Legend gradually starts to lose his humanity and sanity in the ruins of New York. In The Day After Tomorrow and War of the Worlds you see Western cities torn apart by unrelenting forces.”
He also compares the game to the movies Armageddon, Titanic, Cloverfield, Jericho and the TV show Lost. Wow, quite a line-up there! They have definitely picked the correct media to be inspired by if you ask me.
As far as the actual gameplay is concerned he says that the game is being built “around the concept of social chaos” when a mysterious earthquake destroys the entire city of Chicago as main character Adam Collins searches for his missing girlfriend as well as other survivors as they try to get the attention of a government task force who is eerily quiet about the ordeal.
Goddard says that the moment-to-moment gameplay will be unlike anything gamers have previously experienced, stating “In I Am Alive, we’re not only turning your everyday life upside down; we’re also changing the very social values and rules that both everyday life and videogames rely on.” Weapons and ammo will be much harder to come by than in a typical survival horror game and you will be able to obtain items in the environments to help in your survival, such as bottles of water which can be used to heal you or to distract your enemies.
Guns will appear in the game but they will be rare and not the focus. “Confrontation is a way of dealing with violent groups, but will rarely be rewarded. We encourage the players to use tactics, diversion, and discretion. You’ve found a police shotgun, which is out of bullets — rightfully so, since Chicago has long been a proponent of a ban on guns. How about some intimidation? After all, who knows the gun is empty but you? Just point it at looters and they’ll remain at a distance as you progress toward your objective. However, you can only aim it at one person, so you have to watch for being flanked.”
Since the game is in first-person and the focus is not on using firearms, you may think it sounds something like EA’s recent Mirror’s Edge, a first-person free-running game. Goddard admitted that it does but said that the first-person perspective was the best choice to go with in order to give the player’s the best viewpoint of the power of mother nature. “We wanted the player to really feel the power of Mother Nature, to feel the danger coming from the collapsing towers and devastating rifts, feel the chaos happening all around him. There’s nothing like a first-person view to create that kind of emotion.”
To read much more on the game as well to see some great artwork be sure to check out the latest issue of GamesTM who has I Am Alive as their cover story.