Riddick : Dark Athena is a go (360/PS3)

[bingo83]

Starbreeze Studios the developer of Riddick on the original Xbox and PC is bring a next gen port of Riddick to gamers in the near future.

Dark Athena will build on the existing game with approx 40% new content and also bring online multiplayer shiv action to the masses.

Source (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=164311)

Vin Diesel will also be giving his dulcet tones to the game to add more authenticity.

Source (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=112032)

I still have original installed on my PC and cant wait to see what this will look like on the 360.

Anyone else love the original ?

[Dcontrol]

Yeah I thought that the original xbox game was a decent enough title to be fair. It was a bit short really and had no replay value though, but the graphics were good and the story wasn't too bad.

[Raisedbyflames]

it actully was better than the movies because their ---- and the game was good how does that work i dont know but it did

[Fusion]

Woohoo a next gen Riddick. I loved the original game. i still play it from time to time. can't wait!

[bingo83]

Sierra Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Games, announced today that The Chronicles of Riddick will blast onto Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and debut on the PLAYSTATION 3 system, for the first time. Taking advantage of new hardware technologies, the game will present a reinvention of Escape from Butcher Bay, delivering 2004’s award winning experience in high definition with stunning enhancements. Also included is the Dark Athena chapter, an expansion of the original game with an exciting new story and new gameplay features. Scheduled to ship later in 2007, it is being produced under license from Universal Pictures Digital Platforms Group, in association with Vin Diesel’s Tigon Studios, and is being developed by Starbreeze Studios, acclaimed developer of the original edition.

With The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, players will not only be challenged to survive Butcher Bay, but will also engage in a new single-player experience and, for the first time in the Riddick universe, take action in intense multi-player combat. The game introduces the ominous Merc-ship Dark Athena, which sits silent like a marauding spider, awaiting helpless prey in the dark reaches of the galaxy. Players must face a large, bloodthirsty operation led by the dreaded Captain Revas and her slaves-turned-controllable combat drones, storm though death-defying events and fight fierce enemies in a battle of malice and gore.

First released in 2004, The Chronicles of Riddick game features an original storyline that provides insight into the mythology of Universal Pictures' films The Chronicles of Riddick and the cult classic Pitch Black, which first introduced Vin Diesel as enigmatic anti-hero Riddick. The game blends action and stealth elements, as players navigate Riddick through the harsh environments of dank tunnels, dimly lit corridors, and other hazardous areas filled with guards, savage inmates and deadly creatures that prowl the darkness.

“The Chronicles of Riddick is a genre defining game that helped shape the modern first-person shooter,” said Al Simone, senior vice president, global marketing for Sierra Entertainment. “We are proud to not only take this ‘Best in Class’ title to the next level for both the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3, but to create a new single-player experience and multi-player campaigns for a truly robust product offering.”

"When the original The Chronicles of Riddick game exploded on the scene, gamers were taken with its fantastic graphics and hard-hitting gameplay," said Bill Kispert, Vice President and General Manager, Interactive, Universal Pictures. "We are excited to now introduce new players to this character and world, while thrilling existing fans with the surprises and additional features this edition will offer."

"The Riddick universe is incredibly rich source material for creating on-going stories and games," said Cos Lazouras, Head of Production, Tigon Studios. "This next chronicle will take us to new, dark corners of that universe, which when combined with Starbreeze's fantastic next-gen techonology, will deliver the compelling player experience gamers have come to expect of Riddick."

"We’re very happy to be working in the Riddick universe again." said Ian Stevens, Lead Game Designer, Starbreeze Studios. "Assault on Dark Athena gives us an opportunity to revisit the original game and share it with a new audience, as well as offer a continuation of the Butcher Bay gameplay and storyline. We’re also thrilled to be bringing Multiplayer to the game."

Moving and attacking in darkness is particularly effective for Riddick as his haunting ‘eye shine’ gives him the ability to see without ambient light. However, stealth won't serve every situation and players will be able to take the action up close and personal. As Riddick, players will be able to sneak up behind enemies and snap necks or fight face to face using fists, elbows and grapples. Additionally, players will be able to capture weapons such as shanks, shotguns, or assault rifles and use these to cut a swath of destruction through anyone who gets in their way.

About The Chronicles of Riddick
Vin Diesel reprises his star-making Pitch Black role of enigmatic anti-hero Richard B. Riddick in the science fiction action-adventure epic, The Chronicles of Riddick. Released by Universal Pictures, in association with Radar Pictures and One Race Productions, The Chronicles of Riddick stars Colm Feore, Alexa Davalos, Karl Urban, Linus Roache, Thandie Newton and Dame Judi Dench.

Riddick has spent the last five years on the move among the forgotten worlds on the outskirts of the galaxy, eluding mercenaries bent on collecting the price on his head. Now, the fugitive finds himself on planet Helion, home to a progressive multicultural society that has been invaded by the Lord Marshal, a despot who targets humans for subjugation with his army of warriors known as Necromongers.

Exiled to a subterranean prison where extremes of temperature range from arctic nights to volcanic days, Riddick encounters Kyra, the lone survivor from an earlier chapter in his life. His efforts to free himself and Kyra lead him to the Necromonger command ship, where he is pitted against the Lord Marshal in an apocalyptic battle with possibly the fate of all beings-both living and dead-hanging in the balance.

Written and directed by David Twohy, The Chronicles of Riddick is produced by Scott Kroopf and Vin Diesel. Ted Field, George Zakk and David Womark serve as executive producers.

Bit more concrete info for you all.

[smileemptysoul]

only 40% new? wtf?

[bingo83]

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/790/790606/the-chronicles-of-riddick-assault-on-dark-athena-20070521083529082.jpg

US, May 25, 2007 - With Sierra Entertainment's announcement that it would be releasing a remade version of its critically-acclaimed Xbox title, Chronicles of Riddick, we had a list of questions almost immediately. Luckily we had a place to turn to for answers when Starbreeze Lead Designer, Ian Stevens agreed to tackle whatever we threw at him. Here's what he threw back...

IGN: It's only been a few years since the original Riddick game was release on Xbox; Why revisit it and not just work on an all-new game?

Ian Stevens: For a while we were trying to get the original game onto the backwards compatibility list for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft seemed to have some pretty fair reasons why it couldn't do it. We were disappointed with that conclusion and we've seen the same disappointment in the community, so we felt compelled to find some kind of way around that.

The fact that we were already working with new technology for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms lead to some obvious ideas, and the new technology is based on what we developed for Escape from Butcher Bay, so the subject of a remake came up pretty quickly.

We also had some hesitation about moving too quickly into a sequel. The story we tell in Escape from Butcher Bay is an important one, and we felt like it was a better decision to get that experience into the hands of a larger audience before moving on to something new and creating some gaps for gamers that had never played the original.

IGN: Is Dark Athena's core game based on the PC "Director's Cut" version?

Stevens: We will be carrying over the additional content that we created for the Director's Cut, but that's about the extent to which Assault on Dark Athena will resemble that version. We're going back and recreating a lot of content. We're adding a lot of detail to the original environments, reworking and tweaking many of the existing characters; we're creating a lot of new textures and audio as well, and making a few tweaks to the AI also.

We're definitely putting a good amount of work into enhancing everything that we can, and we're hopeful that this version of the game will be a real treat for fans of the original.

IGN: Tell us about the new storyline elements. What's it about, who's in it and when does it take place?

Stevens: We're expanding the single-player experience and that new episode takes place immediately after Riddick's escape. He and Johns stumble across the Dark Athena and encounter Revas, the Captain of that ship. It will be an interesting story to tell because we get to explore the role of Mercenaries in the Riddick universe. That's about all I can say for now. We'll have a lot more to talk about in the coming months.

IGN: How much time will that add to the single-player game (The original was sort of short)?

Stevens: This is an interesting question. We did get a lot of feedback with the original release that people felt the game was too short. We also received some criticism for being a first-person game but not having multiplayer. And this is an understandable perspective for gamers to have because they believe that longer games are better and they like Multiplayer. What's probably less obvious to our audience is that game development comes with a laundry list of competing priorities and it's a very difficult balancing act.

For Starbreeze, though, the priority has always been clear -- we have to make decisions that make the game better. Quality is the ultimate concern. And so, if we had tried to make Escape from Butcher Bay longer or if we had gone for multiplayer, the quality of everything would have diminished slightly as a result. You simply never have the time to make everything great, unless you narrow your focus. So we made the decision to go for the absolute best single-player experience possible. In the end this wound up being the right decision because, as a result, we changed quite a few people's minds about whether or not a game based on a movie franchise can be good; and not just good but great.
To put it another way; you can chose to do 10 things moderately well, or five things extremely well. When you present questions like these to gamers in this way, I've seen that they too see the sense in killing your darlings and aiming for quality across fewer goals. So our philosophy is that it's better to go for depth than length, because too much of a bad thing isn't good for anybody, and wanting more of a good thing isn't exactly the worst position to be in.

Short answer: the new content will be great.

IGN: Nice! How about additional sidequests? Are they in there?

Stevens: It's a little too early to talk about that just yet, but more info to come soon.

IGN: Is the combat system deeper and have you added new weapons that you can mess some dudes up with?

Stevens: Too early to talk too much about this as well. But I can tell you that yes; we are adding some really cool new weapons.

IGN: Have you made any adjustments to Riddick's "Shine" vision or will it work the same way it did before?

Stevens: We'll have to see where we're at with this as we get closer to release, but in general I don't believe that we'd want to get too far away from what you've seen already. What we have now fits the character too well.

IGN: Tell us about the stealth elements -- is it still "on/ off" in the shadows or has it be expanded upon to take advantage of the new technology?

Stevens: We feel that the stealth gameplay we created for Escape from Butcher Bay worked really well, so we're likely to continue working with that mechanic as-is.

IGN: Okay, back to the technology then -- what has the new hardware allowed you to do with AI and physics? Can you give us an example of how both of those elements change one of the existing experiences in the game?

Stevens: We're remaking the game and creating all of the new content in our new engine which is the same engine we've used to develop The Darkness. So the new technology gives us a lot of new opportunities in terms of lighting, the complexity of our environments, the complexity of our characters, and overall the ability to create a more immersive experience in much greater detail.

We will be including some enhanced AI and physics with Assault on Dark Athena, and this is likely to show itself in the way that enemies take cover or combat you while they're behind cover, and the overall functionality of our environments. Having physics allows us to make things more reactive and that tends to make the action sequences more intense.

IGN: What sort of approach are you taking for the multiplayer sections? Is it just going to be traditional deathmatch or are you going for some cool uncommon modes? Can we expect co-op story modes?

Stevens: Can't say much about Multiplayer right now. But we're excited about what we're working on and we're very anxious to get to that point where we're ready to talk about it.

IGN: Will there be new Riot Guard types and can you use them in multiplayer mode?

Stevens: You will be happy. Not saying why, but you will be happy.

IGN: The first game looked great on the Xbox -- is this a rebuilt engine or just an up-scaled version?

Stevens: It's difficult to answer that question without referring to specific parts of the engine. In general, no one writes a new engine every time they want to make some enhancements, and most enhancements are incremental anyhow. But in our case there are many pieces of our current technology that are brand new, and then some of it is technology that we've continued to develop since the release of Escape from Butcher Bay.

IGN: Fanboy fighting fodder ahead... are there any differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions?

Stevens: We'll probably be able to answer that question better closer to release.

IGN: Is Vin Diesel coming back to offer his services for the new content and in what capacity?

Stevens: Vin Diesel and Tigon are our most important partner when it comes to working in the Riddick universe, and they have an active role in the production of Assault on Dark Athena. We work with them on crafting the characters and storyline, and they are really passionate about game design so there are usually a lot of really interesting ideas that they put on the table.

Vin was actually here in Sweden only a couple of weeks ago and we spent time talking to him about the multiplayer portion of the new product. Lots of ideas and discussions were going back and forth about what we're building. He's very excited about it and so are we.

IGN: What are your plans for E3 and Riddick's appearance there?

Stevens: Difficult to say right now but it's always being discussed.

Otherwise, I'd like to thank you very much for your time and interest, and if you have any other questions we're happy to be of service.

[bingo83]

JMY8xpSf5Ew

Some ingame footage at last :D

[Raisedbyflames]

looks good i think its going to be good but i wouldnt want to pay full whack for it ive already got this for my xbox

[smileemptysoul]

exactly the same not worth the money