PAX 2007 Wrap-Up: Penny Arcade Game Hands On
As Tiny mentioned a bit earlier, the guys from Penny Arcade chose their own convention to reveal a few more details about their eagerly awaited game debut, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, along with a shiny new trailer. That you’ll be able to download the game via Xbox Live and a first look at the character creation system made up most of the hype at the Hothead game booth. Getting to actually fiddle with the game firsthand, I’m nothing less than astounded that everything I’ve seen manages to capture the look and humor of the webcomic dead-on. Good, good stuff.
Hit the jump for some pictures of the character creation system and other OTRSPOD (Otter's Pod?) tidbits from Hothead Game's PAX booth.
Aside from bustling with Penny Arcade fans and being littered with Fruit F#$@er postcards, the big deals at the Hothead booth were the aforementioned game trailer and a hands-on look at the early parts of the game, including the character creation system. Players of the PA game get to customize their own avatar to join Gabe and Tycho in their Victorian-stylized adventures, brawling against hobos, mimes, and stranger sorts. The neat part is that after you create your character, it's rendered into both 3-D and 2-D versions: 3-D for in-game play, and 2-D for the cinematics, which take place in a stylish comic strip slide-by not only reminiscent of the webcomic, but seemly drawn by Mike Krahulik himself. Dressing a little PA-looking character up in top-hats, monocles, and frilly shirts is something I already foresee consuming hours of my free time.
As if creating an avatar to use in the game wasn't enough, attendees could also fill out a card with their name on it. Those who meet some undefined prerequisites of appropriate wackiness have a chance of getting their name added into the game as a new character. There didn't seem to be any photographic element to this, so who knows what the virtual you might look like, but at least you get to be in the game. In fact, if you get in, more people will probably recognize the game version of you than the actual you... so you might want to consider a new look.
No word on a release date yet, but the Hothead website still promises Episode 1 sometime in 2007.
Lectric Lich
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 27 August 2007
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