Turok Part 2: Holy Dynamic Foliage Batman! - Features

Yesterday, Omni reported on the dinos, the cinematic touches, and look of the upcoming Turok. Today we find out about dynamic foliage, the look of Turok, and his possible arsenal.

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Turok Part 2

Holy Dynamic Foliage, Batman!

Continued from yesterday...

All the areas that were shown concentrated on wide-open jungle environments and construction zones. Turok uses a slightly modified Unreal 3 engine, the same thing powering Gears of War. That game concentrates on tight, controlled areas; Propaganda is trying to show how the engine performs with open spaces and greenery. To demonstrate the latter point, Josh shows us a technical demo of waving grass.

Lacking the “Wow!” factor of exploding heads or flashy dismemberments, the tech demo of the waving grass intrigues me.

Perched on a bit of an overlook, there is an enclosed area of grass which is reacting to small dinos running around in the area. If you think of the scene in Jurassic Park: The Lost World when the intrepid team is sprinting through a field of tall grass as we watch the grass parting in several areas as the raptors

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gain ground – that’s kind of what watching the tech demo is like. The grass isn’t quite as dense but the effect is the same; the grass also reacted to explosions, showing noticeable shockwaves. In-game, I can’t really see the practical uses for such a feature in the single-player game, however, during multiplayer the practicality of being able to detect enemies trying to cross open

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spaces has quite an allure. Of course, it’s a tech demo at this point so whether it shows up in the final game is unknown.

Josh confirms multiplayer, saying it’s up and running but things are still in motion and no one wants to talk about possible multiplayer modes, not even the leads working on the level design. It’s much more about honing and nailing down the single-player game.

The way the team views it, they have challenged themselves to some extent to redeem the Turok franchise, not just in terms of story but also character. Largely squandered by Acclaim – well, to be fair, it only really tailed off with the last two games – Propaganda wants you to forget about the previous games. The most noticeable distancing here is the lead character, Turok. He still maintains a general Native American look, but he doesn’t sport war paint or a ponytail. The team readily admits playing Prey and really pondering how they wanted to depict a Native American character. They don’t want to play to a stereotype. At least, of that kind – muscle-bound space marines, that’s fine and dandy.

To further differentiate itself from the old series, the weapon design looks to have borrowed from the Unreal Tournament franchise. It seems that most weapons have some kind of dual function, like the rail gun’s grenade capability. Once again, the weapons seem to be in flux at the moment, though there’s every indication that Turok’s ability to duel-wield some weapons will be included when the game lands on store shelves. The bow and knife show up here as well, for those rare times when stealth is actually required. When Turok uses a knife on an unsuspecting human enemy the camera cuts to a third person view to highlight Turok’s one-cut kills. The knife also comes into play when a dino attacks at close quarters. The action shifts to a third-person view, showing Turok pinned. To escape, the player has to hammer on a specific button so Turok hacks away at the attacker’s head. (If the dino is near death, Turok performs a finishing move, otherwise Turok merely escapes so that he can use a gun.)

We aren’t shown any indoor areas, which was a bit of a disappointment, but, we're promised "there will be plenty of indoor action," along with driveable vehicles, which we are also not shown, at least in action. (But from what we are shown, there will be a vehicle like Halo’s warthog.)

Turok is tentatively scheduled to ship to retail sometime in the 4^th Quarter of 2007, at least that’s my gut feeling. This could turn out to be a disaster or a godsend. We shouldn’t forget about a little title called Halo 3, which is also scheduled to ship about the same time. By all accounts Halo 3 will be a monster hit so if Turok is up against that kind of competition (even if it is shipping for Xbox 360 and PS3) it might get lost in the buzz around Halo 3. This far out it’s difficult to know for sure what will happen – ship dates get shuffled all the time – but if Turok strikes at just the right moment (a few weeks before Halo 3 would be ideal, I reckon) then those Turok games from yesteryear will likely be forgotten.

Be sure to come back tomorrow when we sit down with Josh Holmes in a candid one-on-one interview.

(January 21, 2007)