A little over a week ago, we talked about Faith and a .45, a game notable for its awesome title, interesting backdrop and the fact that it was being made by Total Overdose developer Deadline Games. Now there are some new gameplay details, mostly regarding the focus on co-op and the rather close bond that you will be able to share with your partner.
After an intense shootout, main characters Ruby and Luke will apparently celebrate survival with a kiss. More importantly, Ruby can also apply a kiss of life to Luke if he's out for the count. Now, in a single player mode with an AI-controlled Ruby, that's interesting. If played over say, Xbox Live with an online friend, however, I can't help but feel this is going to lead to hilarity, not to mention a fair few of online gaming's famous homophobes finally getting together to explore those latent feelings they've been having.
The developers are working hard to create a partner that the player really cares about, inspired by the fact that in Gears of War, you don't really give much of a stuff about your squad. In Faith and a .45, you will really get to work together, and Deadline is promising some real co-operative gameplay, such as being able to toss a gas can in the air for Ruby to shoot and explode. Here's what Deadline had to say about the game's plans:
We have a design rule to make sure that Ruby is really interesting and easy to play with. What we call it is 'To play around with an unscripted A.I. you care for' — that's the line that we use internally. That means Ruby should be able to take the initiative on her own, not just react or be scripted to exactly what she has to do... That came mostly from playing some of the other co-op games — say a game like Gears of War, where you have a character with you most of the time, but you don't really depend on him and it's kind of like whenever he goes down, you fight on, and then he wakes up again after the battle is over. There's no real connection.
So, we're looking at Gears of War but with ranch-hands and kissing. Here's hoping that Faith and a .45 succeeds where Kane & Lynch failed and we finally have a decent buddy game on our hands. I am looking forward to good things here.
Contest:
1:29 AM on 01.30.2008
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In all honesty, stories that lack emotional seedings tend to disappear. If you look at something like say FFVII, the underlying theme of Clouds character is his love to the people around him, notably Tifa and Aries. I do however feel that scripted interaction is much different then trying to force a gamer to share the empathy or love that the character has for another character. The fact is they have to make ruby an appealing character to create that bond, I guess the first thing would to be to make her useful... which is half what they are suggesting. If i get shot and i am going down, i want to see ruby go all out and kill a bunch of bad guys and save my ass, or at least try and go down in a blaze of glory.
if there is one thing that pissed me off about gears, Its that if i died, they just kept fighting like nothing was wrong. if i go down, i want all the AI on my side to go down.
...I saw through the bullshit."
- Mitch Hedberg
To me, optimistically, Ruby will be a cross between Yorda and Alyx Vance, with more initiative than either!
I'm guessing if you play first person and your partner is AI controlled, there'll be a control for telling them to pick up and throw something for you to shoot and something similar. Otherwise, would get annoying having to keep an eye out for what your partner is doing.
Oh yeah, this one's gonna shape up to be an instant classic.