As you probably have noticed by now, we went to the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. (The Electronic Entertainment Expo is an annual trade event for the games industry.) There are a couple of projects that are in a very early stage of development that we wanted to tell you about, as well as some action/adventures that we found interesting. Here are some capsule previews of those games.



Full Throttle II

I will begin with the most exciting news of all: LucasArts used the occasion to present the first footage of Full Throttle II. While the game wasn’t on display at LucasArts’ booth, we were shown a video trailer full of bar fights and high-speed bike chases. Ben, the leader of the renegade motorcycle gang the Polecats, is back for this second installment and his attitude is still as macho as ever. A shakycam recording of the trailer can be found here.

According to PR manager Tom Sarris, we won’t see much more than that until spring 2003, possibly around E3 2003. Full Throttle II was announced pretty early on since LucasArts was very eager to show it. "We can't think of a better brand or character to lead LucasArts' charge into a new era of original game development,” says president Simon Jeffery in the press release. We were also told that this announcement is only a signal of ‘much more things to come’.

Leading the project is Sean Clark, who previously oversaw the design of Sam & Max Hit the Road, The Dig, and co-designed Escape From Monkey Island. The game will combine action and adventure elements with a humorous original story and will be released for next generation consoles and PC in 2003.

Broken Sword 2 GBA

Adventure Gamers had a meeting at E3 with Charles Cecil, Managing Director of the British developer Revolution Software. He had taken a prototype of Broken Sword 2 for the Gameboy Advance with him to show us. Revolution had taken great care in porting the first Broken Sword game to the GBA, with re-mastered graphics, a new control system and – yes – the removal of the notorious Goat-puzzle. The game had been almost completely rebuilt from scratch. This will be no different with Broken Sword 2: it feels like it was born for the GBA.

The buttons give you direct control over the character. When you are near a hotspot, an icon will appear above it, showing you what actions can be performed. Revolution has also included a function that will reveal all hotspots on a screen, making the dreaded ‘pixel hunting’ a thing of the past. Revolution’s philosophy is that this will not make the game too easy. Instead, they say, it will make the game less frustrating. Porting Beneath A Steel Sky or Lure Of The Temptress will be a more costly and time demanding task, but Revolution may consider doing them if the Broken Sword GBA ports prove to be successful. The Game Boy is indeed a platform that lends itself perfectly for adventure games and to say that we are exhilarated by its potential would be an understatement. It is Revolution Software that is at the forefront of exploring this new market.

Next page: Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon, Myst Online and more from LucasArts