The Golden Joystick Awards 2007
Ubisoft and Assassin's CreedUbisoft won the "One To Watch" award for Assassin's Creed (read our preview here) and that was no surprise at all - this game is massively anticipated, and not just by the press and gaming community. The developer-publishers themselves have put a lot of time, money and effort into this title, so they were naturally very optimistic about it. We grab a brief chat with Ubisoft, who were naturally rather pleased with themselves!
With fours years of work behind its development, Assassin's Creed is set to break a few conventions - if only for the amount of rewriting and extra time it's had on it. Originally planned for release last Christmas, it's only just ready now (and the PC version is undergoing "fine tuning" for launch early next year): at one point there were 32 scripts in use, before they whittled it down to a choice of five. Apparently, the ending has been kept secret from most of the team (although, exactly how that's possible is quite a puzzle). If this has the air of TV serial production to it, then you'd be right as Ubisoft are having talks with TV and film people about what possibilities could arise from the story.
Gamers expecting a quick rerun of Prince of Persia are to be in for some surprises: Ubisoft talked of riding horses around, just doing side-quests, and that there was more to Assassin's Creed than just the 12th century. Apparently their Q&A can do the main game, with no additional missions, in around 8.5 hours, with everything taking up to 30 to complete. NPC AI required more work than expected and was duly given the necessary time; hopefully we should get something more than just mindless enemies charging at us. Having spent a huge amount of money on the project (they joked that we would need more than two hands when it came to an estimate of the number of digits in the final cost... at least, we hope they were joking), Ubisoft are adamant that Assassin's Creed is going to be a huge success and great franchise, but at least they're not the only ones to think so. They didn't win the "One to Watch" award for nothing.
Codemasters and The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of AngmarCodemasters won two awards last week: best developers of 2007 and the best PC game of 2007, with The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. The latter is actually a Turbine development and Codemasters are the European publishers, but whatever the facts are, that the game has been a good success for them is not in question.
We only managed to have a brief chat with Codemasters but we learnt that the next update after Book 11 will bring new areas to the game, and that they have 3 years of updates all planned out. Since they have the full licence of the books, they have room to expand into other areas of Middle Earth lore, such as the First or Second Age.
LOTRO still has plenty of issues that need resolving for it to become a long-lasting classic but it's encouraging to know that the developers and publishers are committed to finishing the whole story - they've barely reached Moria, so just think how much grinding you'll have done by the time you get to knock on the Black Gates of Mordor? All over for another yearIt has to be said that PC video games only had a small presence at this year's bash, but that's to be expected given the popularity and number of console platforms available for gaming. Apart from the obvious Best PC Game, the only beige box contender was World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade for the online prize. The likes of Valve and Crytek were absent because the cut-off date for polling excluded their recent and forthcoming releases, so be sure to look out for them next year. Here are my absolutely serious and well thought out guesses for the 2008 Awards:
Will I be right? Place your bets now! Oh, and no, we didn't drink all of the free booze - it was ruddy awful!
If you would like to comment on this article or mock the editor's choice of next year's winners, then click right here (registration not required). Many thanks go to Dom Mukwamba-Sendall and Quench (the award winning student publication from Cardiff) for their kind permission to republish the Codemasters award winners images. Cheers mate!
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