Team Interviews, Press and Penthouse: IG is all over the place!

The press situation has been out of control lately. That, of course, is a good thing but given the QA interview posted last week I am way, way behind on keeping the community up on Irrational in the press.

So, starting with Freedom Force Vs. The 3rd Reich, Ken wrote an article for IGN titled "Adventures in Self Publishing" which outlines why Irrational opted to self publish Freedom Force Vs. The 3rd Reich and how they did it. For those of you looking for more insight into the inner workings of Irrational, this is a great article.

There's an excellent preview of Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich on WorthPlaying.com with lots of screenshots. Best quote: "one can expect Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich to once again become a staple of comic book game fans everywhere."

GamesDomain on Yahoo also has a brief preview which includes the following gem:

"The game oozed love for its subject matter with Jonathan Chey's perfectly posed heroes, and Ken Levine's humorously hyperbolic and well-written wordplay. The sequel looks like more of the same, only better. And with the addition of Nazis as the bad guys, and time travel as the plot propellant, this should make comic book fans squeal."

In internal FFV3R news, the team has been working very hard putting the final touches on Freedom Force Vs. The 3rd Reich. I recently saw the box, it looks beautiful and was of course designed by Irrational concept artist, Robb Waters.

Check out the front page of GameSpy which features an article about Freedom Force Vs. The 3rd Reich's brand new story-based multiplayer. Plus, it's written by our very own Alexx Kay.

And while we're on the subject of employee articles, congrats to Irrational programmer Terry Cohen, whose article "Moment of Impact: Designing an In-Game Effects System" will appear in the March issue of Game Developer Magazine. Check it out and learn about the effects systems used in SWAT 4 and Tribes:Vengeance.

As for SWAT 4 in the press, well, there's been a lot of that too but first, I have been working a lot in the office lately and had the opportunity to overhear the very heated play-testing that is going on for SWAT 4. I am talking about screaming, swearing, all-out battles, which unless I am completely out of touch, seems like a lot of fun and bodes well for the final product!

For an inside look at the development process, SWAT fan site 10 David is running a Developer Interview series where you can read what Paul Hellquist (SWAT 4's lead designer) and Chris Kline (lead programmer) have to say about the game.

Along similar lines, here's an interview with Chris Kline, Paul Hellquist, and Joe Faulstick put together from SWAT 4 fan questions from the forums.

Gamespot has a SWAT preview which goes into a fair amount of detail concerning the gameplay. My favorite quote from this one: "With its combination of excellent graphics and tense, realistic gameplay, SWAT 4 looks very sharp".

Check out the SWAT 4 trailer on Fileplanet.

Vivendi was nice enough to take SWAT 4 to Sundance where the game was set up for ten days in a hospitality lounge for an invite-only celebrity and film exec. extravaganza. We don't have the details yet but apparently lots of celebs got a chance to play the game. Lots of TV reporters showed up from shows like Entertainment Tonight, E!, CNN, Access Hollywood, and Extra so we're hoping to get some coverage.

And for the weirdest PR coup ever, SWAT 4 will soon be showing up in the May issue of Penthouse (yes, you read that correctly). "Dear Irrational...I never thought this would happen to me, but there I was playing SWAT coop and there was a knock on my door..."

Personally, I just read it for the screenshots...

--- Meredith Levine