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| Game: |
BC |
| Genre: |
Adventure |
| Developer: |
Intrepid Computer Entertainment |
| Publisher: |
Microsoft Games |
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| Related Links: |
Coming Soon. |
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BC Preview: |
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BC is set in a prehistoric world, a vast eco system which lives breathes and grows. The game is best described as a member of the arcade adventure genre, a game similar to say Tomb Raider but without the climb this and pull that element. The game is set in a vast world, a world that is inhabited by prehistoric man and beasts including those of the dinosaur variety. Instead of being a sexy babe, or a crack strike team member you play through as a prehistoric man (cave man). You also control a tribe of fellow cave men and women and their destiny and survival revolves around you. Welcome to the land of BC, a land filled with grassy plains, towering cliffs, mountain faces, beautiful waterfalls, deserts and even snow-covered areas. A land where man is not the great almighty and where survival revolves around more than nipping to your local store for a can of beans and loaf of bread.
The aim of the game is? Well Evolution, survival and development for you and your tribe. How well your tribe does is how well you do. You need to teach them skills and develop techniques such as hunting and gathering minerals etc. The game begins, you have a small tribe available and none of them would be up for awards from Mensa (high-IQ society). By the end of the game, depending on how you play and how you teach, develop and evolve your tribe you may have a tribe of 50+ all essential in their own special way.
The game revolves around several key elements. You will control and guide your tribe, you will teach them, you will evolve them as you guide them through an epic journey of survival. Battle against ferocious prehistoric creatures alone, or train select tribe members to join the fray. In BC you are able pick up and use more or less any object in the world. Trees can be chopped down to build shelters or used for fire. Bones and sticks can be fashioned into weapons, a necessary item when you have a world full of hungry dinosaurs. Animal skins can be worn as clothing. In fact, the only limit to the practical applications of objects in the game is your tribe's level of skills and technology which you are right at the very heart of developing.
Explore and exploit the vast natural environments and discover new technology and knowledge. BC is played in a living breathing ecosystem and you go out either solo or in groups and complete challenges or quests into a world filled with dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, crocodiles, and a host of other prehistoric creatures that once roamed our vast lands.
Ben Cousins, lead designer for B.C. says. "We wanted to set BC in an extremely richly simulated ecosystem". "An ecosystem where all the objects in the world make sense and behave the way they do in natural environments. A world where a rock can be picked up, rolled, broken, and used as a weapon. Where a tree can be set on fire. Where the creatures in the world have diets, need water, and need to sleep. We decided to make it a prehistoric setting because we're all fans of dinosaurs and everyone loves that whole over-the-top kind of setting". From the code seen in playable action at X03 this is certainly shaping up to be achieved, not that we ever doubted the team headed up by the games guru himself Mr. Peter Molyneux.
The vast nature of BC will lead to almost endless possibilities. For example, you will be able to dam rivers and water supplies. Flooding areas forcing herbivores and carnivores alike to either move in search of dry land or find a new place to drink from. You will also be able to poison food supplies, create fires and such like. Fire is an extremely destructive force in BC burning an area down will affect all animals that depended on that environment, again forcing them to flee in search of new woodland areas to inhabit. Everything has effects on the entire eco system and creatures including us humans living within it. Strategy will play a major role in your survival and development. It's just like modern life, there is a chain and if the chain is broken we all suffer the consequences. For example, the vast chain within BC, birds may eat beetles, raptors feed on birds, if you were to poison a berry bush which is used for food by a group of birds the birds will die, the raptors will suffer and search for a new food source. Then the beetles will thrive and run free. This is just an example of the how simple one event can effect the living breathing eco system which is BC.
Although BC is still in very early development the game play we have been fortunate enough to experience with Mr. Molyneux at X03 already shows this is a title looking & playing like a must have xbox title of the future (it's certainly in my most wanted xbox games list), the only negative I can conclude is that we won't be seeing BC any time soon, as Intrepid and Mr. Molyneux will not be content to release B.C. until they have fulfilled their original vision for the project. When that might be? Well you'll just have to keep checking www.msxbox-world.com for news. Lets face it, you can't put a deadline on a work of art can you? So be patient oh wise one as all good things come to those that wait.
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