Although still early in development, I couldn't resist the chance to share some of the fascinating information I have gathered about Volition's upcoming, possibly revolutionary game, Red Faction. Just for familiarity, Volition is responsible for creating Decent: Freespace which was a popular game for the PC and one that I enjoyed very much. With the onset of Red Faction, Volition hopes to bring a revolutionary game to the platform.

Red Faction is a first person shooter that seeks to revolutionize the genre by incorporating completely deformable environments that are truly interactive and play just as predominant a role in the gameplay as the characters themselves. The design team is labouring through the complexities of creating ultra realistic environments that are also destroyable and the end result could lead to many new gameplay frontiers never before reached in a FPS. Since games of this type typically follow a linear path from beginning to end, the ability to destroy walls and doors would literally open up the entire level, but Volition is working on a method to effectively implement these environments without loosing the cohesion of the levels and story line.

The basic story line deals with a rebellion against an oppressive mining corporation on Mars. Players take the role of a guy named Parker who is leader of the union and must fight his way from the dark inhospitable depths of the mines to the surface and towards the corporate headquarters orbiting the planet. Along the way players will meet up and interact with various characters. In all, there will be 20 levels in the final product to battle through.

Although there will be puzzle solving and strategic elements throughout the game, emphasis on good old fashioned gore will still be the mainstay of the action. Motion capturing methods are being used to give life-like animation to the enemies and other characters.
The collision detection will be highly accurate. This means that depending on where you hit an enemy causes a different type of reaction so in the case of a headshot their head would naturally explode in a gruesome fashion. But a hit in the arm may only rip it off and not kill or blow apart the rest of him. There will be 15 weapons the players will have access to, including a rocket launcher (no surprise) which has an infrared detection device that allows players to see enemies through walls and around obstacles! I'm guessing this idea was borrowed from Perfect Dark and since it is such a cool feature no wonder more games are starting to use it.

Another very cool feature in Red Faction is the vehicles that you can control at certain times through the game. There will be six in all, one of them is a drill machine that allows you to actually drill underground so you can pop up somewhere else! Is that total freedom or what? I hope it is as good as it sounds. All the vehicles are armed as well, so you can also do combat in them. The fighter plane should provide an interesting twist on the FPS genre eh?

Now on to the visuals, do yourself a favor and take a close look at all the pics because they are amazing. Yet another beautiful ps2 game. I believe that some of the best graphics in videogames come from FPS games. It's all about immersing the player in a world where it is hard to tell the difference from reality or virtual reality and with graphics like in Red Faction, the line is drawn very thin. The developers are aiming for a high resolution for the game at 640x448 running at 60 frames per second. Although I don't know how smooth the game runs, obviously by looking at the screenshots, it is definitely running at a high resolution.

Like I said before, the game is still a ways off, with a release date set sometime in the second quarter of 2001. But for all the FPS fans looking for a possibly revolutionary game, it's probably worth saving a little cash for this one.