Neowin.net

You could say that first-person shooters, the fast-paced games that let you run around blasting everything that isn't you, have evolved over the years to emphasize teamwork over simple run-and-gun gameplay. You could also say that Sierra's Tribes series has contributed greatly to this change of focus. The Tribes games let you play as a futuristic soldier armed with heavy-duty weapons and the ability to "ski" (quickly gliding down hills and ridges) as part of a squadron tasked with capturing an enemy base or flag. Tribes 2 added new gameplay modes and drivable vehicles, and the next game, Tribes: Vengeance, will feature a comprehensive single-player campaign with a complex story. It will also feature plenty of new toys to play with in multiplayer.

We're fortunate enough to be able to reveal some of these new toys to you now. Tribes: Vengeance features an all-new infantry weapon that is tentatively called the rocket pod. It's a handheld weapon that fires a cluster of rockets that can then be guided manually by using mouse-look. These rockets spread out slightly from one another and deal a significant amount of damage to a targeted area, which makes it especially dangerous against large targets, like vehicles and enemy base fixtures.

Tribes: Vengeance also introduces an all-new vehicle: the rover. This armored land vehicle serves an important support function as a mobile spawn point for your allies, who can, with some clever driving, be dropped behind enemy lines. It's not an offensive vehicle, but it can move quickly when it has to.

News source: GameSpot

GameSpot: Thanks for taking the time for this interview. How far along is the game at this point, or is that even a fair question? It seems like Tribes: Vengeance is practically being developed as two separate games. So we'll ask, how far along is the game's single-player mode, and how far along is multiplayer? What aspects of the game are the team members working on now?

Michael Johnston: Tribes: Vengeance is about 65 percent complete, which means we're on target for a release in Q4 2004. Although the game does feature plenty of single-player and multiplayer content, a great deal of the content and code is shared. For example, all of the player models and map assets are the same in the single-player and multiplayer games. All of the weapons, equipment, vehicles, and physics are also the same. This is deliberate. One of the goals of the single-player experience is to ease players into the multiplayer experience by gradually teaching them about the game in an interesting, story-driven way.