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The legal battle between Activision and Infinity Ward is coming to a head, and newly released court documents are giving us a better look at Activision’s internal dialogue in the days leading up to firing Jason West and Vince Zampella. The e-mails range from frustrations, to plans of how to keep projects and teams on-track without the known leadership.

Court documents published by the LA Times show conversations between CEO Bobby Kotick, and executives Dave Stohl, Mike Griffith, and Rob Kostich.

Tensions began to boil after Infinity Ward failed to get a gameplay demo of Modern Warfare 2 ready for Microsoft’s E3 press conference. “Msft [Microsoft] will go ballistic over this and the deal is seriously risked,” Kostich wrote in one email. Griffith, who was president of publishing at the time, called West and Zampella and said they hung up on him. Kotick replied, “If they really did I would change their locks and lock them out of their building.”

Griffith then suggested that Treyarch could take it over, but says that option is “scary given the tight timeline.” Plus, Stohl said the group should “discuss what the plan B is going to look like” since “there could be a ton of risk getting the project done depending on how the team takes it.”

And in a moment of truth in hindsight, Stohl also said, “Is everyone ready for the big, negative PR story this is going to turn into if we kick them out? [It's] freaking me out a little.”

Activision had also set in motion a retention plan for the top 12 team members, besides West and Zampella. This was to “help ensure we retain the team if things blow up at the top,” according to Griffith.

The company recently settled its suit against Electronic Arts, and paid a hefty non-settlement sum to the Infinity Ward Employee Group. All indications are that it’s clearing the arena for the main event against West and Zampella, and these new e-mails show just how tense the situation was before the company fired the two former executives.

“Is this a reboot?” I asked a Capcom representative at a recent preview event. I had to ask, because Lost Planet 3 was not what I thought it would be. Beautiful, atmospheric, and intense, Lost Planet 3 is the rare game that goes completely against expectations, and offers something refreshingly new and exciting.

It’s an odd admission to make, given the awful turn the franchise took with Lost Planet 2. Perhaps taking too many cues from Monster Hunter, Capcom’s sequel became too multiplayer-focused. Battles against the game’s many towering enemies felt like grinds, with the game’s “shoot the glowing weak point for half an hour” gameplay growing thin. And with the franchise now in the hands of a developer as unproven as Spark Unlimited (Turning Point, Legendary), it’s no wonder I was skeptical. However, after thirty minutes of hands-on time, I would say Lost Planet 3 is the game I always wanted Lost Planet to be.

Lost Planet 3

On paper, the Lost Planet franchise certainly sounds like a winner. You rappel over buildings, fighting giant alien bugs with giant mechs that can shoot lasers. And Spark Unlimited has ensured that the core tenants of the franchise remain intact with Lost Planet 3: rappelling, giant alien bugs, and laser-shooting mechs, of course. However, the tone is incredibly different. Instead of making yet another arcadey third-person shooter, it’s as if Spark asked “what if this were a living-on-a-frozen-planet simulator?” The end result is a much more serious approach to storytelling and gameplay–one that makes the overall experience so much more compelling.

The demo begins with Jim, Lost Planet 3’s new unassuming lead, on a quest looking for therman energy. As he jumps in his mech, you get a great sense of scale and weight. You tower above everyone else as you make your way to E.D.N. III’s frozen terrain. As you progress forward, a storm kicks up. Electrical interference distorts your in-cockpit HUD, and it eventually gets encased in ice, forcing you to evacuate the mech. That’s when things get really interesting. An Akrid attacks, jumping onto your head. The camera zooms in, and you fight it off by trying to aim your knife with an on-screen reticule. (It’s not unlike fighting off zombies in the recent Walking Dead game.)

Fighting aliens off your face requires great reflexes

After fighting off a few more scorpion-esque creatures, I realized that this was not going to be like any Lost Planet game before it. A fight with just a small number of enemies felt dangerous–and the intimidating purple sky and blowing winds made the mood no more comfortable. Later in the demo, Jim enters an abandoned research facility. Of course, the lights go out and Jim must try to find his way out–surviving attacks from wandering Akrid that jump from air vents. That’s when I fully accepted that Lost Planet 3 isn’t an arcade shooter; it’s a survival horror game.

While much of the demo plays to common sci-fi horror tropes, Lost Planet’s mechs help make the experience feel fresh and unique. It’s one thing feeling helpless against powerful alien foes–but what about when you’re in a massive robot? Halfway through the demo, you fight a Akrid “mini boss,” a scorpion-esque creature that towers above you. While that encounter simply proved the gunplay was competent, encountering that creature again while in the mech proved to be a much more visceral experience. The monster is much faster than your mech is, and every strike it lands adds cracks to your battered windshield. However, time the right bumper at the right time, and you’ll be able to grab its claw. Using one analog stick, you try to pin the arm as the beast tries to resist. Using the other analog stick, you aim your mech’s drill and try to rip its arm off. As you dismember the Akrid, Jim can go in for a finishing blow, by drilling the creature’s glowing back. This wasn’t a canned cinematic, or a QTE. What made this experience so memorable was because it was all happening during gameplay.

My time with Lost Planet 3 ended after that encounter, but not before seeing a glimpse of a psych evaluation. Given its new survival horror focus, could Spark be taking inspiration from Dead Space?

With such a drastic change in tone, Lost Planet 3 might as well be a reboot of the franchise. The single player has definitely drawn me in, but will Spark be able to impress with multiplayer as well? Lost Planet 3 will be available on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in 2013.

Watch the Shacknews E3 2012 page to follow all our coverage of this year’s show. This preview is based on a hands-on demo shown at a pre-E3 event.

Some licenses carefully dip a toe into game adaptations, but not A Game of Thrones. The popular HBO show seems to be going with more of a scatter-shot method. It has produced a strategy title, a recently-released RPG, and now a newly announced social game.

The game is called Game of Thrones Ascent, and it’s coming from developer Disruptor Beam. Its Facebook page is already up, and Like the page to be entered in the beta test pool. You’ll be playing the part of a noble in Westoros, choosing a great house, developing your land and personal reputation, assigning sworn swords to quests, and forging alliances with friends.

“Everyone at Disruptor Beam was a huge fan of Game of Thrones long before we began working on the game, so we recognize that other fans expect character-driven conflict and intrigue to take center stage in our new game,” said CEO Jon Radoff in the announcement. “Westeros is the perfect setting to deliver on our vision of weaving stories through decisions and social interactions. Game of Thrones Ascent will bring the world of Westeros to the over 500 million social game players in the market today, featuring original artwork in a highly engaging game experience that is, most importantly, fun for fans and their friends!”

Since Diablo III launched a week ago, a growing number of players have found their accounts broken into and their characters stripped bare, or even had their accounts outright taken. Blizzard is investigating these reports, initially blaming them on old-fashioned hacking techniques rather than a security hole in Diablo III, but some victims insist they’ve been hit even with a Battle.net Authenticator.

As with hacks in other online games–let’s not forget Diablo III’s DRM means it’s an online game for everyone–the victims have all their characters’ items sold, their stash emptied, and all gold passed onto another account. Blizzard’s offering rollbacks for affected characters, but it’s inconvenience and upset nobody fancies dealing with.

While Blizzard is eying the usual hack vectors–keyloggers, phishing, passwords collected from hacked websites and whatnot–some unconfirmed reports say there may be a serious problem. Supposedly, miscreants can easily hijack the session ID of someone else playing, spoofing it to get access to their account.

As a forum post from community manager Micah ‘Bashiok Whiple shows, Blizzard’s not buying that yet, but is investigating.

We’ve been taking the situation extremely seriously from the start, and have done everything possible to verify how and in what circumstances these compromises are occurring. Despite the claims and theories being made, we have yet to find any situations in which a person’s account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password. While the authenticator isn’t a 100% guarantee of account security, we have yet to investigate a compromise report in which an authenticator was attached beforehand.

Yet there are many reports of players using an Authenticator who have been hacked regardless. Still, you may want to beef up your account security all the same, using an actual Authenticator, the free Authenticator mobile act, or the SMS Protect service, as detailed here.

“Historically, the release of a new game–such as a World of Warcraft expansion–will result in an increase in reports of individual account compromises, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing now with Diablo III,” Blizzard said. Let’s hope that’s all it is.

With the launch of the real-money auction house coming on May 29, delayed by the launch issues, people are about to become an awful lot more concerned about the safety of their gear.

“Defy everything you know about conventional storytelling.” I can’t recall the number of hyperbolic statements I overheard at a recent preview event for Trion Worlds’ next MMO, Defiance. The word “revolutionary” was thrown around quite a bit, and as with any self-proclaimed revolution, I was skeptical.

Unfortunately for this jaded writer, Defiance is revolutionary. The upcoming MMO shooter developed by Trion Worlds isn’t a game “based on” or “inspired” by Syfy’s upcoming new show–it’s being built as an integral part of transmedia story. While many properties have attempted convergence between cinema and gaming, the persistent world of Defiance offers an opportunity to create something genuinely new.

Defiance

Defiance is both a new game and a new TV show. It’s a world where, after decades of war, humans and aliens coexist in a devastated, terraformed planet. The show follows the lives of characters in St. Louis, while the game focuses on the struggles of a post-alien invasion San Francisco. Because both the TV show and game run on a schedule, their stories can intertwine immediately, with characters from the show appearing in the game and vice versa. In many ways, Defiance represents Syfy’s desire to have people move away from DVR and Netflix, and remember an era when new episodes were events worth tuning into. “It’s true appointment viewing. If you’re not watching on a Monday night when we air Defiance, then you will miss that storyline that’s referenced in the game,” Dave Howe, president of Syfy, told Shacknews in an interview.

The synergy between the two extensions of this universe is certainly novel, but there are clear logistical limitations as to what’s possible. TV shows are filmed months before they air, so is it possible for events in the game to affect the show in a meaningful way? The answer is “not really,” as the producers are unlikely to shoot alternate scenes and throw certain outcomes on the cutting room floor due to decisions players make in the game. Rather, the nods to players will be rather minor. For example, if John “XboxLover87″ Smith is the first to complete a specific mission in the game, he might be namedropped by one of the characters in the show. However, the producers are hoping that bigger game decisions will impact the storyline of a season two, when the show goes on hiatus. “For season two, we’re cautiously optimistic and confident that we’ll be able to be more responsive to stuff in the game,” Howe said.

Syfy’s vision of a future San Francisco

The transmedia vision for Defiance is certainly impressive, but how is the actual game? The game is an ambitious undertaking, even without the ties to a potentially ongoing TV series. Developed by Trion Worlds, Defiance the game is a MMO shooter, meant to feature thousands of players in a persistent world–across all three platforms. Amazingly, I saw the game running not only on a PC, but on an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 3 as well. Players won’t be able to play against each other, however, as the platform holders won’t open up their gated community to other networks. It’s an incredible technical achievement–but that’s about it.

As a shooter, Defiance is certainly competent and fun enough, but nothing truly spectacular. It’s easy navigate the environment thanks to the ability to summon a buggy at the press of a button. However, encounters against AI enemies are rather standard affairs. There isn’t much depth outside of running, gunning, and throwing the occasional grenade. One instance we were thrown into had us collectively fighting a giant insect boss that could summon minions. With a huge amount of HP, it became a bit of a chore, emptying clip after clip into the boss’ glowing, obvious weak point.

While it’s unlikely to take players away from Call of Duty, “fun enough” might be all fans really need, should Defiance take off as a show. The quality of the game won’t necessarily determine the fate of this online world. Instead, it’s the business model that will ultimately attract players. Will this be a boxed product? Will it have a subscription fee? Will it be free-to-play? Unfortunately, I couldn’t get an answer from Trion. Given whatever plan they choose needs to meet the requirements for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, is free-to-play even an option? “If you look at what Trion did with Rift… and what we’re doing with End of Nations, we don’t really have religion about one business model or another,” Trion’s Nick Beliaeff told us. “What we decide for Defiance will make a lot of sense.”

Defiance will be available on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 in April 2013. Season one of the show will air over twelve episodes next year on Syfy.

Watch the Shacknews E3 2012 page to follow all our coverage of this year’s show. This preview is based on a hands-on demo shown at a pre-E3 event.

Although 2K Marin’s first-person reboot of XCOM has disappeared into the ether, Firaxis’ strategy game has been dated. XCOM: Enemy Unknown will be available on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 on October 9th.

Of course, no release date announcement is complete without mentioning pre-order bonus incentives. Pre-ordering the game from select retailers will entitle you to the “Elite Soldier Pack.” This DLC add-on includes a classic X-COM soldier, inspired by the original UFO Defense. Soldiers can also be customized with a Deco pack and “complete color customization.”

In addition, 2K Games is offering a special edition of Enemy Unknown to PC gamers. Available exclusively at retail, the $59.99 package will include the game, a bonus art book, fold-out poster of the XCOM HQ, insignia patch, and a collection of digital bonuses, including desktop wallpaper, soundtrack, and more. The game will also be available for download–but won’t come with any of these nifty bonuses.

Humanity is pretty much screwed

Shacknews receives a slew of new screenshots and trailers for upcoming games everyday. The most anticipated titles receive their own post, because we know you’re eager to see that content. For the rest, we have the Daily Filter, a place to feature all of the media we add to our enormous database on a daily basis.

Today’s Filter features a technology trailer for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, a developer diary for Dust 514, and much more!

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier

Dust 514

We also have a tips and tricks trailer for Mortal Kombat Vita, a live-action teaser for Metro: Last Light, a television trailer for Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and launch screenshots for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Commander. Be sure to check out additional trailers and screenshots on each game page!

Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in 2007 for “technical problems” with the now widely-adopted Unreal Engine. The Too Human developer had modified the middleware so much that it called it the “Silicon Knights Engine.” The original claim asked for $58 million in damages, however after the judge threw out Silicon Knights’ “unreliable and speculative” damage assessment, the developer now faces a significantly reduced judgment.

According to court documents, Judge James Dever III got tired of waiting for a breakdown of the supposed damages, with Silicon Knights missing a key deadline earlier this month, The Verge reports. As a result, he made his own determination of the monetary harm incurred: $1.

There’s still reason to continue the case, however. If Silicon Knights wins the trial, which is expected to take one more week, it is free to appeal how the damages were calculated. The developer recently laid off a sizable portion of its staff, and claims to be working on a hotly “requested” new title.

And they keep on dropping like flies. Recent weeks have seen a number of high-profile games delayed out of 2012. Ninja Theory’s upcoming Devil May Cry reboot is the latest title to move into 2013. Perhaps publishers have only just accepted that the world isn’t going to end this year?

DmC will be available on PS3 and Xbox 360 on Jan. 15. In addition, Capcom has confirmed that a PC version of the game is also in the works. “Development is already well underway,” the announcement confirms. (Given the game runs on Unreal Engine 3, porting shouldn’t have been much of a problem in the first place, no?) However, as is typical for multiplatform PC releases, this version will release “later in 2013.”

In 2010, Halo developer Bungie signed a deal with Activision–an exclusive t10-year partnership “to bring Bungie’s next big action game universe to market.” Little has surfaced about the new project since.

As a consequence of Activision’s ongoing litigation with former Modern Warfare developers at Infinity Ward, details of the publisher’s agreement with Bungie have surfaced. While specifics could have changed since the contract was signed in 2010, the original contract lays out a plan for four sci-fi “action shooter” games from Bungie, codenamed “Destiny,” released every other year, beginning in late 2013.

The LA Times got their hands on the full 27-page document. According to the original contract, the first “Destiny” game would be exclusive to Xbox consoles, the 360 and its successor. “Later games” would then be multiplatform as per the original announcement, coming to the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as PC.

In addition to these four games, Bungie’s agreement with Activision also covers four downloadable expansion packs, codenamed “Comet.” These will also release every other year, beginning 2014. If Bungie is still adhering to their original agreement with Activision, that means we will be seeing content coming out of the studio on an annual basis starting next year–until the year 2020, only a few years before drones screw everything up.