Gun
Neversoft's non-Tony project is finally revealed, and we've got the first details.
Published: July 18, 2005
For your average gamer, mentioning the name Neversoft will probably mean a couple of blank stares and maybe a puzzled grin, with the occasional, "oh yeah, you mean the Tony Hawk guys?" Thanks to the recent success of the Treyarch-fueled Spider-Man games, most have forgotten it's been the only deviation from The Path of Hawk that the developer has taken since it started making skating games.
It's not like the developer doesn't know anything but skating and web slinging, either. They've dabbled in side-scrolling with Skeleton Warriors and shooting with Apocalypse (starring Bruce Willis) and the PlayStation port of Shiny's MDK. Of course, it has been a while since they've done anything but update the Birdman's world for the past couple years, so when rumors began flying of a top-secret project -- possibly even a first-person shooter -- it didn't take long for buzz to build.
In typically coy fashion, even the "premiere" of the title, Gun, at this year's E3 amidst a multi-screened display that probably cost more than our whole staff nets in two years showed absolutely nothing of the game. Imagine our surprise, then, when Activision finally dropped us a line with a teaser of an event here in San Francisco that would finally reveal all. Needless to say, we were salivating.
All that loose slobber wasn't for naught, either. Neversoft, tucked into a decidedly fitting Western-style log cabin in the picturesque Presidio in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge, finally pulled the wraps off their top-secret project. It's a shooter. It's an Old West shooter. Oh, and it looks impressive as hell, to say the least.
While most certainly early and more than a little rough around the edges in some places, the team's work was evident from the second the first frames of the video presentation kicked off. A massive, free-roaming and constantly streaming world meant huge, open vistas dotted with wind-swept buttes, rolling hills dotted with patches of grass and mountainous hillsides just begging for some kind of mine shoot-out. Best of all, the game was a go-anywhere approach that required either a train ride or horseback gallop to cross without going grey.
Gun, as Neversoft head honcho Joel Jewett sneered, would be all about replicating all the darkest parts of the Old West. Guns. Booze. Women. More guns. Lots more booze. This, according to Neversoft, is what the West was really about, not the pussy crap with civilized duels and some kind of Hollywood-style "Code." Accordingly, the game, and in particular Colton White, the grizzled and graven hero of the game, pull no punches and have zero problem showcasing just how hard it was back then.
Raised as a mountain man in Montana with his father, Colton learned just about everything he needed to survive in the wild, including hunting, a fair bit of sharpshooting and of course how to sweet talk a woman with curt little orders using a four letter word or two. All these skills served him well when his world was suddenly turned upside down after the murder of his father by a crooked preacher, the gifting of a mysterious medallion as his father simply told him (and we're paraphrasing here for effect) "I ain't yer ya" as he chucked him overboard as the steamboat they were riding on explodes.
Now, with a past as cloudy as the Missouri he was just dumped into, Colton must uncover the significance of the medallion, who his birth folks are, and exact some slow and painful revenge on the preacher who killed the closest thing Colton had to a father. He heads to Dodge City, and the saloon in it before meeting up with Jenny, a whore who seems to know something of Colton's past an-- oops, another gunfight.
It's not like the developer doesn't know anything but skating and web slinging, either. They've dabbled in side-scrolling with Skeleton Warriors and shooting with Apocalypse (starring Bruce Willis) and the PlayStation port of Shiny's MDK. Of course, it has been a while since they've done anything but update the Birdman's world for the past couple years, so when rumors began flying of a top-secret project -- possibly even a first-person shooter -- it didn't take long for buzz to build.
In typically coy fashion, even the "premiere" of the title, Gun, at this year's E3 amidst a multi-screened display that probably cost more than our whole staff nets in two years showed absolutely nothing of the game. Imagine our surprise, then, when Activision finally dropped us a line with a teaser of an event here in San Francisco that would finally reveal all. Needless to say, we were salivating.
All that loose slobber wasn't for naught, either. Neversoft, tucked into a decidedly fitting Western-style log cabin in the picturesque Presidio in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge, finally pulled the wraps off their top-secret project. It's a shooter. It's an Old West shooter. Oh, and it looks impressive as hell, to say the least.
While most certainly early and more than a little rough around the edges in some places, the team's work was evident from the second the first frames of the video presentation kicked off. A massive, free-roaming and constantly streaming world meant huge, open vistas dotted with wind-swept buttes, rolling hills dotted with patches of grass and mountainous hillsides just begging for some kind of mine shoot-out. Best of all, the game was a go-anywhere approach that required either a train ride or horseback gallop to cross without going grey.
Gun, as Neversoft head honcho Joel Jewett sneered, would be all about replicating all the darkest parts of the Old West. Guns. Booze. Women. More guns. Lots more booze. This, according to Neversoft, is what the West was really about, not the pussy crap with civilized duels and some kind of Hollywood-style "Code." Accordingly, the game, and in particular Colton White, the grizzled and graven hero of the game, pull no punches and have zero problem showcasing just how hard it was back then.
Raised as a mountain man in Montana with his father, Colton learned just about everything he needed to survive in the wild, including hunting, a fair bit of sharpshooting and of course how to sweet talk a woman with curt little orders using a four letter word or two. All these skills served him well when his world was suddenly turned upside down after the murder of his father by a crooked preacher, the gifting of a mysterious medallion as his father simply told him (and we're paraphrasing here for effect) "I ain't yer ya" as he chucked him overboard as the steamboat they were riding on explodes.
Now, with a past as cloudy as the Missouri he was just dumped into, Colton must uncover the significance of the medallion, who his birth folks are, and exact some slow and painful revenge on the preacher who killed the closest thing Colton had to a father. He heads to Dodge City, and the saloon in it before meeting up with Jenny, a whore who seems to know something of Colton's past an-- oops, another gunfight.