lastinline said:

I'm sorry for bumping it, but I really want to see this game. I'm wondering why we aren't getting any media. First, we didn't get to see it on GTTV not too long ago when we were suppose to, and now this game isn't in the media today.

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StuBurns said:

Next person to bump this without media bleeds out at my feet.

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StuBurns said:

I was joking, I'm very much anticipating the footage myself.

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Gawny said:

http://twitter.com/JenovaChen/status/21605000099

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Gawny said:

http://twitter.com/JenovaChen/status/21605000099

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Gawny said:

http://twitter.com/JenovaChen/status/21605000099

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'Journey' Is This Generation's Shadow Of The Colossus

Having just seen thatgamecompany's latest PSN title at gamescom 2010 – its much anticipated follow up to Flower and flOw – one thing was clear: Journey is this generation's Shadow Of The Colossus.

I don't mean that in terms of gameplay or even story. There are no giant monsters, possibly no enemies of any kind. There is no dying damsel to save and there may not be any terrible moral consequence to anything you do. However, as a world watching Journey in action brought back all the emotions and awe of stepping into Team Ico's masterpiece for the first time.

Journey's open desert landscapes with dunes of sand that move like oceans and grains skipping over the surface is really something to behold. Your character, a mysterious hooded humanoid must reach a distant mountain that's shooting light into the sky. There is no more explanation than that. Even an NPC encounter was completely mysterious as a masked figure said nothing, but passed glyphs onto the outfit of the lead character.

Gameplay wise it's all about solving puzzles and exploration as you move around this world, finding ruins and deserted towns, piecing together what's happening in this world for yourself. The story is manifesting in your own mind... remind you of anything?

Watching it all unfold was like seeing the horns begin to emerge on Wander's head. What's happening? What does it all mean?

These are the questions thatgamecompany wants us to be asking as it was inspired by the emotional and spiritual realisation some astronauts have of looking back at the Earth and realising how small and alone we are. In Journey you too will be small and alone in this huge world.

Journey is going to be something very special indeed.

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Jason's Ultimatum said:

Spank my ass those look great.

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kensama said:

Fumito Ueda is on Neogaf and looking this thread

Huge!

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lastinline said:

*spanks*

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While Journey is very much a single player game, it is enhanced with a multiplayer mode. As online multiplayer is something ThatGameCompany has never done, Chen was eager to try and tackle it with his third title. As you explore the desert you will see other players who are also exploring the same area. It's up to you to ignore them or try to communicate. As there are no words (and no headset support) your only method of conversation is to sing at them.

There will only ever be one other player inside your game at a time. Chen didn't want the desert to be overrun with players as it would ruin the atmosphere of the empty and desolate environment. This means that meeting up with someone in your world feels special. Chen was keen to state that the game can be completed on your own, but it will be a lonely experienc

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Of course, it helps that the game is absolutely gorgeous. Sand flows realistically while pieces of cloth billow satisfyingly in the wind. The world is made up of warm yellows, oranges and reds as you look towards the distant horizon. This horizon line is where you'll find your ultimate goal, a mountain bathed in light. You're not told you need to go there. You just know.

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Your singing ability (a short chime that is reminiscent of many sounds in Flower) is one of the few actions you can perform, alongside jumping. With these you'll take part in the actual gameplay of Journey, which involves taking advantage of the cloth that is found all over the desert. Because the main character is made of the same material, he reacts to any cloth he comes across, allowing him to float and access higher, harder to reach areas.

Solving simple environmental puzzles might unlock some new sections of cloth, or give you material fragments. These form a scarf around you, allowing you to fly for a short amount of time. Singing near these fragments will draw them towards you.

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Rez said:

I hope there's a custom song-editor. I want to sing YakitySax as I swing by a peaceful traveller in the desert.

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Feeling your way through thatgamecompany's Journey
2 hour ago - 7:00 PM on 08.27.2010 | Maurice Tan

After making one The Old Republic character get stuck and playing another one for 3 full minutes last week, I ran off to to meet up with the radiantly friendly Robin Hunicke, producer at thatgamecompany, and Jenova Chen, co-founder and creative director, to talk about their upcoming PlayStation Network game Journey. You might remember thatgamecompany (TGC) from the PSN hits flOw and Flower.

So far, not much is known about their third game at all. We have seen some screenshots, but otherwise the only tangible info out there is that "Awakening in an unknown world, the player walks, glides, and flies through a vast and awe-inspiring landscape, while discovering the history of an ancient, mysterious civilization along the way."

Yep, that sounds like a journey alright. Thankfully, Robin and Jenova were happy to shed some more light on what Journey is about for you guys. What does it mean?!

Something you should know about TGC beforehand is how much feelings play a part on all levels of their development process. I know, it's scary, right? Of course the end result of this approach is pretty obvious to most of you who played Flower.

At GDC Europe, Robin Hunicke talked about how important it is to be able to listen in the prototyping process. She also spoke about how important it is to be able to manage a project with empathy; quite the departure from David Cage's self proposed "Enlightened Dictatorship" approach for overseeing a project.

This emphasis on the importance of feelings translates directly to Journey. The game was inspired by Jenova Chen's feeling that we live in a world full of power. The power to travel to any place, the power to talk to anyone in the world on the phone, or even the power to access the world's information through the Internet. At least, you could say that of people who own a console.

In the vast majority of games we have a similar relationship with power. We have control over life and death in a strategy game, follow an archetypical hero as he becomes progressively more powerful in a role-playing game, or fulfill teen power fantasies in Big Bulky Man Shooter XX: The Sequel. Journey aims to make you feel the complete opposite of that: the sensation of child-like wonder and smallness.

When I asked if by smallness they meant child-like smallness or more like a baby, Robin said it depends: "Maybe you start as a baby and maybe you grow, as you go through the journey. Life is a journey, so ... who knows."

Jenova elaborated on the diametrically opposed feelings of power and powerlessness by sharing a story about an experience he had with an astronaut. Astronauts have, after all, rocket-scientist levels of intelligence, among the most "hard science" kind of people in the world. Yet those that go to the moon come back very religious and spiritual.

Jenova's interpretation of why that happens is that when you are out there on the moon, alone and surrounded by the vast emptiness, everything you thought you knew about your life and life in general becomes small and irrelevant. You start to wonder about things you never wondered about before, living in the digital age where you can find the answers to almost all of our questions on the Internet, except for the question of why we are here. Only through absence do you truly recognize what was there.

Journey, a multiplayer game that can be played solo, tries to elicit such feelings of powerlessness by thinking about what creates such a state. One of the ways to do that is to focus on feeling alone versus feeling together. After all, you don't miss being together until you are alone. But how do you create something like that in a multiplayer game as opposed to having a scripted single-player game to design around it?

One of the ways Robin and Jenova explain this is the example of choosing to take a long walk in the wilderness. You know you'll spend most of the time by yourself, but if you happen to cross paths with another person who is walking in the opposite direction, you would probably greet that person. There would be a feeling of an innate connection between the two of you, being human beings, regardless of the age, gender or sex of that person.

In Journey, they want to create that feeling of two passing strangers, not to be confused with meeting another player in an MMO who then either ganks you or starts pointing and laughing at your gear. Jenova also wonders about the relationship with another player, as in the usual multiplayer shooter you tend to think about shooting first and communicating second. But what if you strip that power from the player and you can't shoot? Will the other player come first, or will you do something else entirely?

While you can find a connection with other players when each of you is on your journey, the game will allow you to choose to seek togetherness or go solo, just like some people prefer to live their life's journey, together or alone. Jenova stresses that feeling alone is not their main goal, though; it is just a part of creating a sense of being small and the sense of wonder to the world around you.

Of course, such a painfully tailored experience, which is aimed at insulating the player, can easily be shattered by 12-year-olds shouting "Where do I go?" Thankfully, Journey will only have very primal forms of communication inside the game. For instance, you can make a little call to other players, or make a larger one, to communicate different things. Robin also mentions that when you walk in the sand you leave a trail and that perhaps players will communicate in that way.

But right now, they are still experimenting with the means of communication between players. Let's hope they find a way to make Trophies pop up in an in-game way as well, as those are the most-persistent immersion breakers in console games these days.

Another, more physical way of creating feelings in Journey is the way your character interacts with the sand. One aspect of this is that just walking around in a large space can become very boring, perhaps similar to how reading a summary of Flower's gameplay without playing it can be boring. Jenova therefore thinks that every single movement needs to be interesting, to have some amount of engagement with the environment. Robin mentions that they've been calling this "Deep Movement" at TGC: being able to feel different types of movement throughout a game at any point in time.

Again, something we've seen in practice before in Flower. In fact, for TGC it is now a classic motive to bring something forward that typically only plays a background role in a game, such as movement or the environment. They admit that TGC has only existed for four years, but it's hard to argue against this motive if you look at their other games.

Finally, although they didn't want to talk too much about the story (there will be one) and the gameplay (it will have gameplay), Robin mentions that there will be an element of cloth in the game: "Pieces of cloth that you can call to make them come to you [...] give you a small piece of cape that you can use to fly, like a small bit of momentum, and then when you are near cloth, larger pieces of cloth especially, it will cause you to become lighter and harmonize a bit and then you can float up high."

Naturally, that means there will be either a platforming element in the game, or cloth is a metaphor for marijuana. Perhaps there will be a Trophy for sharing cloth with five players named "I got 5 on it"?

The aim is for us to finish the journey within 3 hours, so you can play through it once in one sitting or play it to relax after work. It is meant to be similar in lenghth to the time you take for other entertainment, like going to the cinema.

It also definitely feels like TGC is primarily targeting a more adult audience that is willing to undergo their continuous exploration in eliciting different kinds of emotions in game. Some of the elements should add replayability and together with the multiplayer component, you can probably put enough hours into it.

Journey is out in 2011 for PSN, so if you save up $1-$2 a month you really have no excuse not to try it by the time it's released.

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As you might already know, we have an extremely iterative development process, which means that although we are still building out the game, we like to get feedback from players early so we can incorporate it into the final version. This is a great opportunity to see the game as it progresses, and get a look behind the curtain of game development. Also, we’d love to have folks from this community help us! Here’s the info:

Evening of November 19th, 2010

Requirements to participate are:

* Be between the ages of 18 and 35.
* Be an active PSN game player. We want people who are familiar with PSN games, visit the Store, and download games as a part of their PlayStation life.
* Live in Los Angeles, and have reliable transportation to the playtest in Santa Monica.

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