NLG Presents: Indiana Jones - E3 2006 Xbox 360 Tech/Gameplay Demo

At #E3 2006, #Lucasarts showed us a demo of their new "Euphoria" physics engine prototyped into an Indiana Jones game. The game would be cancelled, but it still looked VERY cool. We still wonder what could have been.......

Here is the article I wrote for this demo:
"There is no bigger fan of the Indiana Jones video games than me. Ok, maybe there are a couple of people who go back with these games as far as I do. I have enjoyed Indiana Jones games since the Indiana Jones and Last Crusade arcade game. And then there were the old Lucasarts point and click adventure games for the PC. Ahh yes, the days of 486DX machines and Adlib sound cards. And that brings me to our behind-the-scenes booth tour we had with Lucasarts this week. Lucasarts has been bringing Indy to game screens for many years, and after Indiana Jones and the Emporer's Tomb came out for the Playstation 2 and Xbox all was quiet for a couple years. At E3 2005, Lucasarts announced semi-formally that Indy would be making his re-emergance on "next-generation consoles" sometime in 2007. And then all was quiet for the entire year. Not a peep, not a press release, not a bit of information we could get out of them about the upcoming game. We didn't know anything about the upcoming game until right before E3 when they unveiled their new "Euphoria" game engine; which promised to be "revolutionary" in the game industry. And right before the show when we were booking our tour, our rep told me he thought the game was as good as the original PC game. And even though it used to be point and click, that first Indy PC game was just special. So now the bar was set pretty high. I was looking forward to seeing this thing in action. And so when we got to the Lucasarts room, that's demo is straight to where I headed. The demos were short, and the game is totally pre-alpha, but it showed me a lot. And there was some good information that gives the game awesome potential.

Some of the background information on the game was quite interesting. Right now the game is just called "Indiana Jones 2007". But apparently Lucasarts has a high interest in this game, to the extent that it could be their flagship game next year. It is such a high profile title that George Lucas himself is writing the story for the game! The developer told us that Lucas himself said that the one character that could most port well to a video game is Indiana Jones. And for that, he wanted to work on it. It was also interesting to not that ever since Lucasarts moved their operations to the same building as Industrial Light and Magic, they also have a hand in the game (and apparently they are very big gamers themselves). Did I mention that George Lucas was writing the story? The anticipation will be killing me until next year.

Ok, onto the demo. unfortunately there was no hands-on, but that's ok. The game is extremely early on the Xbox 360. And on the Playstation 3, which the game will also be out for, the game was being shown as nothing more than a tech demo with Indiana Jones on a bridge. That's where I started off. And this was the first look at where Lucasarts will be taking their games in the future. As my tech demo began the first thing the demoer said was probably the most fascinating. "There are no animations in this game." He said. "What? What do you mean there are no animations? What's happening on the screen?" was my response. The Euphoria game engine is totally behavioral based, and because of that there will be absolutely no canned or repeating animations in the game. Now at this point you're probably as confused as I was watching the demo. How can you have a character on the screen and not have animations? How are the characters in the game going to move and do things? And that's the point in which the demoer happily began to show me. With the Euphoria engine, the computer calculates all the movements of the on-screen characters based on the situation and what's happening to the character. So what the game designers do is basically build the character model, and then let the computer do the rest. The computer takes into account the character's height, weight, and center of gravity, and then moves the model around based on the situation. It's something that has never been done before, and it is really amazing to see. So as I said the PS3 demo was simply Indiana Jones on a black screen, standing on a rickety wooden bridge, just like the one in Temple of Doom. The demoer began jostling the bridge back and forth and simulating the bridge "popping" up. As it did that, Indiana Jones began to stumble about, trying to regain his balance, stepping forward and backward, side-to-side, and sometimes tripping on the bridge and falling down or over the side. None of the movements though were the same, even if he was hit with the same objects (which in this case were rocks and boulders), in the same place, with the same velocity. It was impressive to watch Indy try to continuously attempt to keep his balance as he was pelted. Another thing that they explained was part of the behavioral engine was the character's ability to try and grab onto things as he's falling. One of the times that Indy fell over the bridge rope, he actually grabbed onto the bottom of the bridge and held on for dear life, kicking and swinging trying to get his composure so he could reach up and steady himself. He would eventually fall off. That was the end of the first demo. Even though it was only a tech demo, I was already impressed. Watch some of this video, you will be impressed as well.

Then I got a couple of real level demos from the actual game running pre-alpha on the Xbox 360. It was not only showing off the Euphoria engine for character models, but adding in something Lucasarts calls "Digital Molecular Morphing". The first of the two levels I saw had Indy fighting some thugs in San Franchisco's Chinatown. The fighting followed the same no-animation gameplay as the tech demo, with Indy throwing thugs up against cars, and into wooden doors. But what was cool was that much like Indy not behaving the same on the bridge demo, the bad guys never fell the same way or bounced off the car the same way. Depending on the size of the enemy, and the force and direction in which he was thrown, the thug would fall forward or bounce to the side, or even lay up on the wheelwell of the car. But as impressive as that was, when Indy threw a thug into a wooden door, the wood itself splintered and broke apart as real wood would do. The more he got thrown in, the more the wood broke apart. The demo guy however wouldn't answer whether or not the bad guy would eventually go through the door. But again, pre-alpha. The mode impressive thing they showed us was when Indy threw one of the thugs into this exploding barrel. The thug popped up into the air and fireworks shot out of the barrell. But the thug then hit a lengthwise sign that fell across the street and knocked down a fire escape with about 3-4 other henchmen. The henchemen all fell different ways and whoever could tried to hang on to the now broken escape as long as they could until eventually falling down to the street. Now here's the kicker. I watched the same exact scene two more times at different demo stations, and it really was never the same! That was cool. Once again, we have a video for you to watch to see just what I'm talking about.

Finally, we were shown a shorter and more fast-paced demo level. It was a trolley car rolling down the famous street hills of San Francisco, with cars of thugs chasing it down. Indy was on top of the trolley and henchemen were jumping onto the rig from the cars. And Indy was of course knocking them off the cars. I found it interesting that even the developers doing the demo were amazed as some of the reactions that happened in the scene. Cars running into other cars, with people flying into the air. And I was told that the cars did not drive "on rails", which allows for things like collisions and such. Again, no preset animations anywhere. And again, we have the video to show you."