Gamernode: Previews - E3 '07: Legendary: The Box

E3 '07: Legendary: The Box

Legendary: The Box is a game which I believe was created by scanning my brain and seeing what I'd like most. Combining intense action scenarios with mythology and legend, it's perfect for a gaming guy like me who's also an anthropologist trained in folklore. Too bad they didn't scan my brain for a better name...
 

The game centers on a thief named Deckard, who's tricked into stealing what ends up being Pandora's Box. The man hiring him planned on Deckard dying, but things didn't exactly work out that way. Upon loading up, the demo featured a cutscene showing Deckard entering a museum and opening the box. Guess what? Things went to hell, which they usually do when Pandora's Box is involved.
 

Lights came shooting out of the box, and the entire museum became sporting glowing cracks on all surfaces. It's a quick race full of shifting floors and crumbling structures as Deckard tried to escape; I made it just in time (although I don't think you couldn't make it). Arriving in a lobby area, the floor cracks open, and a giant beam of light shoots into the sky. Thus starts Legendary.
 

After that, Deckard races outside with the other panicking people, only to be attacked by rampaging griffons. "It's just like the disaster movies," said Spark producer John Garcia-Shelton. "In the movies, shit hits the fan, and people run away from it. They don't worry about fighting back until after things settle down a little."

The griffon attack is hectic, and while running through deserted and destroyed cars, you have to dodge the flying beasts. "They're the size of elephants, so they can lift cars," John explained, just as a griffin made off with a police car, policeman included (take that, GTA!).
 

Running between the cars appeared to be a fairly set out path with spaces between parked vehicles, but the inclusion of the griffons readily changed your future steps. What was once open may be filled with a destroyed car, and what was once blocked may be open at any second.
 

Escaping into a building, we breathed a sigh of relief; Deckard was safe! Well, not really. One of the cool features of Legendary is the creature AI. Griffons are big dudes, but if you hide from them in a smaller area, they'll recognize places they can break in or grab at you from. For example, windows in the building were destroyed as the griffon tried to grab Deckard, and even a wall was knocked down, giving a griffin a clean shot at biting Deckard in two.
 

Escaping the building, we took our hero to what looked like a safe spot-until the debris began building up, and formed a giant golem. "This is a demo level, so we like to end them with Deckard dying," John said, as the giant golem's foot filled the screen.
 

The next level took place further in the game, and actually allowed Deckard to fight back. Titled "Episode 5: The Cathedral," it took place in...well, a cathedral. Inside were werewolves and enemy soldiers; I wasn't sure who the enemy soldiers were, but since it's the fifth mission, I think that's likely explained between 1 and 5.
 

These situations is where the "triangle gameplay," as John called it, came into play. With human and monster enemies, you need to balance what you use or do. For example, the assault rifle can't take down a werewolf, but it's great against the enemy troops. On the other hand, a shotgun is weak in far distance firefights, but great to blow a werewolf's head off (if you don't destroy their head, they don't die).
 

Legendary is filled with situations like that, where you'll have to decide which foe to focus on. You'll be forced to conserve ammo, and also health (you can suck life from defeated monsters, but with normal human enemies, that's not possible). The enemy AI makes this a big challenge.
 

"A lot of these games are stop, fight, move forward five yards, peak out, etc." John said. "We wanted this game to be nonstop moving with constant fighting." It is. Stay still for even two seconds, and a werewolf will flank you, or enemy troops will lock you down under constant fire. If you have a solid position, the monsters will find ways to you; for example, when Deckard was safely in a corner (I thought it would be easy to hold off enemies), a werewolf climbed up a wall, broke a window, and came down on top of Deckard attacking him from behind.
 

The Cathedral ended with a huge invasion of werewolves; we're talking possibly dozens here. They stormed the bridge Deckard was previously safely on (where I also got my first experience seeing the Saw gun in action [think heavy artillery machine gun]) from all sides; left, right, down, up, back, and front were all being attacked. One werewolf was dead (or so I thought), but he came back to life and got a few quick blows in on Deckard. After the werewolves had their fun for a bit, a griffon crashed through the cathedral's outer protection, and latched onto the metal bridge Deckard stood on. No matter how many times it was shot, though, it just didn't die - sadly it was the end of the demo, and Deckard had to die.
 

Legendary has quite a team behind it. With a lot of experience in the FPS genre, the developers know their stuff. What makes it truly stand out (outside of the frantic pace) is easily the world, story, and incredible AI. Yesterday I thought CoD4 was easily the best FPS I'd see all week; today, I was proven wrong.

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