Dishonored Art goes Into the Pixel

In a release today, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and the Entertainment Software Association announced this year’s winning pieces for the 2012 Into the Pixel collection. Among the selected entries was the above image, titled “Regent”, that appears in Dishonored.

Created by Sergey Kolesov and Arkane Studio’s art director, Sebastien Mitton, the piece will be displayed at E3 from June 7-9, 2011 in the Concourse Foyer. Following E3, it will be toured around the globe at other gaming events.

Congrats to Sergey, Sebastien, and the rest of the team at Arkane for this prestigious honor.

Video Games Live: Dragonborn in the USA

Will you be in LA next week? If so, we encourage you to check out Video Games Live on June 6th at the Nokia Theatre. During the concert, music from Skyrim will be performed by a 110-piece symphony & choir.

If you’ve never seen Video Games Live before, it’s definitely worth checking out. Created by Tommy Tallarico in 2002, its an immersive audio and video concert experience celebrating videogames.

Order tickets to the show via Ticketmaster

Matt Firor discusses TESO game engine

GameInformer.com’s latest on The Elder Scrolls Online features an interview with game director Matt Firor clearing up misconceptions about the game’s engine. The article also gives a first look at the Black Marsh.

Here’s an excerpt from Firor’s interview…

You licensed HeroEngine a long time ago. What role did the Hero Engine play in the development of ESO?

We started ZeniMax Online from scratch, with no employees and no technology. We had to build everything ourselves. It takes a long time to write game engines, especially MMO engines, which are inherently more complicated than typical single-player ones. So, we decided to license the HeroEngine to give us a headstart. It was a useful tool for us to use to prototype areas and game design concepts, and it provided us the ability to get art into the game that was visible, so we could work on the game’s art style. Our plan is for ESO to be a world class MMO, with the most advanced social features found in any MMO to date – so while we were prototyping the game on HeroEngine, we were simultaneously developing our own client, server, and messaging layer that were specifically designed with ESO in mind. Think of HeroEngine as a whiteboard for us – a great tool to get some ideas in the game and start looking at them while the production engine was in development.

Catch up on all of Game Informer’s coverage at gameinformer.com/elderscrollsonline

New cover stories for The Elder Scrolls Online

Today a few European outlets kicked off their coverage of The Elder Scrolls Online. For their June issue, Dutch magazine Chief features a Nord on the cover. Check it out above.

Additionally new coverage is available in the UK, France, and Germany…

  • UK magazine Edge kicks off their coverage with a new interview with game director Matt Firor
  • French magazine Canard PC has revealed their Breton cover
  • See the Gamestar (Germany) cover on the official Facebook page

Stay tuned for new coverage and magazine covers!

 

Mounted Combat arrives in 1.6 Skyrim Update

The team at Bethesda Game Studios is excited to announce another new feature making its way into Skyrim… Mounted Combat! Like the recently added Kinect support (360) and new kill cameras, this highly-requested feature that was seen in the Skyrim Game Jam video is arriving for free. In fact, by opting into the latest Steam Beta Update, PC users can check out the feature today. As far as release on other platforms, we’ll let you know when we have more information.

Thanks again to all our fans, we remain committed to supporting the game through our free updates, mod tools, and more. And yes, we’re still working on our first add-on, Dawnguard – some great stuff to show you soon, stay tuned!

Read the current 1.6 release notes below…

Continue reading full article ›

Questions and Quests

With plenty of info to digest from this month’s first look for The Elder Scrolls Online, Game Informer is now calling upon you to ask questions for an upcoming podcast interview with Matt Firor and Paul Sage. Post your questions here.

Until then, learn more about the game’s exploration-driven quests in a lengthy video interview with Paul Sage and Rich Lambert. Watch it here