Tuesday, January 6, 2009

ThrawnOmega Predicts the Future: Episode 2

Today (or should I say tonight?) I decided to bring out my crystal ball for another round of gazing into the future, to make a couple more predictions. Remember, my crystal ball has the habit of distorting reality, but I managed to tune it a bit, so today's predictions fall into the realm of the plausible.

2009 will be known as the Year of DLC

This probably doesn't come as too much of a surprise. With DLC coming for Fallout 3 and GTA4, DLC will get a lot of attention early in the year, but we should see content for L4D, Tomb Raider Underworld, and who knows what else. DLC will take major steps forward in 2009, and more content released and purchased than ever before. The crystal ball also predicts that x360a will be making one slight new advancement to embrace this change in the industry. What could that advancement be? The crystal ball says you should be able to see for yourself within the next month.
While we're on the subject of DLC, the crystal ball tells me it knows what the first two DLC campaigns for L4D will be:

Deaducation (working title)
In this potentially controversial expansion, the survivors find themselves at the top floor of an academic building on a college campus. To survive, they must make their way through several linked academic buildings and the library before finally making it outside. From there, they must shoot their way to the college's football stadium, and make a harrowing last stand at midfield with ramshackle defenses, while they wait for a rescue chopper to arrive. Fighting the infected swarms of college students won't be pretty...

Mighty Mall
The other campaign takes place in a parody of the Mall of America. The survivors must fight through food courts, an indoor amusement park, a movie theater, a restroom, two department stores, and countless long halls of stores. Play starts in the East Parking lot, which the survivors can't escape from. Their evac is an APC that will pick them up in West Parking lot, clear across the mall, after they've made their last stand in the parking garage. Can the 4 humans make it out alive? Valve will announce this campaign is the longest, running an average 20 minutes longer than the others (on normal... God help you on expert).

Kingdom Hearts on 360
Moving away from DLC, sometime this year it will be announced that all future Kingdom Hearts titles will be on the 360 and PS3. Don't act surprised. I predicted well over a year before FFXIII was announced for the 360 that it would happen (I have friends who will verify this!). The signs were all there. When Infinite Undiscovery came to 360, and Last Remnant was known to be multi-platform, along with Square-Enix's announcement that they wished to go multi-platform in the future, why would they keep their signature franchise stuck on one system? (I'm referring more to announcements here than release dates, because I know the above chronology is a bit fuzzy) Now, the new Star Ocean game is 360 exclusive (if I'm remembering right), so it is possible Kingdom Hearts could stay on Sony systems, but I highly doubt it. They'll want to milk that franchise for every penny they can.

That concludes my predictions for today. Tomorrow I roll out a major achievement progress update.

Image links:
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/images/screenshots/261/med_gauss.jpg
http://www.campusexplorer.com/media/376x262/University-of-Wisconsin-Eau-Claire-2C57281B.jpg
http://gallery.vanguardist.org/d/36859-2/DSC01002.JPG
http://www.doupe.cz/vaulty/finalfantasy/pictures/kingdom_hearts_2_wallpaper.jpg

3 comments:

  1. Xbox 360 L4D wont get DLC till 2010, mark my words on it. Whreas us on the PC version are already enjoying a school and mall map :P

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  2. Freaking PC snob =P... I think there will be a release in 2009 though. More than a year after release seems too late to be adding your first set of new content, to me at least.

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  3. Im going on Valves record with TF2, we are way past a year with that and the DLC is aparently 'on its way'

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