by Cody “Micajah” Bye



For the last six weeks, the crew at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has
gone silent, uttering not a word from their complex down in Arizona.
Speaking from a fan’s standpoint, these instances can either
be
extremely frustrating or remarkably invigorating; often
there’s a
reason for the black out and when the developers finally emerge from
their offices to speak with the players again, it’s with a
bevy
of new material. That seems to be the case with CME and Stargate
Worlds, as just before the Austin Game Developers Conference they
released several new screenshots for the Ten Ton Hammer staff to post
on our site. The folks at CME were ready to talk about their product
again, this time with some solid work behind them.

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/11587" title="The Castle"> src="/image/view/11587/preview"
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A concept piece
depicting "The Castle".

This being the case, I knew it would be to Ten Ton Hammer’s
advantage to sit down with CME at AGDC, and we prepared an interview
with Kevin Balentine, PR Manager for Stargate Worlds. Kevin sat down with Katie Postma, Bill
Pirkle, and I in the lobby of the Hilton and we took our seats on
pseudo-comfortable chairs that had pillows permanently affixed to their
cushions. Getting comfortable, Kevin turned on his laptop –
always a good sign from a developer – and proceeded to show
us
through several brand new pieces of concept art and a few new
screenshots.



As he progressed, Kevin explained each piece of concept art to us,
explaining the significance of each picture and what sort of place that
particular image would have in the game. For your reading pleasure,
I’ve transcribed or paraphrased what Kevin said about each
picture, and you can therefore experience the same sort of presentation
the Ten Ton Hammer staff received at AGDC.



Turning his laptop towards us, the first picture Kevin brought up was
the piece of concept art from an area called the Castle. “The
Castle was basically a normal outpost that Stargate command took over
and were using the structure as a prison for a group called the
‘Opcore’,” Kevin said. “As part
of our in-game
story, the Opcore are basically the NID or the Trust on steroids.
We’re not retelling the Stargate story, and we’ve
got our
own things going on.  Since you’re going to be the
heroes of
your own series, we’ve got to come up with different sorts of
villains for you to face.”

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/11723"> src="/image/view/11723/preview"
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A screenshot of the
interior of "The Castle".

“The next image is an actual screenshot of the interior of
the
Castle,” Kevin continued. “Here you can see the
level of
detail and complexity of the lighting that’s going on. We
honestly can’t wait to show the players more of the
screenshots,
because our early shots may be good, but we’ve got
better.”
And in all honesty, I totally agree with Kevin’s sentiment;
since
we first started seeing Stargate images, the shots have gotten
progressively better.



Next in our viewing was a piece of concept art portraying the Opcore.
At first glance, it’d be hard to distinguish the Opcore from
a
normal SG-1 trooper, and there’s a purpose behind that. The
Opcore are like the counter to the presence of SG-1; the Opcore are
certainly fighting for the darker side of the universe.