Starsiege: Tribes was a miracle of game design--a quantum leap forward in team-based shooters that paved the way for modern multiplayer Battlefields.

Now the company founded by former Tribes developers is returning to its roots, taking first-person shooting back to the skies.

"The first hit is free because we're street like that," says GarageGames' Tim Aste, project director on Fallen Empires: Legion, of the company's plan to offer a trial period for the title. The language is not coincidental: the developer is hoping to craft a perfect mix of fast, addictive multiplayer action, and do it all through your web browser--catering to both hardcore and casual audiences in the process.

Check out a few of the things we've learned about the game below, or just click on through for the full interview with director Aste and GarageGames CEO Josh Williams.

• Runs inside your web browser. Full-screen mode supported.
• Emphasis on fast combat with free, flight-based movement.
• Multi-directional jet-packing.
• Large maps, buildings, and team sizes possible, but not necessarily the norm.
• Laser rifle!
• No vehicles or deployables initially.
• Will be competitively priced. Free trial before purchase.
• User-generated content support planned for post-release.
• Beta test coming soon.

Curious about skiing? Need more details? Read on..

Stargate Worlds Explored is an IGN interview with the people at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, asking them about their plans for the MMORPG based on the now cancelled TV series.

The latest Gamers With Jobs podcast has an interview with Ken Levine, asking the 2K Boston boss about The Orange Box and Valve, the Spike TV awards, emergent story telling and more.

What's the Deal with Deus Ex 3 on 1UP talks with Eidos Montreal general manager Stephane D'Astous about the studio's plans for this sci-fi action RPG sequel.

The Unreal Man: Mark Rein Speaks is a Gamasutra interview with the Epic Games VP about Unreal Engine 3, PlayStation 3, Japanese developers working with Epic's technology, PC development and more.

Chair Entertainment's first release, Undertow, is due out on Xbox Live Arcade tomorrow. To find out more about the underwater shooter, which is based on the childhood drawings of creative director Donald Mustard, I spoke with the man himself about bringing his doodles to life, the chances of an Advent Rising resurrection, and just what happens when you marry your publicist.

Donald Mustard: Undertow is one of those games that we thought was just perfect for Live Arcade and would allow us to distill something to its core essence of fun and fast gameplay, but still have a lot of depth there. And that kind of all sprang from those little drawings of guys getting their heads shot off and sharks swallowing grenades.
Read on...

IGN has a four page interview with Tim Schafer, asking Double Fine's head honcho about his company's third person heavy metal game Brutal Legend.

Remember when you were in kindergarten and dinosaurs were awesome? And then stuff like Jurassic Park and Turok came out, and T-rexes and raptors ruled again. Propaganda Games' upcoming reimagining of the Turok franchise aims to bring your dino fantasies flooding back, and I spoke with studio manager Josh Holmes to find out if they'll succeed. Read on if you like dinosaurs so much you want to stab them in the brain.

The things we really loved about it was, it was the first one to really take you out into what felt like a lush expansive outdoor world that was there for you to explore. It sort of deviated from that corridor crawler Doom clone that had been the standard for what a first person shooter was. Although, a lot of that, if you go back and look at it today, was through the use of fog planes and basically like a 6-foot draw distance.

I first saw Screwjumper, Frozen Codebase's premiere effort at IndieGamesCon this year, and was impressed by how simple it was to play and how that challenge motivated me to keep improving my terrible performance.

With the game's Xbox Live Arcade release coming up as well as its eventual InstantAction offering, I spoke with producer Ben Geisler and design director Norb Rozek to learn more about the game, the company, and its views on independent development.

Norb Rozek: We were actually going to launch this company with a completely different game idea, but then we had everybody that we know tell us that we were on crack for thinking of this idea, so we said "wow, gosh darn, we better get a different idea." I was like, "I have this idea called Screwjumper," and everybody said "alright, let's do that." Thus was born this weird figure of darkness, this avenger of evil, the Screwjumper.

After years of neglect, cooperative play is finally back in the limelight thanks to successful games like Halo and Gears of War. However, few games fully embrace the feature to the extent that EA's upcoming Army of Two (PS3, X360) does.

I spoke with producer Reid Schneider--who noted the team's reliance on the mantra "co-op's not the mode, co-op is the game"--about how and why Army of Two places such a heavy focus on having two players work through a campaign collaboratively. Don't skip the second page of the interview, which delves into the intriguing political backdrop of Army of Two, the post-9/11 world of private military corporations such as Blackwater and Aegis. For this and more, read on.

We knew we wanted to focus on co-op, that was really core for us. We had some ideas, but we didn't know the exact setting we wanted to do. Back on Xbox 1, there were a couple interesting co-op experiences, and then if you think back to Contra or Double Dragon, there were some, but when we were first thinking about this nobody had really nailed it on next-gen consoles yet.

Really our core focus from the ground up was that you need to play co-op with your partner, you need to cooperate to survive. In other games, co-op is more like an add-on. In Army of Two, co-op's not the mode, co-op is the game. Read more...

There's a Team Fortress 2 interview on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, asking Robin Walker and Charlie Brown of Valve everything about the oft-delayed multiplayer shooter. Thanks Blues News.

Harvey Birdman, his sidekick Peanut, sex-toy happy Peter Potamus and the rest of the crew from Cartoon Network's Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law will soon make their way to PlayStation 2, PSP, and Wii courtesy of High Voltage and Capcom. To learn more about the upcoming title, the Shack called High Voltage lead designer Micah Skartika to the stand. Here is his sworn testimony.

Well, let's put it this way, an average show is about 20 pages of script, and we are looking at about 140 pages for the whole game. I remember the first time we submitted our scripts to the writers, and they were like, "Hey look, it's the Harvey Birdman interactive movie!"

Last week's announcement that Aspyr Media would be bringing Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock PC and Mac raised a number of questions. Would it be compataible with existing guitars? How would it control otherwise? Which console version, if any, is it be based on? What about downloadable content? The possibility of imported songs and user-created charts? System requirements?

For the answers, I turned to producer Jay Gordon.

Shack: Are you concerned that the PC and Mac editions won't provide the same social experience of gathering around the television as the console editions?

Jay Gordon: Well, more and more PCs are making it into the living room every day, and those machines are often hooked up to big, fancy TVs--so those people who have integrated their entertainment systems will get the same experience...I don't think it's realistic that we can completely recreate that experience with a PC and Mac version, but I think we can create different kinds of social experiences around this powerful franchise.

In case our own spoiler-laden interview with Ken Levine wasn't enough, GameSpot now also has an interview about specific elements in BioShock. Don't read unless you have finished the game!

The 50th Gamers With Jobs podcast is up, co-hosted by 2K Games Boston's Ken Levine. As you'd expect, BioShock is among the topics discussed.

I recently had the chance to check out Funcom's upcoming action MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Due out on PC in March 2008 and Xbox 360 a bit after that, the game impressed me its the game's distinctive combat.

Afterwards, I spoke with content designer Jason Stone on a number of topics, including Funcom's approach to the traditional MMO grind, how the game distinguishes itself from World of Warcraft, and, of course, nudity.

Jason Stone: From the very beginning, we decided an M rating would be what the game would end up [with]. We have not shied from that, we fully expect to get an M rating. We try not to make sure we don't put anything in the game that would give us an AO, but we want to do Howard's world justice. That means blood, that means sex, that means some nudity.
Read more...

There's an interview with EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs on TenTonHammer, chatting about Warhammer Online at the Austin Game Developers Conference.

Chris Remo was lucky enough to visit the Bungie offices recently and play through Halo 3. Is it awesome, or really awesome? We'll have a review September 23, but until then we can offer you this interview with Frank O'Connor. Bungie's content manager talks about Halo 3 development, the fanbase, downloadable content plans, and what's next for the studio.

When we got to June and we were feature complete, we said, "Whoa, we kind of did it." Certainly I look at the features on our box, and I worked with some of the marketing and PR people, and they said, "What are the most important things in the game," and I started reeling off topics: "[map tweaking feature] Forge--no, campaign co-op--no, the films."

We really fulfilled our promises we made to ourselves with Halo 2, and then some, some big ideas above and beyond that. And they're pretty polished; it's not just stuff we stapled on at the end.

There's a nine page Hellgate: London interview on Gaming Trend, chatting with Bill Roper about the highly anticipated action RPG. The interview is also available in audio form.

Titan Quest developer Iron Lore is breaking into console territory soon, and with that shift came two recent appointments: Jeff Goodsill to president, and former EA Mythic employee Steve Marvin to design director. Read my interviews with the two, and glean tidbits on such informative industry topics as the size of Iron Lore's gaming room, what a grognard is, and how far they are in BioShock.

At the time, PC Action-RPG franchises restricted their audiences by topic or by difficulty. We believed the casual and mass-market buyers were under-served. Diablo limited its audience with its mature rating and high level of gore. Some parents would not buy a game with a flaming skull on the box cover for their kids.