• He identifies Butcher Bay as being 10 hours of gameplay and says that Dark Athena is the same.
• Yes, there will be bosses in the game.
• The engine features improved tech over EFBB and The Darkness.
• There will be six multiplayer modes and 20 maps.
• Bounty cards are confirmed as the vehicle to deliver unlockable content to the player. Some are tricky to find and achievements are attached to finding the cards.
• Tigon provides Starbreeze with creative feedback, helped with the "manuscript", and setup the voice recording that took place in New York.
• Tigon had "Hollywood writers" look through the script, apparently concentrating on Vin's lines
• Confirmed that Starbreeze does have a third project (in addition to Dark Athena for Atari and "Project Redlime" for EA) attached to an unnamed publisher.

Awesome Riddick cosplay costume
Take a look at Severo Gonzalez and his awesome Riddick costume. He said this costume landed him a 1st place in a Houston contest. Nice work!



Riddick Blu-ray: So, the UK is bummed
Well, I guess Universal jumped the gun when they told retailers that the TCOR BD was coming December 30. Still no solid news on the domestic date, but all sorts of international information is starting to show up which includes release dates of late February or early March depending on which country it is.

I'm trying to suppress a feeling of horror as I read descriptions of the extras on the UK releases (TCOR and PB), as they appear to contain the same old stuff as the HD DVD releases, which is not much different than the SDVDs. I sure hope Universal didn't just count on selling the exact same product to the fanbase yet again and that this preliminary information is wrong. One thing that gives me a tiny sliver of hope is that maybe this information is bogus; the PB disk refers to the Butcher Bay game which clearly can't be right as Dark Athena is the next game title that they would want to crosspromote. Weird.

If you read my Blu-Ray wishlist article, you will see that this could be an opportunity to put some great new material on there and give everyone a reason to pick it up. But yeah, oh well, this is still probably how its going to be.

IMDB shows additions to Dark Athena cast
I noticed some updates to the AoDA IMDB cast page recently, adding new voice actor credits and a bunch of new character names. Not many of those mean too much yet, although it looks like the young girl mentioned below and also shown in the trailer will have another family member showing up at some point. Best of all, Cole Hauser is listed as returning to play the merc Johns. I love that guy.

• Vin Diesel as Riddick
• Lance Henriksen as Dacher
• Heidi Schooler as Ellen Silverman
• Bridget Shergalis as Lynn Silverman
• Mark Ivanir as Exbob / Mad Margo
• William Morgan Sheppard as Senate / Pavlo
• Eijiro Ozaki as Yoto
• Patrice Fisher as Grinder
• Jovan Rameau as Jaylor
• David Andriole as Multiple
• Gideon Emery as (voice)
• Michelle Forbes as Revas
• Cole Hauser as William J. Johns

Tigon Studios website gone
Wow, a strange end to a strange web-story, doubly strangerized by the fact that they've got two games coming out soon and both of them have pretty great press.

You see, the Tigon website (in case you didn't know, Tigon Studios is the game production company Vin Diesel founded) is gone. Gone, as in the domain expired and it looks like a squatter got it.



The site has always been a weird beast. The super-complex animated flash design was cool at first and they had some interesting content, including Butcher Bay turned into a full movie. But then it just got frozen in time, and for forever had such goofy stuff as an announcement that Vin Diesel was going to be playing the Hitman in the movie even after the movie had come and gone with a different actor. Etc. They threw up some Wheelman stuff, but in general updates were few and far between.

So RIP, Tigon website. Without frequent updates, maybe this was for the best anyway.

A brief bit of info on Captain Revas
Spotted a link to this preview on this Michelle Forbes fansite which has a tiny bit about Revas, the captain of the Dark Athena:

She plays the captain as cool and calculating; in many ways Captain Revas reminds us of an evil version of Admiral Cain from Battlestar Galactica.

PitcherBlacker over the holidays
Mix a dead main PC, last-minute Christmas preparations, a sick kid, and a trip into the frigid, snowy wastes of central USA together and you'll get me too busy to work on PBer for a while. Above are a bunch of updates which hopefully will stimulate you in some way. I've got more material in the wings, including new feature content that I'm working on but it will take me a little while to make it happen. And honestly, I won't be able to even think about the site for a while. So unless something big drops into my lap or I get the urge and can't stay away, this will probably be it until maybe the tail end of the month. Hope the year end is great for everyone.

The lighting effects and bold color palette help to produce an appropriately claustrophobic, frightening atmosphere. This is especially apparent in the basilica level, which is steeped in icy blue, metallic tones. All of this produces an overall effect that is reminiscent of the better adventure games of the 16-bit era.

Dark Athena opens with Riddick going into cryo-sleep only to be rudely awakened when the vessel is jacked by Revas, captain of the Dark Athena. Riddick escapes into the air ducts of the new ship, runs into a kid who lets him know about Revas' slave trade, and then starts his assault on all the bad guys who were dumb enough to get in his way.

• every model's been redone
• the AI's better
• there's a new weapon select system
• environments are three times the size they once were

• Joystiq
• Big Download
• The Escapist
• Kotaku
• Team XBox

• It won't force you to replay Butcher Bay before getting to the new Dark Athena game (smart!)
• It's true, you get the swingblades that shouldn't appear in the story for five years, and they're called "Ulaks"
• You and Johns have been captured on the Dark Athena ship
• New enemy: the Ghost Drone, a sometimes-remote-controlled guard on the Dark Athena
• You can carry a Drone, use the body as a shield, and fire the gun that's welded to its hand
• Riddick can control a Drone if he finds a control station
• The previews say the Dark Athena campaign is 10 hours of gameplay
• Parts of Butcher Bay, such as the mines, have been altered based on gamer feedback
• Cole Hauser returns!

Dark Athena: Lance Henriksen?!?!?!
I noticed that IMDB had a page showing the currently known cast for the game, and right there under Vin Diesel is Bishop himself, Lance Henriksen! God, if this is true, that will be so awesome. The first game had Ron Perlman, this one has Henriksen... the only way they could top this for the next game would be if they got Ghandi or St Francis of Assisi.

Dark Athena: March 3rd
Thanks to reader Shane Langley for pointing out a bunch of AoDA stuff today, including the fact that Amazon has posted up pre-order listings for all platform versions of Dark Athena with a release date of March 3,2009. And until someone tells me otherwise I'm going to believe it, because Amazon gets those dates from the publisher which means Atari gave it to them.

Also of note is the feature list on the page for the PC version (i.e. the only version), which among other things mentions a Capture Riddick mode along with the fact that the multiplayer will be for 2-8 players. Yeah!

• TCOR (Unrated DC)
• Pitch Black (Unrated DC)

Atari today confirmed a PC version will be released as well

• Boba Debt's original tutorial: HTML'ed by someone on one of the prop forums. Lots of pictures.
• One guy's successful result: Showing pictures of the process as he built his own pair.
• A discussion thread: A thread where people talk about the ins and outs of using the tutorial, getting the materials, and obtaining the knives.

Fernando Dominguez update
Just a few things... sounds like FD is pretty busy with his bodybuilding, but as posted earlier he is still planning a return to his fanfilm and comic work. Here's something from a recent email:

at this moment I´m training and preparing the World Championship to be held in Mexico,Cancun next week(8-9 November) under World Amateur Bodybuilding Association (WABBA)rules. For two weeks I won the regional championship and this last weekend I won the national one, qualifying for the World Championship.

He also updated his site with a few shots from the show, where he was actually in Riddick costume (well, a goggles-and-baby-oil version anyway, heh). Congratulations, Fernando!



Ridiculous Necromonger dance video
If you don't ask me why I was reading the IMDB TCOR boards, then I won't have to remember the experience. I did manage to find two worthwhile things, though. One is the article linked below, and the other is this totally, totally silly video of a guy in a Necromonger outfit doing the nasty dance. I mean... fist action!



Twohy/Aliens article with Twohy comments
Looks like this guy might be the reason Twohy's last news update on his site included a piece about the Aliens franchise. Check out the piece, which includes several comments from Twohy himself.

• Pär "Pelle" Tingström's high-res EFBB character renders: Tingström is a 3D modeler who's worked on some pretty high-profile games, including EFBB. These are some sweet (although untextured) renders of some of the cooler characters.
• New Mecca rifle prop at Propstore: I thought the design work for the Helion elements was pretty nice but in the movie a lot of the props looked pretty fake. The armor and rifles especially. But still, if you've got $519 USD to spare, have at ye.
• Detailed Lord Marshal costume/helm photos: I thought the LM costume was pretty sweet, and it's cool to be able to browse through very detailed photos taken by a guy that owns one of the screen-used costumes. There are also Necro Commander costume photos here.
• Review of UMD version of TCOR: Maybe this only is interesting to me, as I just got a PSP (probably the last person on the planet to do so). Should probably get this version to add to my ridiculous collection of different versions of the movie.
• Prop Collection Photos: Just a bunch of shots and information on people's props and replicas. Kind of cool to browse through. Some pretty detailed photos, if anyone needs them for reference.
• Moar Prop Collection Photos: Same as above, but less so.
• New Mecca clothes props for cheap: I don't know about you, but $60-65 USD for an authentic costume from TCOR is kind of tempting. Looks like they're all sets of shirts and pants, for sale at Hollywood Prop Collector.
  
  

As a music copyist, my job is to take the orchestral scores for the film- anywhere between 20 to 35 separate orchestral scores, extract the parts for each member of the orchestra, transp[ose them if necessary (trumpets and french horns play in different keys and therefore a different musical note has to be written to have them play the pitch you want to hear), duplicate the parts, proofread them, and prepare an orchestral breakdown so that the sound engineer and composer knows who is playing what on each score - important for royalty payments as well as timing the recording sessions so there is not overtime and the musicians take a proper break per hour. These behind-the-scenes are things that you might not be aware of as a listener, but are essential to make the session go flawlessly and smoothly. On a film such as the one I just finished "The Punisher: War Zone", there were in the end over 3000 separate sheets of music that had to be printed, libraried, taped up, etc... So i end up wearing several hats at a time.

Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.

The Chronicles of Riddick seems like an odd choice for this column. After all, it grossed $57.6 million during its domestic release (with another $33 million coming from international venues). Unfortunately, it cost a reported $110 million to make. It was a pretty massive bomb, and fans worldwide had been waiting for a second appearance from Riddick since his origin and to say that this film let them all down is a bit of an understatement.

What does work better are the castings of Chinlund as Tombs and Davalos as Kyra. In stark contrast to the complete apathy that both Feore and Dench show their characters, both Toombs and Kyra are played like their lives depended on it.

In the end, The Chronicles of Riddick is a strange exercise in film. There are few likable characters, the locations are bizarre and gloomy and heavy violence permeates nearly every scene. The lead character is a borderline psychopath and the bad guys are hard to buy into.

“Everyone knows I love the Riddick character and I’m always working on it,” Diesel asserted. “It just takes five years to make another one because David Twohy and I are so precious about it.”