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The video gamer community is full of people who create fan games that tribute their favorite video games. These fan games are a labor of love, and while not all of them are good (most suck if I’m being honest) quite a few gain the attention of the general gaming public and AAA game developers. However, some companies love to send cease-and-desist letters to the people who make these fan games (coughNintendocough), while others are more open-minded. It does my heart good when a large AAA development studio gives its blessing to the tiny team behind an ambitious fan game.

Enter Installation 01. No, it’s not the building where the U.S. government stores the Arc of the Covenant, it’s the name of a Halo fan game. Installation 01 recreates the multiplayer components of Halo 2 and 3 with the Unity engine and, when released, will be free for PC gamers. Installation 01 nails the look and feel of classic Halo, but that’s where the game runs into legal problems. Does Installation 01’s mere existence violate any copyrights? Is the game even allowed to exist? According to the dev team’s latest blog post, the answers are a resounding no and yes respectively.  Sorta.

According to the announcement, the team behind Installation 01 has been in touch with current Halo developer 343 Industries for the past several months. The Installation 01 team shared a lot of information with 343, including development plans, planned content, and the release schedule. The Installation 01 project manager and lead, referred to as Church (a reference to the character of the same name from the web series Red vs. Blue), participated in a phone meeting with 343 and was pleased with the result:

“We are happy to announce that the outcome of the call was both incredibly information and very positive! Through these interactions we have ensured that Installation 01 is not under any imminent legal threat, provided we remain non-commercial in nature and scope, and continue to follow Microsoft’s Game Content Usage Rules to the letter. We are now able to say with certainty that Installation 01 will never be accepting donations. We also will not be selling i01 or Halo related merchandise. This is to keep a respectful distance between us and Microsoft’s intellectual property. It is also important to note that these rules and assurances from 343 are specific to Installation 01 as a project, and should not be interpreted to apply elsewhere. Through ongoing communication with 343 Industries we hope that we, as a fan project, can continue to be a positive driving force within the Halo community.”

In other words, as long as Installation 01 remains free to play and the developers never receive any money for the project, even if it’s a thank you gift of $1 from a random fan, 343 and Microsoft will not take any legal action. This decision does not mean 343 or Microsoft actively support the development of the game, just that the companies have adopted a laissez-faire attitude. From what I have seen, Installation 01 looks very promising and will definitely scratch the itch PC gamers feel for a proper Halo game on the PC, especially since Halo Online (a free Halo multiplayer game for PC designed for Russian audiences) was axed back in 2016. I personally look forward to the official release of Installation 01.

All you have to do to get my attention is talk about video games, technology, anime, and/or Dungeons & Dragons - also people in spandex fighting rubber suited monsters.

Gaming

Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made

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As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.

Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”

You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.

 

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Gaming

You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.

The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.

The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.

The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.

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This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive

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Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.

For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”

Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.

Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.

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