I updated the PA Presents page with teaser images for a couple of our new projects as well as a new wallpaper. As you can see we are doing two projects for Brothers in Arms. I can’t say anything about the first one except to say it’s not what you expect. The second one is similar to what we’ve done in the past. It’s an eight page story and tells the incredible if perhaps slightly exaggerated tale of one “Jumpin’ Jack”, a soldier in the 101st airborne.
You’ll be able to see our World of Warcraft project here in just a few days. The Brady Games WOW strategy guide is set to ship on Nov. 16 and in it you’ll find about thirteen original comics by Tycho and I. Brady came to us and asked us to help them illustrate some of the concepts and rules that players who are new to an MMO might not know about. So you’ll see comics about all kinds of stuff like character creation, in game etiquette and the differences between the various classes. If you’re buying WOW this month pick up the guide and let me know what you think of the comics. It was a lot of fun to do and so I’m curious if you guys would like to see more stuff like this. Maybe even a series of books, “Penny Arcade’s Guide to Game X”. I don’t know, I’m just sort of thinking out loud here.
In other news EA grinds up babies to make their games. Well maybe they aren’t that bad but they do totally fuck over their employees. I’ve heard about shit like this from my friends in the industry for years so it wasn’t a big surprise. What was surprising is that the employees banded together and fought back. It will be interesting to see how this turns out and if it has any effect on the rest of the industry.
I haven’t talked about Halo 2 yet but that’s because I’ve been playing it every night. For me it’s a lot like Halo 1 in that I lost interest in the single player campaign almost immediately but I’ll be addicted to the multiplayer for months. Tycho beat the entire game and he assures me that I’m not missing anything. In fact when I asked him about the ending he swore and kicked over a chair. I don’t really care about that though as what I was looking for out of Halo 2 was an improved multiplayer experience. The addition of Live play along with new weapons, levels, modes, abilities and the possibility of DLC is enough to make me happy with my purchase.
We used to play Halo 1 every Thursday night out at the Microsoft building with some of the best Halo players on the west coast. Needless to say we didn’t really have any business trying to compete with those guys. We’d go there with our friends and anyone from PA was referred to as a “brick”. The idea being that if one of us was placed on your team we would simply weigh you down. If by some unlucky twist of fate we were stuck together to make our own team we were called “Team Short Bus”. When it came time to construct our Halo 2 clan we chose to go with the significantly more intimidating “Team Inferno”. It’s almost cool enough to mask the terrible shame I feel every time I load up the game.
-Gabe out
