Backbreaker Dev Diary #6: Tackle Alley - IGN (original) (raw)

Come and get your first gameplay video.

Hello and welcome to our sixth Backbreaker dev diary. For those who don't know yet: Backbreaker is a next-gen football game by NaturalMotion featuring fully interactive tackles. It's powered by euphoria, the motion synthesis engine behind Grand Theft Auto IV and Star Wars: Force Unleashed.
In past dev diaries I have told you about how we're making Backbreaker a completely fresh and on-the-field football experience, using state-of-the art technology and production methods. However, I know that many of you have been clamouring for gameplay footage, and I'm excited to say that today is the day.

To be clear, all of our trailers and videos (incl. those in the dev diaries) have always been captured in-game. No touch-ups or pre-rendered CG. With previous videos, we've moved the cameras around to emphasize or dramatize the action. Today, we're showing you footage that has been captured live from the player's view, as one of our game testers was playing the game.

Over the coming weeks, we'll show you all aspects of the game, but today we're going to start with something special: Tackle Alley. Tackle Alley was conceived as a test scenario to fine tune our control and camera systems. The idea is simple: you're on one side of the field and need to score a touchdown. Easy, right? Except that you need to get past a whole barrage of defensive players who are trying to take you down. This turned out to be so much fun that it's likely to make it into the full title as a mini-game.

But enough talk, here's the Tackle Alley gameplay video:

Obviously, this is still work in progress, but hopefully you can see just how much fun even this mini-game is. All the tackles are different and generated on-the-fly, so you never know what's going to happen. But whatever does happen – you know it's unique to you. No-one else will have seen the same 100-yard run before!

I'm burning to show you more – but I'm afraid that's it for today.

In the meantime, make sure you check out our previous dev diaries.

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