Ok time for an update about this title I' d say

some new (in my eyes) great looking wii footage

Pre-E3 2008: The Conduit Update
High Voltage preps a playable E3 build. Find out what to expect.
by Matt Casamassina


July 9, 2008 - Wii owners have rallied behind the Wii-exclusive first-person shooter, The Conduit, developed by High Voltage Software, since we first announced it. The game is still without a publisher, mostly because the software house is in no rush to find one. That being said, the company has created an E3 build which it will be showing behind closed doors next week. We chatted with HVS chief creator office, Eric Nofsinger, to find out what to expect from the rapidly developing FPS. Below, you can find our interview in addition to exclusive new screenshots and video direct from the latest version of the game.


IGN: First of all, will The Conduit be at E3?

Eric Nofsinger: Yes we will be at E3! We are only doing private showings and leaving playable demos with a few select folks who we are anxious to get feedback and input from... like IGN, of course.

IGN: You still haven' t announced a publisher. Have you gotten serious about aligning yourselves with one yet?

Eric: No, not until they give us what we want and tons of money. Oh, and a monkey. [Laughs]

We are taking it real slow. We aren' t in any rush. This is something I probably could have been a bit more clear about before; we have our own funding to completion. We know we want a publisher, but we want it to be the right fit for the publisher, High Voltage, the game, and the fans that have so vocally supported us.

IGN: So tell us, what does the E3 build encapsulate?

Eric: The E3 demo is the first half of one of the later missions in the game. It will be showing off the majority of our alien enemies (the Drudge), several of our weapons, and very pretty environment. Story-wise, it gives a small taste of what the player will be doing and finding out after the Drudge invasion of Washington D.C. has begun. Though, I should probably note the demo will be hard set on Easy difficulty so that casual players can have a chance of seeing everything without having to build up the skill set they would normally need to play the mission.

IGN: How would you say the game has progressed since we last wrote about it?

Eric: The single-player portion of the game is near the point of being just bug fixes and fine tuning. And polish, polish, polish. A lot of our team and development effort is moving to multiplayer now.

IGN: You' ve said the controls will be fully customizable. How so? Have you looked at Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for inspiration?

Eric: Yes, Medal of Honor Heroes 2 was a source of inspiration, but we believe we' ve taken things even a step further. In MoHH2, you were able to adjust things like dead zone size, player turning speed and cursor sensitivity via a paused menu. In The Conduit, you can adjust these and other options in real time. That means you don' t have to go back and forth to get the feel of your changes; you see them instantly and can tell if your adjustments are working for you. We are also taking some inspiration from Smash Bros. Brawl and will be allowing players to customize their control layouts. Don' t like using the B button to shoot? Map it to the button you prefer. Like to use a certain Wii-Remote motion for something? You will be able to map to those too.

IGN: Sounds great. We' ve posted some new screens that show off some additional graphic effects for the game. How much of your tech are you hoping to implement into the final product?

Eric: All of it. [laughs] Seriously, we wouldn' t be showing this stuff off if we weren' t planning on using it and using it a lot. Some really fantastic graphical improvements came on line recently. Our artists and engineers are so amazing! I just wanted to give them all a big hug.

IGN: Tell us about the online experience you' re hoping to deliver.

Eric: Our current multiplayer benchmarks are 16 players and we will definitely have the standard modes like Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. We are still exploring the possibilities and depending on how things go, we will have more. But we want to make certain that our online experience is solid and if that means sacrificing some other modes or features to do that, we will. We are choosing quality over quantity.

IGN; We' re all for that. A lot of Nintendo fans have been ecstatic about The Conduit, but there are some critics who say that the game offers little to distinguish itself from other FPS efforts. What is your position?

Eric: We' ve been so happy with the response we' ve received! It really fuels us to do our best. You know? Sure. I think it' s fair that some folks are pointing out similarities to other FPS titles but I hope that they can see that was one of our primary goals -- to make a really solid fast-paced action shooter and that is the core of our game. Then we built the right differentiators on top of that foundation... we didn' t want to be different just for the sake of being different. And I honestly believe we have some very unique and interesting gameplay via the All Seeing Eye device, a storyline that isn' t set during World War II [laughs], a totally customizable control scheme and layout, and we' ve got some awesome high-quality graphics to boot. And this whole package is on the Wii, a platform that is crying out for a shooter like this like a desert cries out for rain. Even if I weren' t making this game, it is the game I would want to buy for the Wii.

ign article


With every little bit of news I can' t keep myself from getting more excited about this game.

The new footage looks just sweet if you ask me. It' s not ps3/360 like but hell to me that looks just damn sweet and really shows how lazy other devs are. If a little studio with rather limited funds can do this. Then all those big devs should easily be able to do much better than this. For a game that doesn' t even have a publisher yet this looks just great.

It looks great, it seems to be running smoothly last I read they were aiming for 60fps and he controls should be ok as well since you can customize them like in medal of honor heroes 2 and it doesn' t seem in that vid like the guy playing was having any problems with them.

I' d say this is a game to keep your eyes on for any Wii owner.

Now go ahead and start your Wii bashing

Now go ahead and start your Wii bashing

Zomg! Gimp/toy/dildo controller/no games.

E3 2008: livewire demo

The demo from The Conduit that was at E3 played by someone from High Voltage.

Only thing I can say against it that this looks to easy. But if I'm not mistaking the demo was set on easy or normal (don't remember for sure) but yeah there'll be harder difficulties for sure so I doubt that's going to be one of the problems in this game.

There's a whole bunch of other videos over on IGN. So far anyone with a Wii who wants something to look forward  to be sure to check them out.

Like the one where you can custumize your controller settings on the fly. Might come in handy.

Really doesn't look all that bad in my eyes and seems to be shaping up rather well.  The controls seem to be good nor am I complaining about how the game looks. Now if they nail the online part as will this game might turn out to be a must buy.

edit: ooh yeah forgot

The Conduit to support 16-Player online multiplayer using WiiSpeak

High Voltage, who’s developing The Conduit, revealed today that thegame will feature a 16 player online multiplayer mode. The company alsostated that the mode will feature functionality with WiiSpeak,Nintendo’s new online microphone.

And some impressions from E3:

The Conduit was the very first game I demoed at E3, and it remained the highlight right to the end of the day. I can’t tell you which I liked more…the actual game, or the passion from the guys at High Voltage. I can’t stress enough that these guys are true Wii fans and gamers…just like you and I. They don’t get why third parties don’t deliver AAA content to the Wii. They know that platform can do so much more than what is currently available. They love the casual/expanded audience, but they want core reasons to play the Wii too. There is no doubt that these guys know what they are doing, and want to bring you the best FPS experience on the Wii. After getting eyes/hands-on with the game today, High Voltage is more than delivering on the promises they’ve made.

Let’s talk graphics, shall we? There is no competition when it comes to visual presentation in The Conduit. Right now, I would say that Galaxy is the benchmark for great Wii graphics. The Conduit is a very different type of game, and the style means that the visuals are much different. Having said that, this title has to be the best looking game I’ve seen on the platform…period. The screenshots look great, the trailers are fantastic, but actually seeing it with your own two eyes makes things even better. I was no longer looking at things through rose-tinted glasses. I was looking at the game, right in-front of me…a first person account. The Conduit really makes you realize just how absolutely lazy developers are with their Wii games. I was annoyed with third parties before, but The Conduit looks so good that it’ll make you sick over third party support thus far.

One element that bleeds into the game from graphics to gameplay and everything else is detail. High Voltage is treating everything with extreme care, and it shows. No matter how minor the detail, they are pouring a ton of work into it. That’s because they understand that little things can make for a big impact. Take this little bit, for instance. The sight on your sniper scope reflects the game world around you, in real-time. Walk up to a car, and you’ll see the car. Face your back to a building, and check it out in the scope reflection. You can even point the gun at the ground, and in the scope reflection, you’ll see the cloud patterns moving…once again, in real-time. This is the passion that is going into every facet of the game.

One of the highlights of my playtime was checking out the various weapons. I watched a playthrough first, and then jumped in for my own try. The weapons that were in the playtest ranged from typical FPS fodder to some ridiculous alien tech…and I mean that in a good way. There is one gun that shoots a homing shot that’s guided by your pointer. It’s almost too much fun to shoot a shot down the street, and then have it curve in and hit an enemy out of nowhere. While that gun is great, my favorite was yet another alien weapon. This one had an attack that I haven’t seen in any other game. It shoots some sort of ammo that literally wraps around whatever it hits, and continues on that path. The team demoed the weapon by shooting it at a lamp post, and the shot wrapped around the post and spun in circles. Neat, but why would you want that? Well, say you have an enemy that is around a corner. You could aim at that corner, shoot, and have the shot attach and whip around the corner to take out the enemy. Tell me that that isn’t awesome.

As far as game controls go, things are still being worked on…but it doesn’t even matter. While the team is still nailing down some preset control schemes, the player will be able to map anything they want to any button. You want the joypad to bash, that’s just fine. You want to fire with the 2 button, go for it. Fully customizable controls, and you make the scheme that works for you. On top of that, you also get to mess with the controller sensitivity and bounding box until your heart’s content. Make the bounding box as big as your TV screen, or as tiny as your crosshair. For those that loved the controls in Metroid Prime 3 or Medal of Honor: Heroes II, The Conduit takes the best parts from both and one-ups them. It’s exactly the type of thing we wanted to see.

I played with one of the preset schemes, and I had no trouble at all jumping right in. Jumping, turning, bashing, shooting…all second nature as soon as I picked up the controllers. Everything was extremely responsive, and felt more than comfortable. There’s even a lock-on that you can activate if you are looking for more of a Metroid Prime-like experience. Of course, it’s up to you if you want to use that. One of the cool benefits you get from locking on is the ability to see how far away the enemy is, as well as his health. A little display pops up to let you know just what the distance is between you and the enemy, and a bar represents the health.

Of course, the game is far from being optimized, but The Conduit already puts so many retail Wii games to shame. There are titles that have already shipped that don’t run a fraction as well as The Conduit does. There was one instance where the game dipped just a hair below 30 FPS, and the team automatically apologized. They didn’t try to hide it, they went back and showed the frame dip again. Of course, they said that they aren’t done getting the game to that 30FPS level, but the final game will without a doubt ship at 30 FPS all the way through. They even said that if they can get a higher framerate out of it, then that’s what they will do. Once again, this little bit of my playtest showed me just how dedicated the team is.

We got into a little talk about multiplayer as well. The High Voltage gang already has 16 player multiplayer up-and running. Right now, they are dedicating a ton of their time to making the multiplayer what it needs to be. Creating modes, levels, and all that good stuff. The same amount of detail is going into the multiplayer as is the single player. We can expect every single gun from the single-player campaign, so get ready to blast the hell out of your opponents from around corners. High Voltage knows what they’ve promised for multiplayer, and they also know what we expect. They have zero plans to let us down.

With The Conduit, High Voltage is proving that the Wii can do some amazing things. You wouldn’t think it from the third party landscape out there. Really, High Voltage is the dream team we were hoping for. A truly dedicated group of programmers that know what the core is crying out for. They are Wii fans, and they know the Wii can play home to some truly amazing titles. Their hard work is something that is rare with third parties…which is a huge shame. Every developer should take such pride in their products. High Voltage is working their ass off to deliver the experience they know that we want…and they want it too.

I’ll end with a little bit of conversation that came up in our elevator ride down to the hotel lobby. We got into talking about publishers, and while High Voltage wouldn’t give me a name, they had a truly horrible story to tell. One publisher they approached outright told them that they didn’t understand why High Voltage was making the game. They thought the project was great, but had no idea who they were trying to sell to. After saying that, the publishers said that they wanted to turn the game into a $20 project, and crap it out for a holiday release. Yes, the publisher really said “crap it out”. Seriously, how disheartening is that?

Whether you like FPS titles or not, you should pay attention to High Voltage. The Conduit is set to upstage almost all third parties on Wii. When the game hits, and if the sales are there, it will start the countdown clock for third party garbage. High Voltage is a team for you, the core gamer. They want to bring you that kick-ass experience that you’ve been waiting for. Take interest in the game or not…just appreciate and acknowledge what High Voltage is trying to do. They aren’t just making an FPS game, they are trying to change the state of Wii support for the core gamer.

edit taking from D'harhan at sonicstadium. Well enjoy

Looks sweet, aswell as the smooth graphics and enviroments the Wiimote controls seem to make the game look alot more appealing, looks seamless to play and very responsive.. One thing that most Pad FPS are not..

Yeah, i remember that post from D'harhan (waves at Demonoroth).

I specially like this part:

I’ll end with a little bit of conversation that came up in ourelevator ride down to the hotel lobby. We got into talking aboutpublishers, and while High Voltage wouldn’t give me a name, they had atruly horrible story to tell. One publisher they approached outrighttold them that they didn’t understand why High Voltage was making thegame. They thought the project was great, but had no idea who they weretrying to sell to. After saying that, the publishers said that theywanted to turn the game into a $20 project, and crap it out for aholiday release. Yes, the publisher really said “crap it out”.Seriously, how disheartening is that?

Nothing people didn't know, but seeing it put out like that really makes one find out who said "gentleman" works for.

I played it during lunch on the 3rd day of the show.  The High Voltage guys were toting around a Wii dev kit and a little LCD tv to show the game off to whoever wanted to play it.  It was actually one of the games that caught my attention.  I walked away very impressed.  Between that and Madworld I'm getting a Wii when they are released.

Btw, sorry for the absence.  I'll be writing up all the E3 impressions and interviews over the weekend.  The last three weeks have been a blur.  Flying to LA, E3, hiking a mountain, flying back to Florida, immediately getting in a car and driving 26 hours to Minnesota, spent a week and a half visiting family all over Minnesota, and then driving 26 hours back home which just ended about 2 hours ago.  I'm spent.