Set in the year 2520 you are Jack Mason, a military virologist, assigned to escort a mysterious female prisoner to the surface of a mined-out prison planet previously known as Earth. You wonder staring out the window on reentry how you could have wound up with such a task so far below your stature when the craft shakes violently and you're thrown from your bunk. The ship has been hit! Who is shooting us down? The military? Why? Now it's up to you to find a way off the planet and your only hope is this mysterious cargo, Kariah, of whom you're most certain there's much yet to be revealed. Now if you can just figure out a way off the planet before the military detonates a nuclear device above the planet surface you may have the chance to find out!

Welcome to Pariah. This is the top-secret project that Digital Extremes [DE] has been working on in secret for the last two years and it's definitely a gorgeous looking FPS. The engine is a hybrid of the Unreal engine highly modified by the DE team. The engine contains features found in UTC, UT2k3 and UT2k4 as well as many updates added by DE including custom shaders and visual FX. DE also opted for the Havok physics engine over the one on offer within the engine itself.

Pariah will contain a single-player campaign playing out the story hinted at above as well as multiplayer which will include two new game types which are variations of pre-existing play types found in most FPS titles. Set to ship in Spring 2005 for PC, Xbox and PS2 we were treated to an early playable build which was demoed to us by programmer Charles Randall from [DE].

Going Solo
The single-player experience will encompass your journey to find a way off the surface of the prison planet prior to the nuclear detonation and your only hope for accomplishing this will be to rely on the assistance of your previous prisoner, Kariah, who is adept at hacking into computer systems. There's definitely more going on below the surface with Kariah and we're promised this will come to light as you progress through the game. She is obviously considered a dangerous asset by the military or we wouldn't be nuking a planet to snuff her eh? J

The gameplay will span 15 areas/zones each averaging somewhere around 20-30 minutes of gameplay. Pariah has a very futuristic look but also offers plenty of outdoor exploration as well and the beauty resident in the flowing of the tree branches and the falling leaves may lead to some death by scenery until one grows accustomed to the imagery not typically found in your shooter titles.

We only saw a few small portions of the title including one outdoor map which found Dr. Mason defending a small outpost while Kariah worked feverishly to activate a Pain Tower. All the prisoners of the planet were outfitted with implants with which the Pain Towers could "communicate" with thus keeping the prisoners in control by offering them a little "incentive' to remain so. The towers have gone offline and the prisoners are conveniently armed to the teeth and attempting to off the good doctor and his assistant. Right away we noticed one of the custom shader FX the team has put to good use throughout the game. When firing a grenade a unique blurring effect is rendered on screen making everything within the blast radius appear to ripple as if under water. Very nice eye-candy indeed! This was later put to a completely alternate use in a multiplayer map in which an artist used the same effect to render knee deep water throughout the map creating a very unique multiplayer environment.

In an attempt to keep gameplay simplified the team has opted to keep weapon options to a minimum. Instead you'll find many WECs or Weapon Energy Cores throughout the game offering many upgrades to your assault rifle offering varied methods of disposal through a single weapon as opposed to the typical armory of items you somehow magically carry around in most FPS titles.

Another nice feature we saw was the healing function. The developer decided to give you the ability to heal yourself anytime, anywhere through the use of a small portable Star Trek like healing device. Only problem is, the more you use it, the more your vision is blurred to the point where a high injection can leave you completely blinded for a period of time. Definitely a unique way to handle the necessity of self-healing in an FPS title; this definitely needs some tweaking in terms of how much time is lost when using longer recharges but is a welcome take on an age-old gameplay issue.

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few


What proper FPS would ship without multiplayer? Well, certainly DE wasn't going to let Pariah fall short in this category. The game will offer the usual CTF, DM and TDM options you'd expect to see and has two new modes called Frontline Assault and Siege which they hope will offer something different to the multiplayer landscape. Frontline Assault is a modified version of Domination similar to BF1942 or UT itself while Siege pits bots vs. humans in a never-ending onslaught to see just how long you can hold out before death takes over.

We were offered a tour of several varied maps including the aforementioned interior under water as well as an outdoor map whose autumn leaves floated effortlessly to the ground as the wind shook the tree branches. We won't have much time to enjoy these visuals while putting the smack down on our office mates but this level of immersion is definitely welcome.

Some vehicles will be available in the MP modes as is expected nowadays but the options we found most interesting where found in the player set-up prior to entering the arenas. You can customize your weapon load out right down to the Speeds, Ammo, Accuracy and Power of your weapon. If you know your aim is bad, up the ammo and firing-rate a bit. Have good accuracy? Maybe trading speed for power for taking down your targets will suit you – the choice is yours.
AI was dumbed down for the demo so we didn't get to see much MP action but things are coming along nicely from what we saw so far.

Pre-Mortem


The game will ship with Xbox Live! Chat enabled but it remains to be seen whether or not the DE team will utilize Microsoft's new XNA platform to bring the same chat to the PC or not. For the Xbox especially the team worked hard to increase the speed of the Unreal engine optimizing every way possible. The result should be a solid fast-paced experience for PC and Xbox players alike.

When asked what he thought was the most rewarding and difficult part of working on this project Charles responded:

The most difficult part was getting 2-3 gametypes for MP thrown out – but that's also what makes this team great to work with. We all want to make sure the end project is fun and of the best quality we can make it. We also set out to make a great story and have hired a well known screenwriter to flesh out the story and characters.

We'll check back with DE around the end of summer to see how the game is progressing and see if we can infiltrate the prison compound to bring you some new screens. For now enjoy the ones we stole off the show floor to the right top and keep your eye's peeled for this one – we don't know if this is going to wipe the competition out – but Pariah seems set to earn it's rightful place on your hard drive.

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