Escape From Butcher Bay Team Returns For Riddick

[Andy Chalk]

Escape From Butcher Bay Team Returns For Riddick

Vin Diesel is getting the Starbreeze band back together for a new Riddick game.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay was a pretty fantastic game. It's also almost ten years old, and good lord, where does the time go? Anyway, Assault on Dark Athena, the 2009 sequel, was also pretty good, if more of the same - but sometimes that's okay. And speaking of more of the same being okay, Riddick himself (that would be Vin Diesel) says the original Starbreeze team that did Escape From Butcher Bay is getting back together for a third game in the series.

"There's a great Riddick app coming out that you'll be able to play on your iPad," Diesel said in an interview with Screen Crush. "But my die-hard gamers want Tigon [Diesel's game production company] to deliver the third chapter in the Riddick game. And we just, over the past couple of months - just this year - reassembled that team from Starbreeze that brought Escape From Butcher Bay to create the third game."

A third Riddick game isn't really a surprise, given the sequel-driven nature of the game biz, but getting the original team back on the case (at least as much as possible) and the promise that suggests of something that might be as good as Butcher Bay is undeniably tantalizing. Here's hoping that Starbreeze has better luck with this than it did with its last attempt to update an old favorite.

Source: Screen Crush [http://screencrush.com/vin-diesel-interview/]


Permalink

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

What Vin Diesel meant to say:

Okay... I realize that Riddick wasn't that good of a movie. My bad. Let's try something else that might work a tad better.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

I'm down for this. I enjoyed Escape from Butcher Bay quite a bit. Has anyone played Dark Athena and know if it's worth checking out?

 

[James Crook]

Werent they busy making Wolfenstein: The New Order ?

Just the MP. They're done with it so now we can have our Riddick III

 

[flarty]

What Vin Diesel meant to say:

Okay... I realize that Riddick wasn't that good of a movie. My bad. Let's try something else that might work a tad better.

Riddick was more than a serviceable movie, it was pretty damn enjoyable, or are you just going off moviebobs review?

I'm down for this. I enjoyed Escape from Butcher Bay quite a bit. Has anyone played Dark Athena and know if it's worth checking out?

If you liked the first, you will most likely enjoy the second.

Great news =D

 

[cerebus23]

What Vin Diesel meant to say:

Okay... I realize that Riddick wasn't that good of a movie. My bad. Let's try something else that might work a tad better.

Riddick was more than a serviceable movie, it was pretty damn enjoyable, or are you just going off moviebobs review?

I'm down for this. I enjoyed Escape from Butcher Bay quite a bit. Has anyone played Dark Athena and know if it's worth checking out?

If you liked the first, you will most likely enjoy the second.

Great news =D

Agree on the movie i thought it was pretty good and about as good as the first. Think the DA edition comes with butcher bay or a special edition something like that cannot recall, but for anyone that has not played BB i highly recommend that edition of the game, since butcher bay got some HD love, tho honestly the old school game looked pretty decent even in this day n age on its own.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

What Vin Diesel meant to say:

Okay... I realize that Riddick wasn't that good of a movie. My bad. Let's try something else that might work a tad better.

Riddick was more than a serviceable movie, it was pretty damn enjoyable, or are you just going off moviebobs review?

"Serviceable" and "enjoyable" are not the same as "good." I was able to guess 90% of the movie from watching the trailer and Pitch Black. That tells me there was some lazy plot outlining. You don't need a mystery box in every movie, but, like a problem I had with Now You See Me (i.e. the one with the magician thieves that relied way too heavily on CGI), a movie loses something if you don't believe the driving characters are in danger (yes, the flailing of other characters is interesting, but if the driving characters are in near-total control, there's no tension).

 

[flarty]

What Vin Diesel meant to say:

Okay... I realize that Riddick wasn't that good of a movie. My bad. Let's try something else that might work a tad better.

Riddick was more than a serviceable movie, it was pretty damn enjoyable, or are you just going off moviebobs review?

"Serviceable" and "enjoyable" are not the same as "good." I was able to guess 90% of the movie from watching the trailer and Pitch Black. That tells me there was some lazy plot outlining. You don't need a mystery box in every movie, but, like a problem I had with Now You See Me (i.e. the one with the magician thieves that relied way too heavily on CGI), a movie loses something if you don't believe the driving characters are in danger (yes, the flailing of other characters is interesting, but if the driving characters are in near-total control, there's no tension).

Suppose the 20+ James Bond films are all terrible then?

 

[0 to 3 Sad Onions]

I'm down for this. I enjoyed Escape from Butcher Bay quite a bit. Has anyone played Dark Athena and know if it's worth checking out?

If you liked Butcher Bay, you'll enjoy Assault on Dark Athena.

In essence, Dark Athena is Escape From Butcher Bay 2: Electric Boogaloo in terms of design and story progression, but it doesn't fuck with the first game's winning formula (and judging from the other games of theirs I've played, that seems to be Starbreeze's wont, so don't take that as a big shock). I personally would rather have a sequel that sticks to what worked like gangbusters last time out rather than one that bounces around trying to fix things that weren't broken in the first place while ignoring the previous game's fundamental flaws (*cough* Halo *cough*), so that's okay by me.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

If you liked the first, you will most likely enjoy the second.

Great news =D

If you liked Butcher Bay, you'll enjoy Assault on Dark Athena.

In essence, Dark Athena is Escape From Butcher Bay 2: Electric Boogaloo in terms of design and story progression, but it doesn't fuck with the first game's winning formula (and judging from the other games of theirs I've played, that seems to be Starbreeze's wont, so don't take that as a big shock). I personally would rather have a sequel that sticks to what worked like gangbusters last time out rather than one that bounces around trying to fix things that weren't broken in the first place while ignoring the previous game's fundamental flaws (*cough* Halo *cough*), so that's okay by me.

Thanks for the quick review. Will have to check it out then.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Suppose the 20+ James Bond films are all terrible then?

The only thing any of those movies have in common other than a common character is the most macro-level three-act plot framing (and even that's kind of shaky). Even the individual actors have separate takes on the character, which have made each version unique (Connery's swagger, Dalton's passion, Brosnan's charm, Craig's brutality). I wouldn't call them all great (only On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Skyfall would qualify as great, both of which have endings that went in far different directions than expected).

Yeah, sorry. I thought Chronicles of Riddick was a good movie and Pitch Black was an okay sci-fi survivor movie. That doesn't give Riddick a pass just because it's the same character.

 

[Agayek]

I'm down for this. I enjoyed Escape from Butcher Bay quite a bit. Has anyone played Dark Athena and know if it's worth checking out?

It's been a while since I last played it, but I certainly remember it as being pretty good. It wasn't quite as fantastic as Butcher Bay was, but it was close. Definitely worth checking out, especially since it's cheap on Steam nowadays IIRC.

OT:
This is good news. I definitely had not been expecting it. Really looking forward to what happens with it. I've always had a strange fascination with Riddick, the games especially, and it's good to hear more's coming.

 

[piinyouri]

Oh, Starbreeze! They made Enclave.
I liked Enclave.

Anywho I remember trying the demo for a Riddick game that came with the movie and expecting the usual licensed game awfulness but was pleasantly surprised.

So yeah I'd play another one.

 

[Quellist]

What Vin Diesel meant to say:

Okay... I realize that Riddick wasn't that good of a movie. My bad. Let's try something else that might work a tad better.

Riddick was more than a serviceable movie, it was pretty damn enjoyable, or are you just going off moviebobs review?

"Serviceable" and "enjoyable" are not the same as "good." I was able to guess 90% of the movie from watching the trailer and Pitch Black. That tells me there was some lazy plot outlining. You don't need a mystery box in every movie, but, like a problem I had with Now You See Me (i.e. the one with the magician thieves that relied way too heavily on CGI), a movie loses something if you don't believe the driving characters are in danger (yes, the flailing of other characters is interesting, but if the driving characters are in near-total control, there's no tension).

I sort of enjoyed the movie but my biggest problem was it was more of a sequel to Pitch Black than Chronicles, i was hoping to see more of the Necromungers and Underverse...

Ah well, i can hope for a 4th movie i guess

 

[flarty]

Suppose the 20+ James Bond films are all terrible then?

The only thing any of those movies have in common other than a common character is the most macro-level three-act plot framing (and even that's kind of shaky). Even the individual actors have separate takes on the character, which have made each version unique (Connery's swagger, Dalton's passion, Brosnan's charm, Craig's brutality). I wouldn't call them all great (only On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Skyfall would qualify as great, both of which have endings that went in far different directions than expected).

Yeah, sorry. I thought Chronicles of Riddick was a good movie and Pitch Black was an okay sci-fi survivor movie. That doesn't give Riddick a pass just because it's the same character.

All James Bond films suffer from the same issues that prevent you from liking Riddick as a film.
1) Opening action sequence.
2) Bond gets given assignment.
3) Bond Investigates, has a martini, meets a women who dies after he lays her.
4) Bad Guy either catches Bond or gets the upper hand somehow.
5) Bond Escapes/levels playing field, meets another women who he will have some r&r with at end of film.
6) Bond wins the day
7) Bond goes on holiday.

This the formula that dominates nearly all the 20+ films, I'm sorry but the series doesn't get a pass just because Skyfall went in a different direction to what you expected, it also has on massive unforgivable plot whole that makes the whole movie redundant. As for the different actors, cant really give them credit for that. Sean Connery left on his own accord and was black listed for awhile because of it. He left them with no other choice, it just evolved into the Bond carousel it is today.

Anyway, its not that you don't like the Riddick movie, its that you state your opinion as fact.

 

[shrekfan246]

Starbreeze has a very interesting history... Butcher Bay and Dark Athena were really enjoyable for me, and The Darkness was, if nothing else, at least highly intriguing but really rough around the edges. Syndicate may have been pretty by-the-numbers and a complete insult to its parent franchise, but the gameplay was still pretty solid, and their most recent title Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons actually had a pretty well-told story. Plus, after snapping up the rights to Payday they also helped on Payday 2, which--bugs aside--people are at least talking about far more than the first Payday.

So, since I've never really seen them make a bad game and they seem really willing to push the envelope both in terms of gameplay and story-telling, count me interested in seeing what they come up with here.

It is quite endearing how invested Vin Diesel is in the character, too. Regardless of how good or bad a character he is, it's nice to see that kind of passion and I hope Starbreeze feels the same way about another Riddick game.