October 2, 2008 - Developer High Voltage Software showed off the newest version of its anticipated Wii-exclusive first-person shooter, The Conduit, at Nintendo's fall media summit event in San Francisco on Thursday. Unsurprisingly, the beautiful project was one of the standouts at the conference, a truth that Nintendo itself seemed to realize: the company alloted lengthy time for the game in its media briefing, enabling HVS' Eric Nofsinger to take the stage and give a full demo of The Conduit in motion. (No other third-party titles were singled out in this manner.) Afterward, crowds gathered around the shooter on a regular basis -- it proved to be the most popular title at the summit, more so even than MadWorld (still unplayable) and Call of Duty: World at War.

We've seen The Conduit on several occasions before and we've always been witness to a single stage set to the backdrop of an invaded city. However, for Nintendo's summit, High Voltage demoed a never-before-shown stage -- the third level of the game in which Agent Ford, working for the secret Trust organization, chases a suspected terrorist into an underground bunker. Only when Ford enters the depths of the location does he begin to realize that something more than mere terrorism may be afoot -- not only does he begin to see alien life forms, but reanimated human guards and soldiers, all of whom seem to want him dead.

Part 1

Two Conduit game kiosks were situated smack-dab in the middle of MadWorld and Call of Duty: World at War -- tough competition to be sure. Telling, though, was that High Voltage's game continually drew the biggest crowds. Activision's wartime shooter looks surprisingly good on Wii, but it is no match for the crisp visuals and effects-drenched presentation of The Conduit. The project's graphics have seen some notable improvements since we last went hands-on with the shooter. For example: a new depth-of-field blur designed to differentiate between foreground and background objects; added particle effects to explosions and gunfire; improved water transparencies and a newly implemented level of detail system that swaps in crisper textures as gamers draw closer to walls and structures. The only visual drawback we noticed -- and you will probably be able to see some of this in our provided videos -- is that the title's framerate occasionally drops. It will, according to HVS, run at 30 frames per second when it's done. It's important to note that The Conduit remains in pre-alpha state.

Nofsinger explained that there's much left to do in regard to polishing the title over the next several months. The team is hard at work adding new kill animations to the 15-plus enemy types featured in the shooter. The plan is to run unique death animations for all of the various guns, so if you shoot an alien or guard with a rocket launcher, he will die dramatically different than he might with a bullet from a handgun. Also, much of the audio work has yet to be implemented -- the developer is prepping a highly dynamic musical soundtrack that changes based on how you play (and presumably where you are in an environment). And as the audio team has worked, it recently combed through code and happened upon a surplus of three extra RAM megabytes that HVS plans to make further use of -- that is, as soon as it can internally prioritize who will get access to the virtual treasure. According to Nofsinger, the audio team wants it for music and sound effects while the artists are already hatching new ideas to inject even more visual polish into the experience.

The game's deep control configuration and customization options continue to set the bar. You can still tweak all control settings, changing look sensitivity, the dead zone, turning speed, and much more. The run speed has also seen improvement so that Agent Ford runs a little faster through environments. You can make all of these changes using The Conduit's real-time control alteration setup, which is sure to be copied by developers going forward. Regardless of your control preferences, you will absolutely be able to come to the perfect calibration. We've got nothing to complain about there.

Running and gunning through environments feels speedy and incredibly responsive. As we zipped through the bunker, blasting enemies who ducked behind structures for protection, we could actually shoot through their makeshift obstructions and eventually dispose of them. Explosions would rock the bunker and debris would fall to the ground. Some bunker rooms were filled with cabinets and tables showing specularity. And even the uniforms worn by guards shone with highlights and reflections, an uncommon graphical polish for Wii games. Also, the game's All-Seeing Eye (ASE), an orb-like device held by Ford that will reveal hidden passageways and hack into computers, looks much better than it did in previous iterations of the title.

Part 2

IGN has with today's update exclusively hosted the entire new level in glorious direct-feed. You will not find this anywhere else on the Web, and we suggest you give our videos a good look to see for yourself some of the visual niceties that HVS is pulling off on a regular basis. We think you'll be pleased. And be sure to tune back in tomorrow as we'll be posting interviews with members of the game's development team.

http://wii.ign.com/dor/objects/14248157/the-conduit/videos/conduit1_10min_100208.html

Hey, did you read the information about the sound effects they are working on? I think that was great, you should put it in the OP

No I didn’t was it in the article? :P I should read first but I wanted to shear this as soon as possible this looks really good

Did you guys notice that your usernames are Roma and Soma.....?

ANYWAY, looks good, the explosions are a bit meh, but otherwise, thumbs up. I know there's alot of customisation options, but the control scheme on display is a bit meh to me, I was hoping for the crosshair to always in the centre and aiming the wiimote moved the screen (feels more intuitive). But I'm guessing you can do that with a change of control scheme.

I'm curious now about how much more powerful the Wii is to the Original Xbox, because graphically, this game looks like it could have been done on that console. I really like the attention to detail on the weapons the player uses, but the environments, while clean, don't show any graphical prowess (like MP3 did).

LOL, no, I didn't noticed..... are you my cousin Roma?

Ohh and yes, that information was in the article.
 

Looks really cool--A must have title..

Video is loading slow for me, but I have enough to see that HVS has once again kicked the graphics up a notch. I do notice the frame dip, though, and I hope they get that under control. I like frames better than I like shiny things (though that Illuminati symbol was pretty damn shiny).

Also, the voices are terrible, but I read that they're recording the voice work right about now, so I expect these are just place holders made by the programmers themselves. ;)

Nice to hear there was a crowd around this game.

Yes I did notice it, what’s more fun is that they come in that particular order as well ;)

Very interesting,texture ,voice acting and AI has much improved since last time i saw it.HV also use similarly text that remain me to MP3. :3