Return of the Adventure

First, there was Omikron. And it was good. Then came Indigo Prophecy, and it was good. Thus Quantic Dream surveyed its domain, and it was good. Or so I hope. It must be pretty good, with Indigo having received more acclaim than Omikron, for they now have a PS3 title in the works, as well as a greatly anticipated sequel on my part.

This year's E3 saw Quantic Dream unveil their next gen PS3 project Heavy Rain, and the video looks impressive. That's just great. Now I'm going to have to get a PS3 eventually. Just what I need, another video game system.

Heavy Rain did get me excited. But not nearly as excited when I read this announcement by Guillaume de Fondaumiere, in which he states that they have started development on Omikron 2, now known as Karma! I couldn't believe it. First they bring us Indigo, and now we get an Omikron sequel. My excitement was somewhat curbed when I read further and found that "you shouldn't expect this title anywhere before 2009." Yikes, that's three years away!

I was still sure it would be worth the wait. So I looked through a few other articles and found another announcement, made more recently (October), indicating that Karma would be supporting Ageia's PhysX engine. What does that mean to us? Thus far, only that we need to drop between $200 and $300 for a PhysX card. The engine is so young that it's just about impossible to tell whether it's going to be worth anything. Currently titles supporting PhysX seem to have minimal differences. Not sure that it's worth the investment.

When Karma comes out, however, things could be entirely different. So I think it's a little too early to determine whether PhysX is going to be useful or not. In terms of any details about Karma, there is nothing yet. I imagine that it will probably be a lot closer graphically to the opening video in Omikron. Whatever the case, I don't think we'll be complaining about the graphics this time as much as last time.

The more interesting part of the announcement came right at the end, with a different report on Karma's release date, stating that the game is "expected to complete development sometime in 2007 when it sees release on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3." Now, 2007 sound a lot better than 2009, but whether that's a reliable date or not is unclear.

What I think is clear is that the PC version is going to be the best choice out of all these, and I am sure that it's going to absolutely rock! And you know what else rocks? Quantic Dream, for giving us a sequel to this incredible game, that's what.