By:
Shiny Entertainment
The revolutionary mentality of Shiny Entertainment stands in sharp contrast to the conservative ideals of Laguna Beach, the community Shiny calls home. Under the tutelage and leadership of David Perry, Shiny has developed such games as Earthworm Jim and Murder Death Kill, two off the wall titles whose uncanniness is matched only by their success. Shiny is carrying on their tradition of tangents with a number of works in progress including Wild 9, Sacrifice and RC Stunt Copter. None, however, has been more hyped or highly anticipated than Messiah, Shiny's sophomore entry into the third person shooter genre.
Messiah's central character is a cherub named Bob. Bob has been sent to Earth by God to clean up one thousand years worth of murder, rape, disease, immorality and sin. Equipped with the ability to fly, possess living things and work a little magic, Bob is a shoo-in for the job, especially considering his abrasive attitude. To keep him interested, however, God stripped him of his immortality. Oh well, can't have it both ways.
As Bob you'll come across over 15 NPCs in your quest to take on the Devil. The cast of Messiah looks like a Blade Runner / That 70's Show morphing experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. The end result is an uneasy alliance of bell-bottoms, night vision goggles, afros and futuristic body armor.
Messiah will be powered by Shiny's proprietary RT-DAT, or Real Time Deformation and Tessellation engine. Depending on scene complexity and available processor power, the RT-DAT engine will add or remove polygons from the characters and object models in an attempt to keep the frame rate running at a constant pace. Objects farther away from Bob will have reduced polygons to save precious processing power while those closer to him will be displayed with a higher amount of detail. In addition to scalability across different scenes, the RT-DAT engine also allows Messiah to be scalable across different machines. While the game won't look the same on a P200MMX as it will on a P2-450, it should run at an equivalent frame rate.
Shiny has promised a completely different experience with Messiah. Looking at their track record of imaginatively liberal games, we don't doubt them. The game is due this summer and will most likely send waves throughout not only the peaceful community of Laguna, but the monotonous gaming community as well. We'll keep you posted with up to date coverage on Messiah. In the meantime, enjoy these screenshots.
Amer Ajami
Senior Editor