Entertainment Electronics Blog

Ubisoft revealed Project Dust at their E3 press conference earlier this week, the new game from Out of this World creator Eric Chahi. But in a new Q&A with Chahi released by Ubisoft, Chahi reveals Project Dust is taking inspiration from another classic PC game: Populous.

“Project dust is the spiritual heir to Populous,” Chahi explains. “The game is set in an extreme version of Planet Earth where nature unleashes her power in a much more violent way than what we are used to.” This includes tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and volcanic eruptions (which, sadly, kind of sounds exactly like the real Planet Earth these days), and the game is about using powers to harness these disasters and their elements to help the people of the planet survive.

“In this kind of God game, users will play with powers to manipulate the world around them,” Chahi further explains. “Ground, water, lava, fire, plants, and trees — model the world like a child playing sand castles on the beach. With such powers, players will help their people resist, expand and migrate so they can accomplish their quest to find a safe place.”

But Populous isn’t the only inspiration behind Project Dust — Chahi also sites a 1999 trip to the Yasur crater in Vanuatu, and also Rez “because music is an important part the universe of the game.”

Project Dust is coming in spring of 2011.

Word out of THQ is a Saints Row movie will arrive alongside the next game in the series. U.K. gaming site CVG overheard THQ vice president of core games Danny Bilson discussing plans for the upcoming film at an E3 meeting.

“What we have coming on Saints Row — and we’ll announce it in December — is the most robust transmedia play on any game ever done,” explained Bilson. “We will have a movie with a major filmmaker that will be tied to our content and we will be ideally day-and-date with that movie.”

The publisher has previously stated that Saints Row 3 is expected sometime in fiscal 2012 — sometime between April 2011 and April 2012 — so there’s still a little time to get the ball rolling on a movie. Let’s just hope that by “major filmmaker” they don’t mean Uwe Boll.

As for the game itself, Bilson said Saints Row 3 wouldn’t be shown at E3 this year. “We’ve spent an extra year rebuilding the technology for this game,” the core games VP revealed. “It is absolutely gorgeous and still completely insane.”

There was also talk of a huge merchandise push for Saints Row 3, including a collectible card game and books. “Most of these deals are already in place. I believe we’re going to announce this at the Spike awards in December,” Bilson said.

You can also expect some of the first footage of Saints Row 3 to debut on the Spike VGAs this December. Until then, if THQ manages to strike a deal with a movie studio for the proposed film, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Not all of the game announcements from E3 are being unveiled at large press conferences. CVG reports that a sequel to Darksiders was confirmed last night at a THQ analyst meeting. “Darksiders 2 is coming,” said Core Games VP Danny Bilson. “We’ve green lit that. It’s well into production now, it’s out two years from now.”

Bilson also addressed how he plans to build the brand throughout the burgeoning series’ sequels. “[Darksiders] did about twice as much as Red Faction. It’s done pretty well. I believe that franchise building isn’t about a zillion units out of the gate, it’s about building a fan base, building a community of people that dig it, listening to them, doing what you think is good. The second will be twice as big as the first one and the third one you get to big numbers. That’s my strategy.”

So if you want more of War and the apocalypse, you only have to wait until 2012 when the actual end of the world comes. We know it’s true because we saw it in a John Cusack movie.

At E3 today Konami showed the first trailer of its next Silent Hill game, with the working title of Silent Hill 8.

The game is scheduled to launch in 2011 on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and promises to be “a next generation horror game that fans truly deserve,” according to a statement released today by Konami.

The game stars prison inmate Murphy Pendleton, who escapes from a prison transport vehicle and finds himself stranded in Silent Hill. From the glimpses we’ve seen in the trailer, Pendleton will have to deal both with the supernatural horrors of Silent Hill and with the cops, who are on his trail.

We should have more substantial details soon, but for now check out these first screenshots from the trailer, which we should have available on the 1UP later today.