Cyberwar: Netizen X
Cyberwar: Netizen X is a spinoff game in Psygnosis' hit Cyberwar franchise of FPS titles, exclusive to Microsoft's Xbox 2. The game is a "sidequel", taking place alongside the events of 2008's Cyberwar 3, and covers a different side of that war. It follows a new protagonist, a Power Corps solider named Samuel Redd, as he attempts to track down a hacker who goes by the moniker "Netizen X". Netizen X is not only sabotaging Power Corps facilities, but they also frequently go online and promote anarchy and chaos, and revolution against the established order. Redd is skilled at both combat and hacking, but his skills pale behind X's, and the two begin to establish a rapport over the course of the game as Redd gets closer and closer to tracking X down. Thematically and gameplay wise, Netizen X has some similarities to the recently released Eye In The Sky 2, but is a bit more light-hearted: Eye In The Sky 2's hacker Suleka was an advocate for a strong central authority and her experiences were colored by her PTSD, but Netizen X has a strong sense of humor, albeit a fairly dry one, and is an advocate for chaos and defiance. Netizen X also has a much more bare-bones HUD and less reliance on stealthy fighting (though it still has some stealth sequences, more than a typical Cyberwar game). However, it does feature extensive hacking segments, both in combat and outside of it, with nearly half of the game involving hacking of some kind. The game also involves "social conditioning" segments, in which Redd infiltrates certain places to get people to help him and give up information on the hacker. This extends to dialogue trees, both physical and in the cyber world, in which Redd chats with people and even exchanges e-mails with them. The game's actual FPS combat is fairly similar to that of Cyberwar 3, with futuristic weaponry of both the lethal and non-lethal variety. Non-lethal weaponry tends to play a bigger role in this game, but the player can choose more lethal tactics if they wish (it might limit the information they're able to get, however). The game also has a more extensive melee combat system than its predecessor, but despite the improvements to the melee system, players can actually choose not to fight with melee at all. The game has a wide variety of NPC characters, both friend and foe, with some characters playing both roles depending on Redd's conduct throughout the game. The game's graphics are nearly identical to those in Cyberwar 3 and are still considered top of the line for the Xbox 2. The game's voiceover cast is a bit less notable than the cast of Cyberwar 3, but there are still a few celebrities here and there, with Colin Cunningham as the voice of Samuel Redd, Spencer Grammer as the voice of Julie Skalzeny (Redd's most notable hacker contact), Hank Azaria as the voice of Redd's commanding officer, and Harry Connick Jr. as the voice of a shady CEO who serves as one of the game's primary antagonists and the main target of Netizen X's assaults. Netizen X's voice is disguised by a machine for much of the game, but the same voice actor does play them throughout. The game itself starts with a mission that sees Redd attempting to take down a band of hacker rebels, only for a "miracle" to bail the rebels out at the last moment. Said miracle is followed by a viral video (a literal video spread by a computer virus on nearly everyone's devices) that plays and shows Netizen X's manifesto. Redd is immediately put in charge of tracking Netizen X down, but must do so as growing tensions (caused by the events of Cyberwar 3) begin to overtake the world. Redd has to fight the Power Corps' battles while at the same time tracking down Netizen X, whose hacks are becoming more and more dangerous and notable, and who is starting to gain more and more followers, turning people against the Power Corps. Redd gains a few tentative clues as to X's identity, but is unable to stop them from pulling off a massive hack that cripples the Power Corps' fighting capabilities, weakening them just enough for their opponents (the three superpower nations, America, Russia, and China) to start to gain an advantage in the ongoing war. Meanwhile, a CEO who's been supplying the Power Corps with weapons has also drawn Redd's attention, and after a crucial clue left by X, Redd begins investigating the CEO. As it turns out, the CEO's been dealing weapons to both sides in order to turn a major profit, and wants to weaken the Power Corps enough to start a new world war that he'll profit majorly off of. Redd realizes that Netizen X wasn't trying to start a war by weakening the Power Corps, but was trying to prevent one. However, X is naive and while they're a brilliant computer hacker, they're also clueless about world affairs. Redd knows that he'll need to take both the CEO and Netizen X down, and ultimately uses the CEO to lure Netizen X into a trap. The game's final two missions have Redd launching an all out assault on the CEO's heavily fortified HQ, and then using Netizen X's slipup to track them down using a hack planted by one of Redd's key allies. The final mission is a literal "cyberwar", a hacking showdown that plays out in cyberspace while Redd battles his way through hacked security bots designed to stop him. A crucial aspect of the final mission is that, while Redd can fail, he can't die: the bots can detain him if his health is fully depleted, but the bots are using non-lethal tech. In fact, Netizen X has never directly tried to kill anyone. Redd finally fights his way to X's base of operations... an apartment building. Redd sneaks up to their room and learns that Netizen X is in fact a 15-year-old girl named Lucy (voiced by AJ Michalka). Lucy explains that she didn't want to hurt or kill anyone, but that the Power Corps needed to be stopped before another war started. As Redd begins to scold her, telling her that another war is about to start directly because of her actions, there's an explosion in the building: American soldiers are raiding the building in search of Lucy. Redd holds them off, keeping Lucy close as he does. Finally, Lucy has an opportunity to hack the apartment's wiring to cut off the soldiers, and she takes it, saving both herself and Redd in the process. The two flee, only for more soldiers to appear, blocking their escape. Redd crouches into a defensive position and the screen goes black. The final scene is of a new Netizen X broadcast, revealing that Lucy is alive. She reveals secrets that she gained from the Power Corps, and says that if either the Power Corps or the superpowers rise up in war, she'll reveal even more of their secrets. We then see Lucy herself signing off after the broadcast, holding Redd's data drive and his Power Corps dog tag, smiling as she looks at them both. She then looks over at Redd himself, who is comatose with numerous bandaged wounds, and we see that Lucy is with several of Redd's hacker contacts from throughout the game, including Julie. We don't know how Redd and Lucy escaped or whether Lucy is Redd's ally or if she's just using him to get information as the credits roll. The game then teases one final thing after the credits... the sealed door in the facility from Cyberwar 3, where Tomas and Sara were sealed at the end of that game, is seen to open, but we don't see who comes out.
Cyberwar: Netizen X receives overwhelming critical acclaim for its gameplay and storyline. It's not quite as highly praised as Cyberwar 3, but is seen as a welcome change of pace and an excellent side title for the series which also sets up the events of Cyberwar 4. Sales are quite brisk for it as well, though they're limited somewhat by the fact that the game lacks a multiplayer mode, with Microsoft not wanting to split the player base for Cyberwar 3 and Netizen X, making the latter game a strictly single player affair. However, the strong critical reviews and hype help Netizen X sell extremely well nonetheless, and though it's not a system pusher for the Xbox 2, it, like the other blockbuster exclusives of the year for the system, keeps it relevant and in the public eye.
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Uprising
Uprising is a third person shooter title exclusively for the Microsoft Xbox 2. It takes place in a Central American nation in the throes of a revolution, and casts the player as Hidalgo Rodriguez, a freedom fighter and one of the leaders of the rebellion. Uprising, from a gameplay perspective, is somewhat close to OTL's Uncharted games in terms of armed combat, giving the player the ability to aim, shoot, throw grenades (or even toss them back at enemies), and also has an extensive cover system. However, Uprising's most notable gameplay aspect is the ability to kill or spare enemies in battle. Hidalgo's uprising can be as peaceful or as violent as the player chooses, and their choices flavor the game throughout, causing certain characters to side with the player and certain characters to side against them. The game's graphics are also excellent, easily some of the best to date on the Xbox 2, with incredible lighting effects and real time weather that effects combat and movement (for example, Hidalgo can slip in the mud, or will wear out more easily when it's extremely hot). All of these graphical flourishes give the game a very realistic feel, aided by the animation in both cutscenes and combat. Character models move very realistically, and the game's facial animations are also some of the best yet seen in a console video game. The plot itself, however, is fairly generic and full of cliches, with no real twists to speak of. Hidalgo's revolution is against an almost unambiguously evil government, and though the player's actions themselves can determine whether the revolution is benevolent or significantly less so, there's little nuance and subtlety amongst the game's main enemies, almost all of whom are portrayed as being cruel and power hungry. Individual enemy soldiers are often portrayed as being honorable or just doing their job (which is why it's possible to spare them), but the ruling government itself is mostly seen as a completely evil foe. The player's actions largely only effect Hidalgo and his allies, not the enemy themselves. The game's plot also touches on all the typical "rebellion" tropes, including moles/defectors and a moment when the revolution reaches its lowest point but is obviously only there to generate tension in the player. However, despite the cliche-ridden plot, the gameplay remains thrilling throughout, featuring action set pieces (some with QTE, but it's fairly generous), a wide variety of different gun fights that rarely wear out their welcome (unlike the ones in OTL's Uncharted, which can become repetitive after a while), and though the heroes and villains are cliched, they're still fun characters and well voice acted. The game is definitely predictable, but it's never not enjoyable, and the ability to play as a noble pacifist or a brutal bastard who's almost as bad as the government he's overthrowing gives the game a good amount of replay value and player interactivity. Hidalgo is voiced by Christian Lanz, whose performance is widely praised, and Hidalgo himself is considered one of the most memorable characters of the year, both in his good incarnation and in his bad one. Uprising, while not a perfect game by any means, is still quite widely praised by critics, garnering a lot of comparisons to Mystic on the Nintendo Sapphire. It's released exclusively for the Xbox 2 in September 2009, and becomes one of the best selling new games of the month, with strong sales continuing right into the holiday season.
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Jeff Gerstmann: Now the next interesting piece of information about Cyberwar comes to us from an interview that aired on X-Play with the developers of the game, and this is about the ending to Cyberwar: Netizen X. So if you haven't played Netizen X yet, this is a HUGE spoiler and you need to skip ahead in the podcast about... probably about two minutes.
Ryan Davis: Somebody who just randomly turns this podcast on in the middle of it is going to hear the spoiler and get real pissed off.
Gerstmann: See, my thing is that if you just pop in in the middle of our podcast, if you don't... if you don't listen from the beginning, you deserve to get things spoiled for you.
Davis: Yeah, that'll teach you not to just randomly click on podcasts and skip to the middle of them.
Gerstmann: But anyway, apparently they did another ending to Netizen X. Remember, remember the ending, where you go up to Lucy's apartment...Lucy being Netizen X, by the way, you go up to her apartment and find her, and she's just some teenage girl chilling in her room?
Davis: Yeah, I wasn't expecting that. I expected her to be like... some guy like us, some fat guy just hanging out... *laughing*
Gerstmann: *laughing*
Davis: Just... just hanging out and...! You know, just hanging at his computer or whatever, I didn't expect it to be a 15 year old girl like it was. That was a cool twist.
Gerstmann: Well, in the original ending, she's not in her room when you first go up there. Turns out, she learned about the facility from the end of Cyberwar 3, and she went there... went there to steal, what was it, like the doomsday program? The one that was gonna... I forget, it was gonna...
Davis: It was gonna destroy all technology in the world.
Gerstmann: Right, that thing, the logic bomb!
Davis: She was going to steal it?
Gerstmann: She was going to steal it because she saw on the cameras that all the guards were dead and so she went... I guess on her bike or something-
Davis: I can see why they decided not to do this ending.
Gerstmann: Yeah, it's stupid as hell. It gets dumber. You were going to follow her to the facility, and... you know how the ending of Cyberwar 3 implies that one of them, either that girl or that guy... Sara or Alvarez, one of them survives and gets out. Well, in this alternate ending, you'd get there, and Lucy, she actually hacked into that room and she would have had one of them, whichever of the two that survived, she'd have them tied up and would be holding them hostage with a fake water pistol.
Davis: *laughing his ass off*
Gerstmann: They storyboarded it and everything. They did the voice acting for it.
Davis: *still laughing* Are you... are you serious?
Gerstmann: This was the original ending they were gonna go with, yeah.
Davis: That sounds... that sounds really stupid. So what, like... one of them... like Tomas Alvarez, he's gotta be the one who survived, right?
Gerstmann: It could've been Sara.
Davis: Is being held hostage by this... by this 15 year old girl... like that stupid ass movie... you know the one Jim Varney, the guy who played Ernest, the one he was in right before he died of lung cancer?
Gerstmann: I don't have any clue what you're talking about.
Davis: He plays the criminal, and he goes up into this treehouse, and these kids catch him...
Gerstmann: Yeah, that sounds stupid too.
Davis: I'm glad we got the ending we got even if it confused the hell out of me. I mean, it was a pretty good ending, this girl who caused all this trouble is freaking out as you're dragging her through her apartment taking out soldiers, it's like, "can't hack your way out of this one, huh?" I thought that was suitably dramatic even if I didn't know what was going on at the very end. But you're telling me that the first thing they came up with was this girl taking either a badass hacker soldier or a tragic psycho genius woman hostage and... doing exactly what?
Gerstmann: Eventually, I guess, the three would have come to some kind of uneasy truce and agreed to work together to stop the coming war. But yeah, they said it was scrapped before it got to the actual animation part.
Davis: Thank God.
Gerstmann: Yeah, I'm glad they went with the more dramatic ending. I mean, Netizen X was definitely less serious than Cyberwar 3, but let's not turn it into a kids' comedy movie, right?
Davis: We dodged a major bullet there.
Gerstmann: One more thing about Cyberwar, and this is actually from an announcement that Don Mattrick recently made, and this is fairly huge if it's true... is that Microsoft is considering streamlining its gaming operations, including spinning off companies like Psygnosis, the one it bought and the one that makes Cyberwar. If that's true, and this is still a big if because Mattrick only said that Microsoft would be focusing more on internal game operations and would be trimming these companies to cut costs... if that's true, we COULD see games like Cyberwar go multiplatform.
Davis: I heard that announcement too, and I had trouble believing it at first because isn't that Microsoft's biggest franchise? But then I looked more into the details of it, and this is interesting: Microsoft would still be publisher of these games, but these games wouldn't be Xbox exclusive. Microsoft would get a cut, but companies like Nintendo and Apple could put them on their platforms.
Gerstmann: And this wouldn't apply to games like The Covenant, but if Psygnosis is spun back off into its own company, it could free up Cyberwar for multiplatform release. And someone directly asked Mattrick at the conference he was speaking at about these exclusive games, and Mattrick said that Microsoft was "moving away" toward exclusive releases in favor of providing what he called "the best possible gaming experience".
Davis: And I'm thinking: "has he lost his mind"? Cyberwar is THE biggest exclusive franchise Microsoft still has. It sells more copies than The Covenant. Cyberwar 3 is about to sell ten million copies. Cyberwar 3 was the only game that caused a spike in Xbox 2 sales last year. I don't think they'll let Cyberwar go.
Gerstmann: Well, financially, if they spun off Psygnosis and some of their other sort of development studios, it would trim off some fat, reduce operating costs and allow Microsoft to funnel more money back into games like The Covenant and Techno Angel that presumably would remain exclusive. That's the only reason I could see for them doing this.
Davis: I can't see them letting Cyberwar go. As much as it might make a little bit of sense, considering where Microsoft is right now, that would be a sign of the end times right there I think.
Gerstmann: Well, it's funny, but it's been the "end times" for Microsoft ever since Gray Zone flopped, and it's been almost a year without any sign of the Xbox 2 going away. So, who knows, you know, maybe this plan's just crazy enough to work.
Davis: And maybe they've finally gone crazy.
-from the September 8, 2009 episode of the Gamespot Podcast With Jeff And Ryan
Cyberwar: Netizen X is a spinoff game in Psygnosis' hit Cyberwar franchise of FPS titles, exclusive to Microsoft's Xbox 2. The game is a "sidequel", taking place alongside the events of 2008's Cyberwar 3, and covers a different side of that war. It follows a new protagonist, a Power Corps solider named Samuel Redd, as he attempts to track down a hacker who goes by the moniker "Netizen X". Netizen X is not only sabotaging Power Corps facilities, but they also frequently go online and promote anarchy and chaos, and revolution against the established order. Redd is skilled at both combat and hacking, but his skills pale behind X's, and the two begin to establish a rapport over the course of the game as Redd gets closer and closer to tracking X down. Thematically and gameplay wise, Netizen X has some similarities to the recently released Eye In The Sky 2, but is a bit more light-hearted: Eye In The Sky 2's hacker Suleka was an advocate for a strong central authority and her experiences were colored by her PTSD, but Netizen X has a strong sense of humor, albeit a fairly dry one, and is an advocate for chaos and defiance. Netizen X also has a much more bare-bones HUD and less reliance on stealthy fighting (though it still has some stealth sequences, more than a typical Cyberwar game). However, it does feature extensive hacking segments, both in combat and outside of it, with nearly half of the game involving hacking of some kind. The game also involves "social conditioning" segments, in which Redd infiltrates certain places to get people to help him and give up information on the hacker. This extends to dialogue trees, both physical and in the cyber world, in which Redd chats with people and even exchanges e-mails with them. The game's actual FPS combat is fairly similar to that of Cyberwar 3, with futuristic weaponry of both the lethal and non-lethal variety. Non-lethal weaponry tends to play a bigger role in this game, but the player can choose more lethal tactics if they wish (it might limit the information they're able to get, however). The game also has a more extensive melee combat system than its predecessor, but despite the improvements to the melee system, players can actually choose not to fight with melee at all. The game has a wide variety of NPC characters, both friend and foe, with some characters playing both roles depending on Redd's conduct throughout the game. The game's graphics are nearly identical to those in Cyberwar 3 and are still considered top of the line for the Xbox 2. The game's voiceover cast is a bit less notable than the cast of Cyberwar 3, but there are still a few celebrities here and there, with Colin Cunningham as the voice of Samuel Redd, Spencer Grammer as the voice of Julie Skalzeny (Redd's most notable hacker contact), Hank Azaria as the voice of Redd's commanding officer, and Harry Connick Jr. as the voice of a shady CEO who serves as one of the game's primary antagonists and the main target of Netizen X's assaults. Netizen X's voice is disguised by a machine for much of the game, but the same voice actor does play them throughout. The game itself starts with a mission that sees Redd attempting to take down a band of hacker rebels, only for a "miracle" to bail the rebels out at the last moment. Said miracle is followed by a viral video (a literal video spread by a computer virus on nearly everyone's devices) that plays and shows Netizen X's manifesto. Redd is immediately put in charge of tracking Netizen X down, but must do so as growing tensions (caused by the events of Cyberwar 3) begin to overtake the world. Redd has to fight the Power Corps' battles while at the same time tracking down Netizen X, whose hacks are becoming more and more dangerous and notable, and who is starting to gain more and more followers, turning people against the Power Corps. Redd gains a few tentative clues as to X's identity, but is unable to stop them from pulling off a massive hack that cripples the Power Corps' fighting capabilities, weakening them just enough for their opponents (the three superpower nations, America, Russia, and China) to start to gain an advantage in the ongoing war. Meanwhile, a CEO who's been supplying the Power Corps with weapons has also drawn Redd's attention, and after a crucial clue left by X, Redd begins investigating the CEO. As it turns out, the CEO's been dealing weapons to both sides in order to turn a major profit, and wants to weaken the Power Corps enough to start a new world war that he'll profit majorly off of. Redd realizes that Netizen X wasn't trying to start a war by weakening the Power Corps, but was trying to prevent one. However, X is naive and while they're a brilliant computer hacker, they're also clueless about world affairs. Redd knows that he'll need to take both the CEO and Netizen X down, and ultimately uses the CEO to lure Netizen X into a trap. The game's final two missions have Redd launching an all out assault on the CEO's heavily fortified HQ, and then using Netizen X's slipup to track them down using a hack planted by one of Redd's key allies. The final mission is a literal "cyberwar", a hacking showdown that plays out in cyberspace while Redd battles his way through hacked security bots designed to stop him. A crucial aspect of the final mission is that, while Redd can fail, he can't die: the bots can detain him if his health is fully depleted, but the bots are using non-lethal tech. In fact, Netizen X has never directly tried to kill anyone. Redd finally fights his way to X's base of operations... an apartment building. Redd sneaks up to their room and learns that Netizen X is in fact a 15-year-old girl named Lucy (voiced by AJ Michalka). Lucy explains that she didn't want to hurt or kill anyone, but that the Power Corps needed to be stopped before another war started. As Redd begins to scold her, telling her that another war is about to start directly because of her actions, there's an explosion in the building: American soldiers are raiding the building in search of Lucy. Redd holds them off, keeping Lucy close as he does. Finally, Lucy has an opportunity to hack the apartment's wiring to cut off the soldiers, and she takes it, saving both herself and Redd in the process. The two flee, only for more soldiers to appear, blocking their escape. Redd crouches into a defensive position and the screen goes black. The final scene is of a new Netizen X broadcast, revealing that Lucy is alive. She reveals secrets that she gained from the Power Corps, and says that if either the Power Corps or the superpowers rise up in war, she'll reveal even more of their secrets. We then see Lucy herself signing off after the broadcast, holding Redd's data drive and his Power Corps dog tag, smiling as she looks at them both. She then looks over at Redd himself, who is comatose with numerous bandaged wounds, and we see that Lucy is with several of Redd's hacker contacts from throughout the game, including Julie. We don't know how Redd and Lucy escaped or whether Lucy is Redd's ally or if she's just using him to get information as the credits roll. The game then teases one final thing after the credits... the sealed door in the facility from Cyberwar 3, where Tomas and Sara were sealed at the end of that game, is seen to open, but we don't see who comes out.
Cyberwar: Netizen X receives overwhelming critical acclaim for its gameplay and storyline. It's not quite as highly praised as Cyberwar 3, but is seen as a welcome change of pace and an excellent side title for the series which also sets up the events of Cyberwar 4. Sales are quite brisk for it as well, though they're limited somewhat by the fact that the game lacks a multiplayer mode, with Microsoft not wanting to split the player base for Cyberwar 3 and Netizen X, making the latter game a strictly single player affair. However, the strong critical reviews and hype help Netizen X sell extremely well nonetheless, and though it's not a system pusher for the Xbox 2, it, like the other blockbuster exclusives of the year for the system, keeps it relevant and in the public eye.
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Uprising
Uprising is a third person shooter title exclusively for the Microsoft Xbox 2. It takes place in a Central American nation in the throes of a revolution, and casts the player as Hidalgo Rodriguez, a freedom fighter and one of the leaders of the rebellion. Uprising, from a gameplay perspective, is somewhat close to OTL's Uncharted games in terms of armed combat, giving the player the ability to aim, shoot, throw grenades (or even toss them back at enemies), and also has an extensive cover system. However, Uprising's most notable gameplay aspect is the ability to kill or spare enemies in battle. Hidalgo's uprising can be as peaceful or as violent as the player chooses, and their choices flavor the game throughout, causing certain characters to side with the player and certain characters to side against them. The game's graphics are also excellent, easily some of the best to date on the Xbox 2, with incredible lighting effects and real time weather that effects combat and movement (for example, Hidalgo can slip in the mud, or will wear out more easily when it's extremely hot). All of these graphical flourishes give the game a very realistic feel, aided by the animation in both cutscenes and combat. Character models move very realistically, and the game's facial animations are also some of the best yet seen in a console video game. The plot itself, however, is fairly generic and full of cliches, with no real twists to speak of. Hidalgo's revolution is against an almost unambiguously evil government, and though the player's actions themselves can determine whether the revolution is benevolent or significantly less so, there's little nuance and subtlety amongst the game's main enemies, almost all of whom are portrayed as being cruel and power hungry. Individual enemy soldiers are often portrayed as being honorable or just doing their job (which is why it's possible to spare them), but the ruling government itself is mostly seen as a completely evil foe. The player's actions largely only effect Hidalgo and his allies, not the enemy themselves. The game's plot also touches on all the typical "rebellion" tropes, including moles/defectors and a moment when the revolution reaches its lowest point but is obviously only there to generate tension in the player. However, despite the cliche-ridden plot, the gameplay remains thrilling throughout, featuring action set pieces (some with QTE, but it's fairly generous), a wide variety of different gun fights that rarely wear out their welcome (unlike the ones in OTL's Uncharted, which can become repetitive after a while), and though the heroes and villains are cliched, they're still fun characters and well voice acted. The game is definitely predictable, but it's never not enjoyable, and the ability to play as a noble pacifist or a brutal bastard who's almost as bad as the government he's overthrowing gives the game a good amount of replay value and player interactivity. Hidalgo is voiced by Christian Lanz, whose performance is widely praised, and Hidalgo himself is considered one of the most memorable characters of the year, both in his good incarnation and in his bad one. Uprising, while not a perfect game by any means, is still quite widely praised by critics, garnering a lot of comparisons to Mystic on the Nintendo Sapphire. It's released exclusively for the Xbox 2 in September 2009, and becomes one of the best selling new games of the month, with strong sales continuing right into the holiday season.
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Jeff Gerstmann: Now the next interesting piece of information about Cyberwar comes to us from an interview that aired on X-Play with the developers of the game, and this is about the ending to Cyberwar: Netizen X. So if you haven't played Netizen X yet, this is a HUGE spoiler and you need to skip ahead in the podcast about... probably about two minutes.
Ryan Davis: Somebody who just randomly turns this podcast on in the middle of it is going to hear the spoiler and get real pissed off.
Gerstmann: See, my thing is that if you just pop in in the middle of our podcast, if you don't... if you don't listen from the beginning, you deserve to get things spoiled for you.
Davis: Yeah, that'll teach you not to just randomly click on podcasts and skip to the middle of them.
Gerstmann: But anyway, apparently they did another ending to Netizen X. Remember, remember the ending, where you go up to Lucy's apartment...Lucy being Netizen X, by the way, you go up to her apartment and find her, and she's just some teenage girl chilling in her room?
Davis: Yeah, I wasn't expecting that. I expected her to be like... some guy like us, some fat guy just hanging out... *laughing*
Gerstmann: *laughing*
Davis: Just... just hanging out and...! You know, just hanging at his computer or whatever, I didn't expect it to be a 15 year old girl like it was. That was a cool twist.
Gerstmann: Well, in the original ending, she's not in her room when you first go up there. Turns out, she learned about the facility from the end of Cyberwar 3, and she went there... went there to steal, what was it, like the doomsday program? The one that was gonna... I forget, it was gonna...
Davis: It was gonna destroy all technology in the world.
Gerstmann: Right, that thing, the logic bomb!
Davis: She was going to steal it?
Gerstmann: She was going to steal it because she saw on the cameras that all the guards were dead and so she went... I guess on her bike or something-
Davis: I can see why they decided not to do this ending.
Gerstmann: Yeah, it's stupid as hell. It gets dumber. You were going to follow her to the facility, and... you know how the ending of Cyberwar 3 implies that one of them, either that girl or that guy... Sara or Alvarez, one of them survives and gets out. Well, in this alternate ending, you'd get there, and Lucy, she actually hacked into that room and she would have had one of them, whichever of the two that survived, she'd have them tied up and would be holding them hostage with a fake water pistol.
Davis: *laughing his ass off*
Gerstmann: They storyboarded it and everything. They did the voice acting for it.
Davis: *still laughing* Are you... are you serious?
Gerstmann: This was the original ending they were gonna go with, yeah.
Davis: That sounds... that sounds really stupid. So what, like... one of them... like Tomas Alvarez, he's gotta be the one who survived, right?
Gerstmann: It could've been Sara.
Davis: Is being held hostage by this... by this 15 year old girl... like that stupid ass movie... you know the one Jim Varney, the guy who played Ernest, the one he was in right before he died of lung cancer?
Gerstmann: I don't have any clue what you're talking about.
Davis: He plays the criminal, and he goes up into this treehouse, and these kids catch him...
Gerstmann: Yeah, that sounds stupid too.
Davis: I'm glad we got the ending we got even if it confused the hell out of me. I mean, it was a pretty good ending, this girl who caused all this trouble is freaking out as you're dragging her through her apartment taking out soldiers, it's like, "can't hack your way out of this one, huh?" I thought that was suitably dramatic even if I didn't know what was going on at the very end. But you're telling me that the first thing they came up with was this girl taking either a badass hacker soldier or a tragic psycho genius woman hostage and... doing exactly what?
Gerstmann: Eventually, I guess, the three would have come to some kind of uneasy truce and agreed to work together to stop the coming war. But yeah, they said it was scrapped before it got to the actual animation part.
Davis: Thank God.
Gerstmann: Yeah, I'm glad they went with the more dramatic ending. I mean, Netizen X was definitely less serious than Cyberwar 3, but let's not turn it into a kids' comedy movie, right?
Davis: We dodged a major bullet there.
Gerstmann: One more thing about Cyberwar, and this is actually from an announcement that Don Mattrick recently made, and this is fairly huge if it's true... is that Microsoft is considering streamlining its gaming operations, including spinning off companies like Psygnosis, the one it bought and the one that makes Cyberwar. If that's true, and this is still a big if because Mattrick only said that Microsoft would be focusing more on internal game operations and would be trimming these companies to cut costs... if that's true, we COULD see games like Cyberwar go multiplatform.
Davis: I heard that announcement too, and I had trouble believing it at first because isn't that Microsoft's biggest franchise? But then I looked more into the details of it, and this is interesting: Microsoft would still be publisher of these games, but these games wouldn't be Xbox exclusive. Microsoft would get a cut, but companies like Nintendo and Apple could put them on their platforms.
Gerstmann: And this wouldn't apply to games like The Covenant, but if Psygnosis is spun back off into its own company, it could free up Cyberwar for multiplatform release. And someone directly asked Mattrick at the conference he was speaking at about these exclusive games, and Mattrick said that Microsoft was "moving away" toward exclusive releases in favor of providing what he called "the best possible gaming experience".
Davis: And I'm thinking: "has he lost his mind"? Cyberwar is THE biggest exclusive franchise Microsoft still has. It sells more copies than The Covenant. Cyberwar 3 is about to sell ten million copies. Cyberwar 3 was the only game that caused a spike in Xbox 2 sales last year. I don't think they'll let Cyberwar go.
Gerstmann: Well, financially, if they spun off Psygnosis and some of their other sort of development studios, it would trim off some fat, reduce operating costs and allow Microsoft to funnel more money back into games like The Covenant and Techno Angel that presumably would remain exclusive. That's the only reason I could see for them doing this.
Davis: I can't see them letting Cyberwar go. As much as it might make a little bit of sense, considering where Microsoft is right now, that would be a sign of the end times right there I think.
Gerstmann: Well, it's funny, but it's been the "end times" for Microsoft ever since Gray Zone flopped, and it's been almost a year without any sign of the Xbox 2 going away. So, who knows, you know, maybe this plan's just crazy enough to work.
Davis: And maybe they've finally gone crazy.
-from the September 8, 2009 episode of the Gamespot Podcast With Jeff And Ryan
