Disney Interactive’s Canadian studio, Propaganda Games, is working on the Tron: Evolution video game that is scheduled to release by the end of this year. The developers offered a glimpse at how the game is shaping up, to the guys at Eurogamer.
While the game will release almost side-by-side with the movie, it is thankfully being developed as an independent project. Tron: Evolution is shaping up to be an action-adventure game with a mixture of free-run platforming, combined with on-foot and vehicular combat. As it has become quite common with recent games in this genre, platforming in Tron:Evolution is inspired by free-running techniques like parkour and capoeira. Fluid session of speed-runs in certain areas appear to be the only method in the game to regenerate health and energy.
On-foot combat will be a simple mixture of ranged and melee attacks that are mapped to a button each on the gamepad. One of the central elements of the game’s design is the use of player stances. For free-run platforming sessions, the player will need to enter a sprinting stance; whereas neutral stance will be used to block incoming attacks using the light disc.
Reward for felling enemies in the game will come in the form of experience points, with the ability for the character to reach a peak of level 20 in single-player mode. If you take your character online to participate in competitive (or ranked) matches, then the level-cap is further increased to 50. The good news is that you can have a single character that is persistent throughout both single-player and multiplayer game modes. It remains unclear at this point as to how a level 20 character fit into single-player mode where the level-cap is at 20.
Now it cannot be a Tron game without the iconic light cycles. Developers are taking the light cycle races up by a couple of notches with new features. Vehicular combat promises to be a frantic affair where you fight-off enemy vehicles while negotiating constantly shifting obstacles and literally losing ground from under your vehicle. The vehicles itself will have better manoeuvrability beyond the traditional 90 degree turns. Also, tanks have been confirmed as a mount during these vehicular skirmishes.
While this news may have calmed the nerves of some nervous Tron fans, there is nothing so far to become overly excited about either. It is too soon and too little to really get a fix on where the game is exactly headed.