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In a flurry of activity over last weekend's Game Developer's Conference 2003, PC gaming website Gamespy has posted three articles that are of interest to Mac gamers.

First off, Gamespy takes a look at Elixir Studio's upcoming strategy / RPG hybrid Republic: The Revolution. The detailed two-page preview gives a brief rundown what to expect of the game, including a sample of the gameplay:

The place is the fictional Eastern European country of Novistrana, and your character has quite an axe to grind with the country's president. It seems that 20 years ago, he had your parents incarcerated, which placed him pretty high on your schvit list. Your goal: to have him removed from power, be it by military coup, forced resignation, or people's revolution.

The game takes place over three living, breathing areas, each of which has hundreds of unique characters going about their daily lives, blissfully unaware of the machinations at hand. Unaware, that is, until you get involved. You'll start out in a small town as the head of a new faction with exactly one member, and will try to drum up enough support to take your cause to a larger city, and eventually to Novistrana's capital. Hassabis took us through some of the early town portions of the game to show us how you'll get started on your quest, and some of the activities you'll engage in along the way.

Also previewed at Gamespy this week is the highly-anticipated god-game sequel Black & White 2. Game designer Peter Molyneux himself steered the article's writer through the paces of the game:

Molyneux said that the game is being developed in two parts. The gameplay elements are being created using the old game engine, while the new world and new engine are being created separately. On the gameplay side, the team is working on new mechanics on how to build towns and villages. Whole new building sets are being created with lots of different style buildings, roads and spires. The game even allows you to build walls in any shape you want to protect your city from attack. However, walls won't protect you forever. Creatures can knock them down, or the hand of god can use boulders to bust holes in them for soldiers to march through.

GameSpy: What is the most interesting thing you have seen or heard at GDC this year?
Devine: I think it had to be the Lifetime Achievement Award given at last night's awards ceremony (it went to Gunpei Yokoi, the creator of the Game Boy). To see Yuji Naga of TEAMSONIC at Sega get up and present the award and say that the guy he was giving the award to was a competitor, but one who always made him strive to be better - that was especially cool. And then to see Yokoi's son and wife come all the way from Japan to accept the award (Yokoi died in 1997). I'm glad I was on stage next so that I could see it up close.

Gamespy: Republic Preview

Gamespy: Black & White 2 Preview

Gamespy: Graeme Devine Interview

Feral Interactive

Elixir

Republic: The Revolution

Buy Republic: The Revolution

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