If the name Rogue Warrior doesn't ring any bells, that's because it went, well... rogue. For a while, at least. It was first (and pretty much last) seen back in 2006, when it was announced by Bethesda as being developed by Zombie Studios (Blacklight, Shrapnel). That is no longer the case.
Bethesda's VP of Marketing and PR, Pete Hines, told myself and other assembled press at a London press event last week that “We were not happy with the direction of where that project was (going) and decided to step back and re-evaluate and figure out what we wanted it to be.” The game passed from Zombie to UK-based Rebellion Studios, where it's under the watchful eye of senior producer Sean Griffiths.
So, basically, we're going to take this from scratch.
The game is described as “A personality-driven shooter" - e.g. what Hollywood used to called a "star vehicle". It stars Richard 'Dick' Marcinko (real-life former Navy SEAL), voiced by Mickey Rourke.
Here are his credentials for having his own game: he's been killing people for quite some time. He served two tours in Vietnam (where he earned medals). He had a bounty on his head, personally, because he was causing the Vietnamese so much grief. He was the commanding officer of SEAL Team 2, he went on to found SEAL Team 6, the Navy's first counter-terrorism unit (“you could go ask some of the Somali pirates how good they are at what they do”, Hines said. No, we couldn't.)
He then went on to found Red Cell, the second Navy counter-terrorism unit, designed to test the Navy's effectiveness at counter-terrorism. He broke onto Navy bases to find out where their weak spots are, he broke onto Air Force One when everyone said it couldn't be done. Getting the picture?
Richard Marcinko
Not convinced yet? I also was reliably informed by Sean Griffiths that, despite the fact that Marcinko (or 'Demo Dick') is now 60 years old, if I was stood with a gun pulled on him and he was completely unarmed, he could still kill me in less than a heartbeat (He's not seen Mark's dad though. Ed).
The game is set in the 1980s, when Marcinko was still a relative youngster, and focuses on a fictional campaign in which Demo Dick is trying to stop anti-ballistic missiles passing from North Korea to Russia. As the game progresses, things go awry and, having been told to stand down for reasons that are unclear, Dick goes rogue.
A pre-alpha build was on display, showing a game that switches between stealthy infiltration and all-out combat. The mission here had Dick trying to stop some of the afore-mentioned missiles making it over a bridge.