The Conduit chronicles life after a vicious alien invasion, set in Washington DC. It's a new FPS, designed exclusively for Wii by High Voltage Software and due out in June this year.

We'd organised to catch up with the guys at High Voltage while at GDC last month, but we were in for a surprise. Prepared for a standard interview session, maybe a gameplay demonstration, it was very pleasant for Creative Director Matt Corso to fire up the Wii, grab the microphone, and show off some of the game's customisable features, before walking us through the initial stages of the game. Good thing we had the video camera there with us, because now we can share the lesson with you - ten minutes of gameplay footage, plus commentary!
The level of customisation Matt showed was pretty darn impressive - how many times have we heard PC gamers complaining about the difficult controls when they make the leap to console? I know this won't completely eliminate the problem, but it's great to see a developer taking the steps to make things more easily tweaked to one's personal preference. And it's not just the controls or the camera that's adjustable, I'm a huge fan of being able to move things around on the HUD, change the transparencies and basically put everything in totally different places (I'm one of those people with the Windows task bar at the top of my screen...). It's great to see this coming into games - in a Wii title, of all things - we can only hope that this level of tweaking becomes more commonplace in the future.


Anyway - obviously, Matt was playing with the sound off, which meant that not only do you miss out on the score, which is written by Diego Stocco, famous for his work on Soul Calibur IV, but you also don't get to hear the exclusive track from Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen (we do, however, have a sample track for you to check out, if that's your thing).

The music isn't the only audio highlight, with High Voltage scoring some great voice acting talent to lend their personalities to The Conduit. Main character Mr. Ford is played by Mark A Sheppard, who played Badger in Firefly, Romo in Battlestar Galactica and a number of other roles in tv series such as 24, Medium, Burn Notice and CSI, and films like Unstoppable, Evil Eyes and In the Name of the Father.

It seems Sheppard enjoys this change of pace:

“I think the story in this [The Conduit] is fantastic. I think there’s a lot there for the player to enjoy.”

Then there's William Morgan Sheppard, who steps into the role of John Adams. This second Sheppard has spent 12 years as Associate Artist for the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5 and film parts in The Prestige, Transformers and Star Trek VI. This is by no means his first foray into video game voice acting, having already lent his voice to Medal of Honor, Metal Gear Solid 2, Escape from Monkey Island and Star Wars: Force Commander.

He's excited about the role too:

“It [The Conduit] has a resonance to it as a story; It’s really quite exciting... and very well written.”

The third big-name voice actor to be attached to the project is a bit of a treat for 90s television fans - Hercules himself, Kevin Sorbo stars as terrorist Prometheus.

Mr. Sorbo enthuses:

“It [The Conduit] looks like a riot, I’m looking forward to it.”

But - back to the game. It's built around High Voltage's proprietary Quantum 3 Game Engine technology, providing the title with fast, fluid gameplay plus some advanced visuals designed to catapult the Wii into people's minds as a "true" next-gen gaming platform. Expect to see dynamic environment mapping, four-stage texture compositions (including bump mapping, diffuse and gloss) and interactive water with real-time reflections.

Not only does it look pretty swanky in the complex first-person campaign, but there's a competitive multiplayer element as well, as you take on terrifying alien creatures boasting an advanced AI system - all part of the conspiracy-laden story.

No specific date has been announced for a local release of The Conduit, but according to our sources, all signs are pointing to "June". Stay tuned, as this gets closer, we'll have more to tell you.