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AusGamers: Welcome back to AusGamers, it's the last day of E3 - we're all a little bit tired, we're all a little bit homesick, we're all a little bit hungover but we're here today with Brian from Neversoft to talk about Warriors of Rock, the next Guitar Hero, Brian, maybe the easiest thing to do is run us through the list of changes this time around; I know you guys have kind of gone back to the series' roots, which is, I think, pretty important...

Brian Bright: Definitely yeah, I mean we look back at Guitar Hero III and kind of the set-list and when you finished, how that felt and how challenging it was and I think over the last few years we've kind of gotten into a bit too much variety, you know, trying to cover too many bases in musical tastes and we've really focused the [Warriors of Rock] set-list on shredding rock and with that we also wanted to create this fantasy storyline with it. We kind of took inspiration from Heavy Metal album art things like that from the past 20-30 years, and so we've got Gene Simmons, he's the voice of the Demigod of Rock and we've got The Beast, who's like this lumbering mechanical creature who's out to destroy rock and roll. So the Beast takes out the Demogod, you know, just defeats him and he gets separated from his legendary guitar which is the source of all his power.

So you play through as each of the characters in Guitar Hero; all eight different characters, and you try to play it well enough to transform them into their warrior alter-ego versions and when you get your army assembled, then you can take on the Beast and destroy him and the last song of the game is this epic tune that Dave Mustaine (Mega Death) wrote called "Sudden Death" specifically for this game.



AG: I've seen that track being played, it looks insane and the multipliers now are through the roof - how does the reward system work?

Brian: Well we have two main modes. So there's Quest Mode, and that's all star-based and that's where, when you have all eight powers and your getting 36x multiplier combo meters and stuff, it is through the roof, but it's all star-based, so you can earn up to 40 stars on a song now in Quest Mode.

Then we have Quickplay Plus where we have, you know, 13 challenges - unique challenges for every song in your library. Those, we have the standard purist Leaderboards, you know, and then we have Power Challenge where you can pick any two powers and get really high scores.

So we have the same old Guitar Hero that you love and then we have new areas of development like the Quest Mode and things like that.

AG: And you guys have a new guitar, but everything is still compatible with all the old equipment right?

Brian: Yeah it's all still compatible.

AG: So what's the difference with the new guitar? Is it just the shape or...

Brian: All the electronics are the same; they're in the neck. And then we have these wings that snap on to the neck, and I know that here in the States at least we have a pre-sale thing going where you can get these Battle Axe wings and they make it look more like the legendary guitar in the game. Otherwise it's a refined strum bar... it's just a new guitar but your old one works fine - if you need a new one, you can buy it (smiles).



AG: So you have Dave Mustaine to write a song - anyone else that you have in there doing their own original tracks for the game?

Brian: Not specifically original, but we've got a new unreleased Soundgarden track on their as well.

AG: Like, from Soundgarden, not Chris Cornell with an orchestra? (Activision's party actually featured this live with him performing "Black Hole Sun")

Brian: (Laughs) No, it's from Soundgarden.

AG: I know you can't really reveal everyone who's in the game, though I was happy to see Dethklok are back, but can you give us some of the big names?

Brian: We've got Black Sabbath, Dethklok like you said, we've got Children of Bodham, we've got Queen, geeze... Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, Dragon Force...

AG: And in terms of backwards compatibility with any DLC...

Brian: It's all since World Tour - when we went full band, and yeah not only is it compatible but in Quickplay Plus we have 13 new challenges that you can play for that song that earn you stars and then you rank up. So every new rank you're unlocking cool, new stuff and so we're giving you lots of new gameplay for songs you might have bought two years ago.



AG: And so what's the difference with multiplayer this time around?

Brian: We have I think six or seven different competitive modes you can play. We have a new one called Momentum Plus which starts everyone off at Medium (difficulty) and after you get 10 notes in a row, your highway starts speeding up and you go up and up and up until you reach Expert and you're shredding and if you miss three notes, you drop down a difficulty, but really the cool thing about Momentum Plus is if you're beating me, I can fire off Star Power and immediately knock the leader down to Beginner and he's gotta work his way back up.

AG: Awesome, well thanks heaps for that Brian.

Brian: Cool.