Preview

Lair

Lair is a next gen title that incorporates high flying acrobatics and immense environments with spectacular dragon duels and vast battling armies to bring you one of the most anticipated games for the PS3.

In terms of the storyline for Lair, not much is known other than you are a dragon rider you is sent to help fight in a war between two ancient civilizations. In battle you will either fight enemy dragon riders in the air or you can land and kill thousands of men with your allied troops by spitting fire or trampling them to death.

Some things Factor 5 has confirmed for Lair are the uses of the PS3 controller tilt function and that Lair will play in 1080p. So far the uses of the tilt function are said to control your flying as well as in duel control melee combat.

Graphically Lair is beautiful, featuring dragons that are made up of seven layers of modeling including normal mapping, bump mapping, and others. The environments will span from places like stormy seas to high mountainous peaks and the armies you find on land include 10,000 of thousands of men.

Lair is expected to ship sometime next spring so you can expect more improvements on framerate and perhaps more graphical updates. Lair will be a PS3 exclusive and you can get more information over at their official website.

UPDATE

Lair is a dragon-riding title that incorporates high-flying acrobatics and immense environments with spectacular dragon duels and vast battling armies to bring you one of the most anticipated games for PlayStation 3.

The two groups within Lair’s epic story, the Asylians and the Mokai, split many generations ago due to different interpretations of god. Both left their place of origin and settled at opposite ends of their vast land. In the game’s present time, the world is on the brink of starvation due to shortages of both food and water (due to an epidemic similar to current day global warming). Volcanic activity has ravaged both sides (especially the Mokai’s land) and a massive war breaks out due to the Mokai’s desperation. As Rohn, the ace flier in a squadron of "burners," you must be the hero of the Assyrian military.

Lair is probably the most graphically impressive console title since Gears of War. The dragons (made up of seven layers of modeling) are fearsome and awing. The 32 x 32 kilometer environments will span from places like stormy seas to high mountainous peaks, with intelligent armies consisting of tens of thousands of soldiers. Possibly the most impressive aspect of Lair is it’s overall sense of scale. The environments (especially the hypnotically beautiful water) and soldiers look equally as impressive from the distance of a kilometer in the sky to a mere meter away. 

The team at Factor 5 worked heavily to include proper Sixaxis motion control within Lair. This isn’t a gimmicky "shake your controller when event A happens" either. Lair’s entire gameplay system revolves around the use of motion sensing. You’ll control the dragon during flight by tilting the controller up to go up, left to go left, and so on. Other motions have been mapped to the controller as well. Simply pull back the controller during flight to perform a 180 degree aerial maneuver, or thrust the controller to the sideways to bash into another dragon. The inclusion of this control scheme was meant to be a natural experience, so it should be simple to understand as soon as you pick up the controller, or at least after spending a little time with the game. Factor 5 wanted to be sure that Sixaxis tilt controls felt natural and were implemented effectively, and it was for this reason that they removed motion sensing for ground combat, instead replacing it with the more responsive analog stick.

If you’re still skeptical about the whole experience, we recently confirmed Lair’s demo for PSN in our interview with Factor 5’s co-founder and president, Julian Eggebrecht, so you’ll be able to give it a test run before purchasing it. Get ready to breathe fire, destroy cities, and if you so desire, chomp on some soldiers, when Lair hits the PS3 this July.