Dead Rising 3

Dead Rising 3
Developer(s)	Capcom Vancouver[1]
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Studios[1]
Series	Dead Rising
Engine	Forge Engine [2]
Platform(s)	Xbox One[3]
Release date(s)	November 22, 2013
Genre(s)	Survival horror
Mode(s)	Single-player, online co-op
Distribution	Blu-ray Disc

Dead Rising 3 is a survival horror video game developed by Capcom Vancouver and published by Microsoft Studios.^[1] The game was announced as an Xbox One exclusive during Microsoft's E3 2013 press conference on June 10, 2013.^[3][4] It was released on November 22, 2013 as a launch title for the Xbox One.^[3]

Gameplay

Following in the footsteps of previous Dead Rising installments, players control new protagonist Nick Ramos in third person. They will start by searching for supplies and weapons in order to fight many undead and complete missions.^[5] Dead Rising 3 is set in a vast, open world environment which is much larger than the worlds of Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 combined.^[6][7] According to developers, the game can render three times as many zombies on-screen at once as its predecessor.^[8] Players will also be allowed to save their progress anywhere, as opposed to limiting saves to toilets.^[9] The game will include a "Nightmare Mode" for those who would prefer the traditional time limit and save options.^[10][11] The game will not have load times.^[12]

Dead Rising 3 expands upon the crafting system introduced in Dead Rising 2. Players retain the ability to create "combo weapons", but without the need for a workbench, allowing them to craft weapons on the fly.^[6] Dead Rising 3 also allows players to create "combo vehicles", such as combining a motorcycle and steamroller to form a "RollerHawg".^[13] Each combo vehicle includes two seats and a secondary blue attack to support cooperative gameplay.^[13] According to Capcom Vancouver, driving vehicles will be "a critical part of exploration" as players navigate the city of Los Perdidos.^[12] Player 1 will be able to discover and unlock blueprints for new combo weapons and vehicles.^[14]

Dead Rising 3 will utilize both the Kinect and Xbox SmartGlass.^[15] The optional Kinect feature gives zombies a certain level of situational awareness.^[15] Loud noises from the player could potentially trigger a rush of zombies; however, the player can also use the ability to shout at zombies through the Kinect in order to distract them.^[16] According to Executive Producer Josh Bridge, the microphone sensitivity will be tuned to "a threshold that makes sense," so that attracting zombies will feel like an intentional decision.^[15][17] The Xbox SmartGlass feature, which is also optional, can be used to locate specific items, find abandoned storefronts, and set waypoints for mission objectives.^[15] It also provides players with exclusive missions that unlock apps within the SmartGlass, giving them the ability to call in airstrikes, drone support, or area-wide flares for fending off or drawing the attention of the undead. Like previous games there is a Mega-Man themed costume earnable by receiving the S-ending, with the Mega Buster requiring finishing the game in nightmare mode.

Multiplayer

Dead Rising 3 offers two player cooperative gameplay. Co-op play is entered seamlessly in all game modes with the exception of an explicit single player mode. In all other modes (Casual, Completionist, Speed Run, Hardcore) players may be paired with a second player seamlessly at any time should a match be found. Alternatively, players can directly select to play Multiplayer. ^[18]

The primary player continues as Nick Ramos while the secondary player (who would have selected "Multiplayer" in the menus) assumes the role of Dick, a trucker who survives the outbreak. ^[19] The two players can explore the entire map and complete side missions separately, but main story missions must be completed together. Any blueprints and collectibles found or completed challenges will count for both players.

Plot

Dead Rising 3 takes place ten years after the events of the Fortune City outbreak. The story follows a young mechanic named Nick Ramos and his attempt to survive a massive zombie outbreak in the fictional city of Los Perdidos, California.

The game begins three days after the initial outbreak. Nick is on the bridge outside the city heading towards a quarantine area to search for supplies, but had quickly left after the infected broke out inside. Nick soon makes his way back to a diner afterwards where his friends are taking refuge. This includes Annie, his boss Rhonda, and a trucker named Dick. Rhonda argues with Annie over being "illegal", which are people who are infected and refused to be chipped by the government. After the zombies break into the diner and two more survivors are killed, Annie runs back to her own group of survivors. Nick and the others make it to Rhonda's auto shop to figure out their next move. After seeing on television that the government is going to bomb the city in 6 days, they drive to a military checkpoint, only to find everyone there is dead. They are then ambushed by an anarchist biker gang. After Nick kills their leader and saves Rhonda, he has an emotional breakdown over the fact that that was the first human he had ever killed. Rhonda reassures him that the biker would have killed them and that its "escape or die".

Nick and his friends are ambushed by Diego, one of Nick's old friends and a soldier in the military. Once Diego realizes it's Nick, he quickly stops firing and apologizes. He tells the group that there's a plane at the old museum in town that could be fixed up and used to escape the city before the bomb. In the midst, Nick is bitten by a zombie in the hand. Realizing that he could turn, he heads to the crematorium in town to search for emergency Zombrex. He meets Gary soon after arrival, who reveals that he is working for an unknown crook. He needs to get into the crematorium to get a body for his boss and works with Nick to get in. When they find the body, Nick believes her to be Annie for a few seconds, startling him. However, he takes a closer look and realizes that she is not Annie, but a woman who closely resembles her. Nick then asks Gary to show him where the Zombrex is, but Gary points out that the emergency stock is empty. Accepting his fate, Nick allows Gary to shoot him in order to not become a zombie. However, Gary trips over the body and his only bullet misses Nick. When Nick gets up to help him, Gary notices that his wound has healed, revealing he is somehow immune to the virus.

The two regroup at The Diamond Panty, where Gary tells him that the body he brought to his boss was the wrong girl. Nick, realizing that Gary was looking for Annie, finds her with some other illegals at a watch tower. When he asks her to come with him, she immediately knows he's lying but forgives him soon after. He then tries to make it up to her and the others by helping her group. The leader of the illegal group, Red, tells Nick that the government is in fact not evacuating survivors but killing them off instead. Surprised, Nick helps them destroy military supplies and other important equipment they need, and in return, they offer to get him fuel for the plane.

Throughout the crisis, Nick develops romantic feelings for Annie while attempting to recover evidence of the military's wrongdoing stored in a flashdrive. After retrieving the flashdrive, all of the survivors except for Nick and Red have been kidnapped by the military. Nick and Red infiltrate a military encampment in Ingleton, where a conversation between government officials General Hemlock and Marion Mallon discuss how the outbreak began and a potential cure for the virus, proving that they were behind the outbreak. The two proceed to murder the president with a zombie worm and broadcast her eating a corpse on live television. Nick gets into the encampment area and frees Annie, who is relieved that Nick came. He also saves the other illegals and Gary. Red shows Nick a government flyer offering five million dollars to anyone who captures people with certain numbers tattooed on their neck; something that Nick and Diego both have. Nick reveals that both he and Diego are orphans and that they grew up in adoption homes together. Reassuring Red that he has no clue what it means, Red tells him where to find fuel and Nick heads there to retrieve it.

Nick returns to Rhonda and Dick with the fuel only to find out that Diego has fled. Nick goes after him and is forced to fight him; it's clear that he's gone insane with guilt over leaving his military unit. After getting Diego to come to his senses, the two go into the zombie section of the museum, where images of Frank West, Chuck Greene, and several outbreaks across the country are located. Nick learns about Carlito and Isabella Keyes, the two terrorists behind the first American outbreak. After retrieving parts for the plane Rhonda confesses to Nick that she's not going with them because she wants to reconcile with her ex-husband. Nick, Dick and Diego leave to find Annie and the illegals but are ambushed by the military. Nick awakens in a room, chained to a chair surrounded by soldiers next to Diego. Diego is hit by a laser beam and killed from hundreds of parasitic bees and worms swarming out of his body as a result. During the confusion, Nick escapes.

After traveling further into the laboratory, Nick meets Isabella Keyes, who tells him that the worms won't live inside him and his fate will not be like Diego's. He attempts to escape with her so she can further explain, but he is attacked by Mallon. He tells Isabella to go to the warehouse where the plane is and that he'll meet her there. After defeating Mallon, he escapes and attempts to find Annie. Instead, he finds a suicidal Gary, who has finally captured Annie and locked her in the tiki bar, refusing to let her go with Nick unless he gets reunited with his ex-wife, revealed to be Rhonda, or Nick kills him in a fight.

Nick brings Rhonda to Gary and in return Gary allows him inside the bar to save Annie. Nick clears the bar of zombies and unties Annie. At the plane hangar, Nick learns of his origins as an orphan. U.S. soldiers stationed in Santa Cabeza, Mexico had intercourse with women in the town, giving birth to many children. When the parasitic bees were discovered and experimented on in the town, the bees got loose, killing the population and turning them into zombies. The government came and murdered almost all of the survivors in order to cover up the truth. Angered at the destruction of his town, Carlito deems it fitting to send the children, spawned from the US military, back to the country which created them. He infected the remaining 50 surviving children with the zombie disease and sent them to America, in the hopes that these orphans would transform over the years and create outbreaks. However, Carlito made one of the orphans, number 12, immune to the infection. Nick, realizing that he has the cure to the disease in his blood, now understands why Mallon wanted to capture him. In the midst of this, Red calls for Nick and Annie's help. When they arrive, Red turns on them, and captures Annie and Isabella. He tells Nick that when he saw the reward for his capture, he realized he could finally live life good, as a rich man. Infuriated, Nick vows to kill Red and the two fight. After Red's death, Nick returns to Annie, Isabella and Dick, who has somehow escaped the military. He hears Hemlock on a transceiver, and pretending to be a military agent, tells him they need more time to get the orphan. Hemlock agrees, extending the time before the bomb an extra 24 hours.

Shortly after the distraction, Chuck Greene arrives with Rhonda and Gary in a car, revealing that Annie was Katey the entire time, and that Gary was working for him. After a reunion between father and daughter, Isabella explains to Chuck that they must get Nick to a safe place in order to create the cure, and they head to the plane.

Gary and Rhonda volunteer to stay to help rescue any remaining survivors and find another way out of the city. Nick is about to take off, however he overhears on the radio that General Hemlock is planning to create a super weapon with the zombies, which will destroy the population but leave the infrastructure, making him extremely powerful. Nick and Chuck team up to stop Hemlock's plan.

Hemlock kills Mallon after being angered of her disrespect to him. He then proceeds to go forth with the extraction of king zombies from the city. Nick and Chuck stop UAVs from extracting them and then Hemlock and Nick have a long battle. When Hemlock is weakened, Nick reveals to him that he is the cure to the zombie disease before kicking him into active helicopter blades, killing him. After his death, Nick and the rest escape the city and eventually create and distribute a cure to the zombie infection.

After the credits, it is revealed that Isabella was responsible for the outbreak the whole time, convincing Mallon to begin the outbreak. Her goal was to start the outbreak so that number 12 would realize his immunity and come forward, successfully making herself the creator of the cure and clearing her family name from what Carlito did 15 years prior in Willamette. Back in the present, Isabella destroys the evidence of this and leaves the city with the others, making her elaborate plan a success.

Alternate endings

Like the previous games, Dead Rising 3 has multiple endings that can occur. The difference is that in Dead Rising 3, the endings are based on decisions made by the player throughout the game, unlike previous games where the endings were based on time.

The summary above is the canon ending, Ending S, which will be received if the player follows Nick's morals in the game. The other endings are:

• Ending C (kill Gary at the club instead of finding Rhonda)

  The game will play out the canon ending until Red is killed. Since Gary is dead, he, Rhonda, and Chuck don't show up. Isabella runs up to Nick and Annie exclaiming that they have to leave immediately. They board the plane, but it stalls as they try and take off and plane becomes surrounded by zombies. The end text states that Hemlock was arrested for his actions, but the parasite continued to spread as rumors of Carlito's "immune orphan" were never proven.

• Ending D (escape the Metro Station, but go straight to the plane instead of the club where Annie is being held hostage)

  Nick decides to leave the city by himself, declaring "it's every man for himself." He is discovered by Rhonda, Annie, Red, and Gary, who proceeds to knock him to the ground. Each person reprimands Nick for his selfishness and they board the plane themselves. Nick tries to explain he was joking as the plane takes off, leaving him behind in the city. The end text states that no survivors were found and the outbreak was the beginning of the end for the United States, as the West Coast went under martial law. Hemlock created his biochemical weapon from the mutated zombies and caused outbreaks all over America and rumors of Carlito's "immune orphan" were never proven.

• Ending F (don't complete the story by the end of the end of the 7th day)

  A cutscene plays of the city being destroyed by incendiary bombs. The end text states no survivors were found, Hemlock succeeded in creating his biological weapon from the mutated zombies, and America was put under martial law.

• Alternate Overtime Ending (fail to stop Hemlock's harvesting of the mutated zombies)

  Hemlock declares success and escapes the city. The end text states that Los Perdidos was destroyed by incendiary bombs and Hemlock created a biological weapon from the mutated zombies, which destroyed the population but left the infrastructure and rumors of Carlito's "immune orphan" were never proven. Getting this ending will result in a game over screen and the player can choose to return to the last checkpoint and try again in Overtime Mode.

Development

Promotion at E3 2013

In 2010, prior to the release of Dead Rising 2, Keiji Inafune, the producer of the Dead Rising series, had speculated about the possibility for a sequel during an interview, stating that "we're not going to start even speaking about DR3 until we see the sales of DR2—unfortunately that's the nature of the game! However, the experience with Blue Castle was very positive, and if we have the opportunity I would like to work with them again."^[20] With the success of Dead Rising 2, Capcom COO David Reese asserted that Dead Rising 3 was likely to continue the narrative of its predecessor.^[21] Reese also stated that more digital content, similar to Case Zero and Case West, was also plausible, and would help to bridge the gap between Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 3.^[21] Klayton of Celldweller is composing music for the game.^[22][23][24] The game was officially announced during Microsoft's press conference at E3 2013.^[25] The game was revealed as originally being developed with high-end PCs in mind so the team could realise their expanded vision for the series, before Microsoft offered to partner with them for it to become an Xbox One launch exclusive. On October 10, 2013, it was announced that Dead Rising 3 was not approved by Germany's rating board and would not be released there.^[26]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Dead Rising 3 was released via Sumthing Else Music Works on November 19, 2013, 3 days before the games release. The soundtrack featured various artists including: Celldweller, Oleksa Lozowchuk, Sascha Dikiciyan, Traz Damji, Brian Reitzell, Dave Genn, Ashtar Command, GIBS, Andrew Kalmbach, Jeremy Soule and Julian Soule.^[27] The standard edition contains 40 songs, while the Sumthing.com exclusive version contains 99 songs.

Tracklist

Reception

Dead Rising 3 has received mostly positive reviews from critics. It has an aggregate score of 78.96% on GameRankings^[28] and 78/100 on Metacritic.^[29] GameSpot gave it a 7/10 and said that "Capcom has successfully made Dead Rising 3 a more welcoming experience than its harsh predecessors." While GameSpot praised the silliness and replay value, they criticized the minimal variety and the technical hiccups.^[30] IGN gave the game an 8.3/10, saying that "Dead Rising 3 delivers the undead and great tools to kill them with by the truckload." While they enjoyed the number of zombies on screen and the co-op, they critiqued the performance issues and the padding.^[1]GameZone's Jake Valentine it a 7/10, stating "Dead Rising 3 is a schizophrenic game. The story is absolutely mess and the difficulty has a tendency to spike every now and then, yet the gameplay is beyond enjoyable and it’s a blast to explore the game’s sandbox."^[31]

On January 22, 2014 Capcom announced that the game has sold one million copies.^[32]

References

External links

• Official website