'Sup guys? Not much with you? Cool, cool. It's a slightly different story up in 'dis house. Yo.

I'll explain the reasoning for the Birdiness of today's title in a moment, but to start off with, I'll update you guys with what's happened since our birthday.

First things first, congratulations, Yax! You are the newest Honorary Royalty. I know it's been a long-time coming, but we figured that since nobody else had decided to add to our lovely house, and since you added the most awesome feature (Rawrysaurus, no less), we decided to crown you. Our resident Legoroy is currently making a mini-game with your character, so feel proud.




The House in its early days.





Here's the House in all its most-recent glory.


Moving on, we've also started a Whispedia - a Whisper Game Studios Online Encylopedia, which will be filled with the stuff that you see fit for it to be filled with. User-defined-content, dude, it's amazing. I've been helping out here and there, and so have a lot of you guys, but if there's anyone out there with 1337-Pr0 Wiki skillz, feel free to help us out there. Contributions, and who contributes are being noted. You have been warned/enlightened/hinted-at.

Anyway, moving onto less-exciting news. As you may or may not know, the Whisper-Sabre merge went swimmingly well, and so here's the current list of Whisper Game Studios' employees. Yep, a total of 25 employees. Not bad. Most of them are busy working away already, others are on stand-by until such times that they are called upon to serve.

I caught up with Lord Snakie earlier, and asked him for an autograph and an interview. He happily obliged.

More important was the interview, of course. Here's how it went:

Sarsion: So hey, fellow-CEO Snakie, lolsup?

Lord Snakie: Not too much, my fine slave-driver.

Sarsion: So, to start off with...Sabre Game Studios: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

Lord Snakie: Well... the who is the hard part. We've got quite a fair bit of folks. Some of our more prominent would be myself, Cheehwawa, and NinjaPleez. The what is relatively simple, too: we're a game studio, of course, or at least we were. We started off in Bungie.net's Bungie Universe Forum, to answer the where, after the Halo Encyclopedia launched. Many theorists were disgruntled at the level of canonical errors present in the book [ed's note: not that that should stop you from getting the book; it's also a very good read!], and we all wanted to make something that would stay true to an established canon; thus, Sabre was born with the overall goal of creating a series that could be believed in. This happened just about two months ago now, and we were extremely dedicated to our goal from the start, which is how we got the basic plan for a game down in just five days.

Sarsion: So, Sabre was essentially spawned on another video-game-company's doorstep? Sounds familiar.

Lord Snakie: It does, doesn't it? Cheeh and I actually commented several times that Sabre and Whisper's merger into... well, Whisper... was almost like the Bungie.net Community Forum and the Bungie Universe Forum joining up. You guys supplied the Programmers and the Artists, we supplied the Writers and the Universe Builders; quite the sweet deal.

Sarsion: Totally agreed. Opposites attract beautifully well. You mention that Sabre had "the overall goal of creating a series that could be believed in", is this project still in-the-works?

Lord Snakie: Most assuredly. We've recently come up with a working title for it- it's going to be called "Heron" from now until we decide on a final title, probably close to the release of the first game. A heron-marked blade is the symbol of a blademaster in the "The Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, and we were Sabre Studios: we are the blademasters, and this work will be a sword worthy of our mark, hence "Heron".

Sarsion: I was wanting to call it "Birdy Adventures"; are we still considering this as a final-title?

Lord Snakie: Are we still considering, "Find the shushes, find all the shushes, kill all the shushes!" as the marketing phrase? [ed's note: lolol, Snakie got caught by the curse-filter]

Sarsion: Oh gosh, I should hope not. Point taken. So what's Birdy Adventures about then? Birdies? Adventures?

Lord Snakie: Heron isn't quite what you'd expect of Whisper; it's not like Coconuts, Pie Collect, or even Quiff. Heron has an intense and long-spanning story, and a dedicated team working on making that story as gritty and realistic as possible while still delivering an epic worthy of the people who influenced us at Bungie. With that said, we're working closely with all of the teams to make sure that everyone thinks it's a realistic and captivating tale, and so far we've gotten positive results. The first planned game in Heron's universe begins in the late 2100s on Mars. Earth has been struck by a comet and devastated, and the only humans that might be able to survive this catastrophe are stuck on the partially-terraformed red planet. These unlikely survivors are forced to turn to genetic treatments to help keep themselves alive on the harsh planet, but a worse foe than the landscape around them is lurking, a collective of zealous worshipers that have been driven to insanity by an ancient alien artifact.

The first game covers the war between these genetic-treated men and women who are just trying to survive and the collective of zealots, who have more than just the artifact's indoctrinating effects to call upon to defeat the heretics of Mars...

Sarsion: Wow. That sounds totally unlike the child-friendly Whisper that we know and love. Will this mean that all future games from Whisper will all be this dark and gritty, or is there a light side to Sabre's dark side? Snakie, is Sabre a moon?

Lord Snakie: Not all moons are tidally locked, Mr. Sarsion, there are those who like to mix their light and dark sides in a rotation of epic beauty. Sabre is dedicated to producing a storyline of epic proportions that will have the gamer dropping his jaw more than once- that doesn't mean we're not also prepared to force that same gamer to roll around on the ground in laughter now and then! Heron's first chapters will be gritty and dark in many ways, but that's largely a reflection of what happens to humankind in and around that time period (the comet and some... "other" changes). Humor makes everything better, though, and to remain true to what might happen if people were really in such a situation, there may very well be liberal amounts of it.

Sarsion: That's certainly a reassuring word. Is Heron the only game that Whisper's team is working on at the moment? Give me a quick run-down of what our peoples are concerning ourselves with right now.

Lord Snakie: Right now only a few people are working on Heron; a few people are reading the story bible being produced in their spare time and giving it the check of approval or pointing out some areas where it can be improved, but for the most part, only Chee and myself are actively working on it at the moment. The main reason behind this is, quite simply, we want to get the basis for the universe put together and get the story bible completely glued and duct-taped up before we let everyone jump all over it and rip it to shreds. Very soon (as soon as we get the Story Bible completed) we're going to get some concept art cranked out and we'll give our loyal fans at Whisper a few quick glances at some of the pieces- not too much, though, or you'll spoil your yearning!

While Chee and I are slamming our faces into desks and drinking liberal amounts of caffeine to remain awake long enough to toss the file containing the secrets of our universe back-and-forth and while the artists are gnawing their pencils waiting to get their hands on the thing, however, the majority of the programmers and a few artists are crowding over Quiff, working on its creation. That's right folks, you heard it first here: Quiff is underway, and Heron will go from the planning stages to the construction stages the moment that Quiff is finished.

Sarsion: Quiff is indeed underway, and I'll be releasing some up-to-date wallpapers for that shortly. But that's not the main concern here; how does the development process for creating the Universe? Are we ever going to publicly share the Heron Bible?

Lord Snakie: The process is pretty advanced for the stage that we're at right now. Essentially, every time the Story Bible (which is currently just a single word document) is edited by somebody, a tag is created at the very top in italics; usually it says something like "Edited by _____ on ______". All the edits made in that session are highlighted with a certain color, which is unique to the editor- teal is Chee, I use yellow, and Ninja uses red (general announcements are highlighted in gray). This helps us to see who had what ideas and when they had them, in case, for example, Ninja makes edits to an old version and Chee made edits to a new version, but we still like some of Ninja's ideas. The file is then re-saved as "Heron.*name of editor*.*date*", and is at this point ready to ship out to whoever wants it/needs it next. We usually just transfer it over MSN; advanced, right? As for sharing it with the public, we opt for a Bungie-style plan, which is to say "no". Sorry folks, information is precious, and we have the equivalent of the One Ring up in our "my documents".

Sarsion: You mean the "My Documents" stored on a super-secret-storage facility hidden on Luna, right? Good, I thought as much. So what kind of game is Heron going to be?

Lord Snakie: Well, to be quite honest, we've got... err... "more than two" games in the Heron universe planned out, so the style might change partway through- in fact, we somewhat intended it to from the first. We want to give out programmers time to practice and gain skills before we try anything 3D, so the initial game has been written to function as a side-scroller. Beyond that, I'm "not at liberty to say"... which is to say, it's a combination of not knowing and a few secrets.

Sarsion: Dare I say that it seems quite likely, then, that Quiff will be released before Heron? I'd imagine that Quiff would act as a wonderful ice-breaker for the team, especially the coders.

Lord Snakie: Quiff has indeed been planned for release before Heron. Quiff will provide our programmers with an excellent basis for learning and growth while also tying the teams of Sabre and Whisper even closer together before we begin on what will ultimately be one of Whisper's largest undertakings. That doesn't mean that Quiff won't be just as good as Heron though; we've still got surprises in store for you!

Sarsion: I think that's a perfect point to wrap things up, say thank you and get-yer-backside-back-to-work, and provide you lot, the Whisper Community with some prettiful wallpapers for Heron. Any last words, Sir Panty?

Lord Snakie: Sabre made a commitment when we were created, not to make games that we would want to play as Bungie did, but to make games that could be believed in. In this time when story is becoming less and less important, Sabre's merger with Whisper changes nothing about our absolute resolve. I speak for Whisper when I say that we WILL make games that you can believe in, and I speak for Whisper when I say that Heron will blow you away. Good night, and good luck.

Sarsion: I guess that works well with Whisper's original slogan of "'Play' is Goal Number 1; 'Enjoy' is a Secondary Goal." Good job, guys. Thanks for dropping by, Snakie.

AND NOW, HERON WALLPAPERS

I made these, so if you don't like them, you know where my Private-Message Inbox is.




Heron Wallpaper Preview

MOBILE DEVICES

Microsoft Zune and Zune HD
240 x 320 | 272 x 480

Apple iPhone and iPod
432 x 576

COMPUTER DESKTOPS

Small
640 x 480 | 800 x 600

Average
1024 x 768 | 1280 x 1024

DAMN, DUDE, YOU HUGE!
1600 x 1200 | 1856 x 1392 | 2048 x 1536

THANKS FOR READING, OH, AND FOR PLAYING

Well, that was a pretty big update, was it not? I'd say it was. I know you think it was. Expect a lot more good things from us. Progress on both Heron and Quiff is a sight to behold, but your eyes are not yet ready. Don't worry, I'm keeping track of the evolutionary process of each game. There's a wonderful difference in comparing - say - Quiff's original sprite-sheet, to the new one that I've been working on the past week.

Oh, but that's a story for another day. And yes, I do enjoy teasing you.