RPGs jump into the future with Anachronox  Screenshot Gallery

Anachronox
Developer: Ion Storm
Publisher: Eidos

If there's one game that really seemed to come out of its shell at E3 this year it is Anachronox, the Ion Storm title designed by Tom Hall.  This is another game that has been around at two previous E3 shows, but previously it was little more than some interesting technology and design ideas.  This year it became clear everything is coalescing into a very impressive-looking game.

You begin your journey as Sylvester "Sly" Boots, a down on his luck detective living on a strange alien planet.  The game is billed as a role-playing game, but there are no swords or spiders here – The world of Anachronox is dark, brooding, and reminds me of the movie Dark City.   You'll be able to control up to three characters at a time on six different planets, and even though the game uses the Quake 2 engine, considered dated by some standards, the visuals are very impressive.  Hall demonstrated a number of in-game cinematic sequences that are unquestionably the best looking in-game story sequences I've ever seen on a PC.  Noticeably absent from the E3 demo was the turn based battle system (shown at last year's E3) which is remarkably similar to the way you fight in a Final Fantasy game.   

It looks like Anachronox is well on its way to being an epic game.  It has a lot of mood and ambiance to the world – it some ways it reminds me of Eidos' Omnikron, but infinitely more playable at that.   With branching dialogue and lots of in-game puzzles, there's a lot to like here.  Overall Anachronox had a very notable showing – Now the biggest challenge for the team is to get this epic game done sometime soon.  If one game on this list that looks like it has an aggressive release target, it's this game, scheduled for Fall.