RB3 hints in the Green Day demo

[jimcallumuk1812]

A Demo for Green Day Rock Band was released on the Xbox this week, this in itself is not terribly interesting. What is interesting is the RB3 hint it contained.

I haven’t seen the demo but the RB site indicates that during it a “3” appears in the usual RB font followed by the RB circle icons. By now we are used to the usual Guitar, Drum, Bass and Mic icons – however next to the “3” there are 5 circles.

The first change is that there are 3 mics in the “vox circle” indicating harmonies will be in the game

And the other change is there is a fifth circle, with a keyboard in it

So harmonies and keyboards in RB3 by the looks of it – very exciting

(And most exciting of all this paves the way for Genesis to at last be in Rock Band – how I envy you guitarists getting to play the guitar solo in “Firth of Fifth” one day

There is no official confirmation but it is an official demo

Any thoughts

[Saccian]

I found the keyboard addition interesting but a little odd. I can't imagine that every song in the game would have a keyboard track/chart so for those wanting to play that instrument, they may be sitting on the sidelines a lot, especially with DLC. I guess the same goes with multiple vocal spots, so maybe it won't be a big deal. Might suck for online play though.

[vw_fetish]

The concept of having a keyboard available is pretty cool and I think this opens up the possibility of a huge array of kick ass 80's songs, but I'm with saccian on this one... only a small percentage of songs use keyboards and this could be an issue when playing online.

IMO, it would be fucking awesome if they could come up with a really cool "key-tar". This additional player/instrument could support Keyboards or RHYTHM GUITAR!

Unfortunately, it still poses a problem for all of the current DLC library.

[vw_fetish]

Forgot to mention how disappointed I am with the Green Day:RB demo. Makes me wonder how involved HMX was in the development of this game. Did HMX only supply the game engine? The menus and animation have the cheap quality and feel of most Guitar Hero games. Even the menu sounds remind me of Guitar Hero. I also feel the lip syncing on the animations were very poorly done.

I'm not sure how much Demiurge Studios has to do with the look & feel of the game, but it's a step in the wrong direction. Thank god we are able to export these tracks to RB2.

Thoughts on the demo?

[jimcallumuk1812]

A good solution would be to be able to sort by band members. Currently if you have a three piece you have to go through all the songs to find the instrumentals. It would be useful if you could sort according to who is playing so all the 5 piece songs were together then you could make sure you were playing tracks where everyone was involved.

I mean currently I don’t mind occasionally playing “Because” or “She’s Leaving Home” when I’m on drums but I wouldn’t want to sit out lots in a row.

In fact it would be even better if you could do multiple sorts – i.e. by bandmembers then by stars then by band to make things easier to find.

[greyghost88]

yea Iam with vw on this the keytar sounds neat and I would love to try it out, but how would it work with already current dlc or will they just patch it and we would have to re down load everything, I don't think this will happen. and the same goes for the 3 part vox, will it be like the beatles and you can only do it at the place where the vox is or will they let 3 people from 3 different ps's jam online together and just like the keytar how will this go with all the dlc already released, but these guys are smart and maybe they have this all worked out and its not gonna be that big of a deal, they still have 6 months of planning and working on the game so...

[mistressd]

They've confirmed harmonies will only be able to be played on the same system (I should know, I asked!), as for altering the dlc, I don't see that happening either, it would just be too much work. But how about the visual issue? 5 highways on one screen? Wouldn't that make the 4 bottom instruments' highway much smaller?

And as for possible music to go with the keyboard, one song came to mind; "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" by Elton John and "Down in a Hole" by Alice in Chains for harmonies. What do you all think?

[hamreus]

I dont think 5 instruments on same screen would be too good and having a keyboard in the band could make all RBN and older DLC useless online. So the only good way i can come up with a keyboard is like this. Release some new songs that dont have any guitar at all and let the guitarist use the keyboard instead on those songs. Or maybe songs with booth guitar, bass and keyboard, either the bass or guitar player can stuck on hes main instrument or take the keyboard. That would solve the problem with too many instrument on the screen and no limited song library online.

[greyghost88]

but like the songs with only 3 parts and you have a four band those songs are greyed out so maybe it will be the same for the 5 parts, if they do it this way that way if you have 5 people then chances are you will be looking for 5 part songs.