Electronic Arts contacted us this morning to let us know that rumors of the death of Steven Spielberg's next game, LMNO, are greatly exaggerated.
Just saw your story on the LMNO rumor and wanted to let you know the game is still in development at EALA under the creative leadership of Doug Church and Lou Castle. The rumor is incorrect.
For those of you not up on your alphabet games, LMNO is said to be an ultra-realistic title that was once described by N’Gai Croal as “North by Northwest meets ET… if ET were female, grown up and hot.”
You don't play as the girl, however. You're an ex-secret agent, and the bond that you forge while on the run with the computer-controlled woman—good, bad, indifferent—determines the nature of her special abilities and the ways in which she'll assist you. Says Spielberg: "The challenge is, can the game have an emotional impact on players while they are actively manipulating the world?" Based on the clever ways in which he and EA are extracting a genuine performance from their digital Eve—complete with eyes that widen, lips that curl and translucent skin that lights up in different colors to express her quicksilver moods—we think Spielberg's got yet another hit on his hands.
Good to know that's still in the works.