http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24107191-5014117,00.html

Australian actress Michelle Van Der Water is on tap to be the voice and model of Chris Redfeild's new partner Sheva Alomar in RE5.

I was ablle to be in attendence to the Bionic Commando pannel here at the San Diego Comic-con and here's a report of the happenngs at the pannel:

short summary:
-BIG anouncement next week for BCR.
-acompanied with the anouncement, next week we'll have a new Trailer for BCR. I won't go too much in-deph on it, but we saw it and it was awesome.
-Devil's Due Press will be publishing a 5 (6?) comic series later this year that will tie in with Bionic Commando Chain of Command and Bionic Commando 3D game.

long summary:

the pannel was headed by Ben Judd from Capcom, Simon Viklund from Grin, Josh Baylock from DDP, and Chain of Command write Andy Diggle.

The Pannel started with the E3 Trailer for the 3D game. Everyone oo'ed and ahh'ed at the swing mechanics. Producer Ben Judd then jumped right into it by talking about a huge anouncement conserning ReArmed to take place later this week. He then started talking about the evolution of Nathan Spencer's character from the arcade version to the Rearmed version to the new and improved model for the 3D game. He skiped over a few things since the pannel was running on some Techical dificulties, but one of the things he wanted to do show us was what Capcom was doing for promotion for the Japanese version of BCR, witch is a total nastalga trip feturing a new theme sung by Anime singer Ichiro Mizuki (Mazinger Z, Gatchaman, GoLion (Voltron)) only done in Japan:

Mizuki himself wanted to come to comic-con, but unfortunatlly, due to scechualing conflicts, he could not, but sent a video apology to the fans atending. Judd pointed out that Mizuki-san is a hardcore gamer, even mentioning Tofu from Resdient Evil 2 and that was his faivorit character.

the afterwords, they discussed the changes done since the NES version and what they kept. Then the floot was opened to Andy Diggle to dicuss the webcomic Bionic Commando Chain of Command. One intresting thing is that that Dingle mentioned that he has been a fan and he saw this series as sort of the link between comic and video games. Fortunatlly, So did Judd. The series would run Aproximatly 32 pages and go on till the release of the game a few weeks later. Judd chimed in by sayint he comic would be the pre-order insentive when the game is released for those that didn't know. Soon Josh Baylock talked breefly about the comic. He mentioned that it will be a limited series that ties in between the webcomic and the upcomming 3D game and he mentioneed techiques that no one has seen to make the comic work. I think they mentioned it would be released later this year, but no word officialy came.

they also showed a new BCR Trailer trailer that will hit the web later next week. I won't say much because I Don't want to step on anyone's toes, but it's very cool.

SInce the pannel was running short, they soon cut to the Tornament section of the game. I parcitipated with 2 other BC fans and the Director of BCR Simon Viklund was also fighting. It was a true display of what crazy things you'll be do you in the multiplayer and who you can play as (Nathan, Super Joe, Gottfried Groeder and General Generalissimo). The new Multiplayer mode is very awesome and very simple to play.

nearly everyone in attendence got a new BC shirt that fetures the evolution of Nathan Spencer's character model from the arcade to the new 3d verson. In private, Me and Judd dicussed 2 things: WIll you be able to create your own guy for the Mutliplayer 3d game, and the answer is unfortunatly no... but said that there will be some degree to customzation. Maybe to the extent of Lost planet. also, the Japanese song. Unfortinatly, it's only avaliable in Japan, but did mentioned that it could be posible to pick up the song on Itunes Japan.

That about sums up the coolest fanboy hour that anyone will experience.