Man I'm excited. I was fortunate enough to be in the first group to be shown the Eragon movie trailer and gameplay--yes they played the game right there in front of us, no I couldn't touch it =(... actually the group consisted of myself and one other media source, so this information is coming to you as early as possible.
To be honest, the game looks great. They've done amazing work with the gameworld, both scenery and play-area. If you've read the books, then you will feel very familiar in these areas. During the quick showing, we got to see The Spine and the Beor Mountains. In the spine, Eragon and Murtagh were traveling on foot, fighting urgals along mountain ridges, on peaks, and shooting bows at archer-Urgals on a wooden bridge, of course Eragon was using magic to defend himself and smash up a bit of the environment. The combat is combo-driven, but they have taken it a bit farther than what most of us are used to. Defense is a big part of this game, allowing combo's to be begun or broken with a timely block or evade. Particularly nice combos will pull the camera in so you can get a good look at the action as you finish you enemy off.
As cool as the melee combat looked... Eragon is a DRAGON RIDER and Sapphira (his dragon) made her presence known in a BIG way as Eragon used his telepathic connection, calling her to completely demolish the aforementioned bridge, causing the bow-using Urgals to fall to their deaths.
Is that all she did? Of course not, there was dragon riding, where the player controlled the movements of Sapphira as she sped through a mountain mass, tail-swiping and fire-breathing to kill hordes of Urgals. Eragon was even firing his Brisingr arrows to support her. This looked tough to do, because Dragon and Rider obviously were using independent targeting... but that's when they told us...
TWO PLAYER CO-OP!!! That's right, one player can drive Sapphira while a buddy handles Eragon's arrows and spells, which seems to me like it could be some of the biggest fun to be had in quite a while... and it doesn't stop there. In the melee levels, your buddy can control your partner, Brom or Murtagh depending on timeline, and from what little I saw, they seem to work together pretty well.
Aside from the PS2 release, slated for Fall 2006, Vivendi is also planning to release Eragon on the PSP as a Dragon Flight Simulator, on the DS as an Action Roleplaying Game, and on the GBA as a Turn-Based Strategy game.
