Highway to Hell

It may be back to World War II for the newest Brothers in Arms, but this isn't just another WWII FPS.
6/9/2008 12:00 AM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 4

As World War II first-person shooters go, the Brothers in Arms series has always distinguished itself from the lone wolf approach of Medal of Honor and the wolf pack approach of Call of Duty by letting you be the leader of pack, controlling up to two squads of soldiers, using them for cover fire while you flank, and vice versa. But as we learned while talking to Randy Pitchford, the president of Gearbox Software and the game's executive producer, the third Brothers -- Hell's Highway, which Ubisoft will release on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC this August -- will be distinguishing itself even further with some new mechanics.

Crispy Gamer: How is this Brothers in Arms different from previous ones in the series?

Randy Pitchford: Well, this is the first game in this [next-gen] round, so we're able to do things with this technology that we couldn't do before. We chose to invest where Brothers in Arms is strongest, and where its identity is: squad combat, authenticity and the brotherhood between soldiers.

In terms of squad combat, we kind of made the last game a little too rigid about firing and maneuvering to the point where that was the only way to win. You'd find the places from which to suppress and flank, and take them out that way. It was a new concept for a shooter, but unfortunately it was also the only way to win and that took some of the fun out of it. So now we have a couple things to open it up a bit. We have more units at your disposal. You now have up to three teams, with one of them being a special team that might be equipped with a heavy machine gun or a bazooka.

We've also added destructible cover. In the past, if you hid behind a wooden fence, you'd be safe. A lot of games do that. But now, like in real life, wooden fences shatter and can't protect you forever. Some cover is harder to destroy than others, so you have to factor in the strength of the behind which cover you might hide, the strength of the cover the enemy is behind, and do you have the equipment, like a bazooka, where their cover won't matter?

We've also invested way more into the story. I think people are really going to get sucked into the story and we've also found ways to entwine the cinematic language into the gameplay. We have this action camera that -- let's say you get a headshot, one that goes under the helmet, what we'll do is move the camera in close, cut to slow motion, and show it very cinematically. It's kind of like what they do with the crashes in Burnout. It actually started because when we'd play the game and something cool would happen, we would pause the game so we could look at it in slow motion.

As for the authenticity, we always do our homework. This time we bought some aerial recon photos from the British government, who did recon every three hours before, during, and after Operation Market Garden, which is the battle our game is centered on.

Crispy Gamer: Did you have to sell them on this idea?