Post by Zecristo on Mar 12, 2005 11:44:36 GMT 1
Here's a Gamespy extensive review on Call of Duty"'s most probable successor with game site at: www.brothersinarmsgame.com/teaser/index.php
"Oh $#!%, there's a tank," says Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software. We're looking at the developer's upcoming new WWII action game, Brothers in Arms, and we're deftly moving a squad of soldiers through the fields of WWII Europe when a large enemy tank rolls into view. Pitchford orders his team to lay down suppressing fire while we roll our own tank forward, and an explosion rocks the area. Thankfully, we're still in one piece, and our tank takes down the enemy steel with a well-placed shot. For a closer look at the game, we spent a day at Gearbox's offices in Plano, TX, where we got to see both the Xbox version of the game as well as a first-ever look at the PC version.
Eight Days in June
Brothers in Arms casts you as Sgt. Matt Baker, member of the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles" during World War II. While HBO's acclaimed "Band of Brothers" miniseries focused on the exploits of the 506th, Brothers in Arms tells the story of a group of paratroopers from the 502nd who hold the distinction of being involved in every major portion of the campaign to free Normandy.
The game should contain about 22 or 23 levels, spanning eight days, starting with a paradrop gone awry the night before D-Day. Interestingly, the game starts near the end: you get knocked unconscious during a huge firefight, which triggers a long flashback starting with your training, the flubbed paradrop and then continues through the entire game until it catches up with the present. Throughout the game, you'll eventually collect the other members of "Baker's Dozen," which opens the doors for what should be some interesting combat.
To start our demo, we booted up the PC version and the level "Crack of Dawn," which takes place nearly halfway through the game. We had a chance to look at this same level on the Xbox at E3 a few months back, and the two versions look nearly identical. Of course, the PC version looks a little sharper thanks to support for higher resolutions, which really pays off when you look at the various characters close up, but otherwise the games shouldn't look very different.
While the idea of "another" WWII shooter may not initially sound all that interesting, it's clear Gearbox is doing something different in terms of gameplay. Instead of one super-soldier taking on the entire German army or having a few computer-controlled buddies supporting you independently, a lot of Brothers in Arms focuses on squad tactics. When you have other soldiers fighting alongside you -- which is the case for a lot of the game -- you can lay simple orders for them on the fly, sort of like calling an audible out in the field. The PC controls are every bit as simple as the Xbox version -- one button cycles through different solders, and another gives them orders. While in this mode, your cursor becomes context-sensitive: move your cursor over an area and you can order your soldier to run there; move over an enemy and your soldier will engage him in combat.
The emphasis on tactics continues out in the field. At any time, you can shift to a birds-eye view to get a good look at your surroundings and figure out how you might want to approach a given situation. This isn't necessarily unrealistic, since squads often had access to reconnaissance photos and maps. You can also lay down suppressing fire to keep enemies at bay. Once you spot an enemy, you'll see a small circular icon that switches from red to gray as you fire in their direction -- when it's fully gray, the enemy is scared out of its wits and will probably stay under cover rather than fire at you. After a few seconds, you'll see the icon start to switch to red, at which point the enemy is more likely to pop back up and start shooting.
One of the more interesting design decisions in Brothers in Arms is lack of a traditional health meter. You don't start with 100 points of health or a meter that you can occasionally refill with magical health packs around the level. Pitchford calls it "the 1 health problem" -- there's nothing realistic about being down to one drop of health and being able to restore it back to full without any sort of penalty, nor is it any fun to try to get through a level with low health and die because you got nicked in the toe. So while you can still get killed in Brothers in Arms, it works a little differently. If you're doing something that's likely to get you in trouble, the game gives you feedback -- you'll take a shot, maybe you'll see blood on the screen, and eventually you'll get knocked down and take serious damage. But as long as you're able to walk around, you can play the game normally and not have to worry about getting killed with a single stray bullet -- you'll really have to get caught in the wrong spot (or rush into an area like an idiot) to get yourself killed.
Next up in our demo was a level called "Alternate Route," which takes place on Day 3 of the squad's eight-day trek. At this point, you've started to gather up several of your squadmates, who were scattered during the initial paradrop, and it was here that we got to see some of the tank combat. Although you can't actually drive the tanks yourself, you can issue orders to your tank just as you would to another soldier, and in this way you can use them as rolling cover. Keeping in theme with the rest of the game, there's no health meter for the tanks (the game will feature the Stewart and the Sherman) -- you'll get visual cues like cosmetic damage and smoke to signal that a tank has been damaged.
As you might have guessed, there's a huge emphasis on accuracy that runs throughout Brothers in Arms, right down to the various areas of Europe represented in the game. To assist with development, U.S. Colonel John Antal is working as an in-house technical advisor to the team. We were able to spend a few minutes with Antal, who at one point took the Gearbox team out to the U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, TX for training so they could learn (among other things) proper combat tactics. The team has collected an immense amount of data for the game, and it's possible that a documentary on the subject matter could appear at some point in the future.
We also had a chance to check out a bit of Brothers in Arms' multiplayer action on our visit. It's an interesting concept: you'll only have a handful of players in each game, but each player can control their own mini-squads of AI soldiers, meaning you could have games with four teams of four soldiers apiece fighting it out. There are about 8-12 maps being planned for multiplayer, usually with various objectives: one map we looked at had teams battling it out over locks that could flood one of the areas that appears in the single-player game.
When we looked at Brothers in Arms, development was moving along well: everything existed in the single-player game, and the team was in the process of tuning the gameplay, cleaning up various areas, adding final art and recording dialogue (expect a lot of character chatter from your squadmates). On the multiplayer side, most of the maps have been built, but still need to be put through their paces to make sure they play well. It's possible there could be a demo around the holidays of this year, and then the game should release for Xbox, PC and PS2 simultaneously at the beginning of 2005. We'll be sure to have more on Brothers in Arms as development continues.
Yours: Zecristo O Messias Dos Ateus
"Oh $#!%, there's a tank," says Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software. We're looking at the developer's upcoming new WWII action game, Brothers in Arms, and we're deftly moving a squad of soldiers through the fields of WWII Europe when a large enemy tank rolls into view. Pitchford orders his team to lay down suppressing fire while we roll our own tank forward, and an explosion rocks the area. Thankfully, we're still in one piece, and our tank takes down the enemy steel with a well-placed shot. For a closer look at the game, we spent a day at Gearbox's offices in Plano, TX, where we got to see both the Xbox version of the game as well as a first-ever look at the PC version.
Eight Days in June
Brothers in Arms casts you as Sgt. Matt Baker, member of the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles" during World War II. While HBO's acclaimed "Band of Brothers" miniseries focused on the exploits of the 506th, Brothers in Arms tells the story of a group of paratroopers from the 502nd who hold the distinction of being involved in every major portion of the campaign to free Normandy.
The game should contain about 22 or 23 levels, spanning eight days, starting with a paradrop gone awry the night before D-Day. Interestingly, the game starts near the end: you get knocked unconscious during a huge firefight, which triggers a long flashback starting with your training, the flubbed paradrop and then continues through the entire game until it catches up with the present. Throughout the game, you'll eventually collect the other members of "Baker's Dozen," which opens the doors for what should be some interesting combat.
To start our demo, we booted up the PC version and the level "Crack of Dawn," which takes place nearly halfway through the game. We had a chance to look at this same level on the Xbox at E3 a few months back, and the two versions look nearly identical. Of course, the PC version looks a little sharper thanks to support for higher resolutions, which really pays off when you look at the various characters close up, but otherwise the games shouldn't look very different.
While the idea of "another" WWII shooter may not initially sound all that interesting, it's clear Gearbox is doing something different in terms of gameplay. Instead of one super-soldier taking on the entire German army or having a few computer-controlled buddies supporting you independently, a lot of Brothers in Arms focuses on squad tactics. When you have other soldiers fighting alongside you -- which is the case for a lot of the game -- you can lay simple orders for them on the fly, sort of like calling an audible out in the field. The PC controls are every bit as simple as the Xbox version -- one button cycles through different solders, and another gives them orders. While in this mode, your cursor becomes context-sensitive: move your cursor over an area and you can order your soldier to run there; move over an enemy and your soldier will engage him in combat.
The emphasis on tactics continues out in the field. At any time, you can shift to a birds-eye view to get a good look at your surroundings and figure out how you might want to approach a given situation. This isn't necessarily unrealistic, since squads often had access to reconnaissance photos and maps. You can also lay down suppressing fire to keep enemies at bay. Once you spot an enemy, you'll see a small circular icon that switches from red to gray as you fire in their direction -- when it's fully gray, the enemy is scared out of its wits and will probably stay under cover rather than fire at you. After a few seconds, you'll see the icon start to switch to red, at which point the enemy is more likely to pop back up and start shooting.
One of the more interesting design decisions in Brothers in Arms is lack of a traditional health meter. You don't start with 100 points of health or a meter that you can occasionally refill with magical health packs around the level. Pitchford calls it "the 1 health problem" -- there's nothing realistic about being down to one drop of health and being able to restore it back to full without any sort of penalty, nor is it any fun to try to get through a level with low health and die because you got nicked in the toe. So while you can still get killed in Brothers in Arms, it works a little differently. If you're doing something that's likely to get you in trouble, the game gives you feedback -- you'll take a shot, maybe you'll see blood on the screen, and eventually you'll get knocked down and take serious damage. But as long as you're able to walk around, you can play the game normally and not have to worry about getting killed with a single stray bullet -- you'll really have to get caught in the wrong spot (or rush into an area like an idiot) to get yourself killed.
Next up in our demo was a level called "Alternate Route," which takes place on Day 3 of the squad's eight-day trek. At this point, you've started to gather up several of your squadmates, who were scattered during the initial paradrop, and it was here that we got to see some of the tank combat. Although you can't actually drive the tanks yourself, you can issue orders to your tank just as you would to another soldier, and in this way you can use them as rolling cover. Keeping in theme with the rest of the game, there's no health meter for the tanks (the game will feature the Stewart and the Sherman) -- you'll get visual cues like cosmetic damage and smoke to signal that a tank has been damaged.
As you might have guessed, there's a huge emphasis on accuracy that runs throughout Brothers in Arms, right down to the various areas of Europe represented in the game. To assist with development, U.S. Colonel John Antal is working as an in-house technical advisor to the team. We were able to spend a few minutes with Antal, who at one point took the Gearbox team out to the U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, TX for training so they could learn (among other things) proper combat tactics. The team has collected an immense amount of data for the game, and it's possible that a documentary on the subject matter could appear at some point in the future.
We also had a chance to check out a bit of Brothers in Arms' multiplayer action on our visit. It's an interesting concept: you'll only have a handful of players in each game, but each player can control their own mini-squads of AI soldiers, meaning you could have games with four teams of four soldiers apiece fighting it out. There are about 8-12 maps being planned for multiplayer, usually with various objectives: one map we looked at had teams battling it out over locks that could flood one of the areas that appears in the single-player game.
When we looked at Brothers in Arms, development was moving along well: everything existed in the single-player game, and the team was in the process of tuning the gameplay, cleaning up various areas, adding final art and recording dialogue (expect a lot of character chatter from your squadmates). On the multiplayer side, most of the maps have been built, but still need to be put through their paces to make sure they play well. It's possible there could be a demo around the holidays of this year, and then the game should release for Xbox, PC and PS2 simultaneously at the beginning of 2005. We'll be sure to have more on Brothers in Arms as development continues.
Yours: Zecristo O Messias Dos Ateus
