Mike Bantick
Friday, 03 April 2009 09:07
Opinion and Analysis
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ITWIRE: The game borrows much from Company of Heroes, what design elements were kept, thrown out or modified for DOW II based on Relic’s experience with the WWII game?
PB: COMPANY OF HEROES was a huge leap forward in squad-based tactical gameplay and we wanted to preserve and adapt as much as we could from that game. Most important for us was preserving the way in which environment is so much a part of the game – squads moving from cover to cover, destroying walls and buildings to change the battlefield, and so on – and the amazing sense of controlling squads of real soldiers.
We did have to make some adjustments, of course. For one thing, 7 foot-tall armoured supersoldiers react differently under fire than World War 2 GIs. And we needed to figure out how the various science-fiction weapons would impact the environment meaningfully without being outright "win buttons."
Lots of work, but well worth the effort.
ITWIRE: How much of a challenge did the introduction of the Tyranid race prove to be in this release?
PB: A huge challenge – but also a hugely rewarding one. Artists and animators did incredible work on the visual assets, but we didn't have too many worries on that front: we knew the Nids would look awesome. The biggest challenges were making the Tyranids feel right, and ensuring players could understand their actions tactically.
For the first challenge, we needed to create behaviour that was radically different from that of individual soldiers. We wanted players to feel they were facing a massive hive, not individual aliens. That meant rethinking cover, which units the Tyranids would preserve and which it would sacrifice, and much more.
So they needed to feel alien. But players also need to be able to interpret their actions in terms of tactics. In a real-time game, players are always looking at the enemy they encounter and trying to figure out how to counter and destroy them. So (using an example from COMPANY OF HEROES) when you spot an enemy heavy machinegun set up behind a hedgerow, you know from the size of the weapon and the presence of a soldier serving as a loader that the gun isn't very mobile; the stream of tracers peppering the terrain tells you that the gun is powerful and likely to chew up any infantrymen you put in front of it. So you need to use your mobility both to defend against it (moving from cover to cover) and to destroy it (flank it and attack before it can track you). And you understand that very well and very quickly – in part because this behaviour is very close to actual real-world behaviour (as seen in countless movies, documentaries and so forth).
With Tyranids, however, many of the cues are missing or could get scrambled. An analogous anti-infantry unit for the Nids is a large warrior creature with an organic weapon that shoots seed-pods which sprout deadly barbed strangle-vine around targeted infantry. That isn't something most folks have seen before and figuring it out can be frustrating. Add in that to human eyes all Tyranids look alike and things get even more confusing -- (they're "bugs" first, and the details distinguishing them only come through after).
Ironically, these two seeming opposite problems were both solved by the same thing: squad behaviour. Not only could we create a sense of an alien, swarming invader, but how units move helped us distinguish various types (backed up by weapon effects and other cues).
ITWIRE: Tell me about the focus on Wargear this time around?
PB: Above all, we wanted the player to feel invested in his squads. These are not faceless, disposable units – these are troops you get to know over the course of the game. A lot of that come from the narrative and mission design, of course, but it also informed the wargear system.
The choice of what gear to equip is a major avenue for personalization, so the player looks at his squads as his customized agents in the game, rather than as generic tools. And because wargear comes to the player as a reward for slaying enemies and completing missions, that attachment grows even stronger. Each item is a tool the player has earned and will want to use to its best effect.
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