JCalCGM
08-02-2006, 12:41 PM
“Oh no…not another WWII RTS game?” Well, actually developer Digital Reality and publisher CDV are not really offering another WWII RTS game with the upcoming title War Front: Turning Point. Instead this title is set just a few years later in an alternate timeline where the Nazis are still fighting and there are some interesting military advances. FiringSquad got a chance to chat with CDV lead producer Elmar Gruenenberg and Digital Reality lead developer Istvan Kiss (http://www.firingsquad.com/games/war_front_interview/) to find out more about War Front. Here is a snip:
FiringSquad: This game seems to have a lot of echoes of the Command and Conquer: Red Alert series. Is it safe to say that this game owes something to that classic game franchise?
Elmar Gruenenberg: We all love C&C and all the big base-building RTS's like Warcraft and such. I think in that genre every base-builder RTS owes something to root ideas drawn from Dune2 or Herzog Zwei and even much older games. It's like with the shooters the innovation curve is very flat since Wolfenstein and Doom 1. – What we want to do is give the people a game that's. fun to play. Our goal is to reach the mass market and make a hell of a fun game and not focus on winning some game designer prize and end up going bankrupt doing it. The market tells us what they want or not and if they don’t want to learn have to learn an all new gameplay mechanic, then we won't bother trying to deliver one. – By the way, we do have some innovations like the first person bunker mode which gives you a damage and armor bonus when you sit inside. This allows plenty of new multiplayer strategies like the "bunker-rush". And there are other innovations in the game that won't wreck the classical (and appreciated) base builder gameplay.
FiringSquad: This game seems to have a lot of echoes of the Command and Conquer: Red Alert series. Is it safe to say that this game owes something to that classic game franchise?
Elmar Gruenenberg: We all love C&C and all the big base-building RTS's like Warcraft and such. I think in that genre every base-builder RTS owes something to root ideas drawn from Dune2 or Herzog Zwei and even much older games. It's like with the shooters the innovation curve is very flat since Wolfenstein and Doom 1. – What we want to do is give the people a game that's. fun to play. Our goal is to reach the mass market and make a hell of a fun game and not focus on winning some game designer prize and end up going bankrupt doing it. The market tells us what they want or not and if they don’t want to learn have to learn an all new gameplay mechanic, then we won't bother trying to deliver one. – By the way, we do have some innovations like the first person bunker mode which gives you a damage and armor bonus when you sit inside. This allows plenty of new multiplayer strategies like the "bunker-rush". And there are other innovations in the game that won't wreck the classical (and appreciated) base builder gameplay.