Call Of Duty: World At War Q&A Feature

After a stint of Modern Warfare, Activision's Call of Duty franchise returns to the Second World War next month, with the release of Call of Duty: World at War.  Following campaigns on both the European and Pacific fronts, the game also includes four-player co-op and competitive co-op modes, alongside multiplayer modes like Free for All, Team Deathmatch, and WAR, all built with the same engine that powered its 2007 predecessor.

In a recent interview with TVG, producer Noah Heller spoke about the latest instalment to come from Treyarch, the performance of the muliplayer beta currently underway, the importance of dog AI, and whether the studio has had a bad rap...

TVG: We're just a few weeks away from the launch of Call of Duty: World at War; with the cycle nearly over, how has production on the game compared to Call of Duty 3?

[It's been like] Night and day.  I have to tell you that towards the end with World at War we're definitely working the same hours as Call of Duty 3, twenty-four hour shifts and what have you, but the extra time has meant that we didn't have to make as many off the cuff decisions.  We were able to try something, if it worked use it, if it didn't take it out.

One of the best examples I can give is in multiplayer.  You probably know that the kill-streak reward for seven straight kills is dogs.  When the Lead Creative Director for online told us it would be dogs, half the guys were like "Oh c'mon, that's a terrible idea!" and the other half were like, "That's going to be the coolest thing ever!"  The first time they were implemented, the dogs had trouble finding you, they'd kill you instantly.  Then they become too weak or too strong, and then they wouldn't find players in the right way.  It's that careful balance back and forth of iteration.  That's game development, some designer and some programmer sitting in a room together.  They try this and it doesn't work, then they try this and it miraculously starts working.

On this game, we finally had time to do game development the way it's supposed to be, and dogs are a great example of that.  If we didn't have the time to try that over and over again, to say "how about a little stronger, how about a little bit weaker", it wouldn't have come to fruition, and whatever we would have had would have been something lame.

TVG: Infinity Ward had dogs in the single player of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, did you base any of the dog AI in World at War on that?

It's tough because Call of Duty is a very scripted experience usually.  There wasn't any combat dog AI per say, the team had to start from scratch in a lot of respects.  What we did learn from Call of Duty 4 and from other games and movies that have had them in is that dogs are vicious and scary.  What makes a dog scary is that dogs run faster than you, they can track you down, and all you hear is the barking.  We knew all those elements would be key in making the dogs exciting, and frankly, they had to be a parallel with the helicopter [in Modern Warfare's multiplayer].  The helicopter strikes death on you from up high, and you don't have much choice on when it's coming.  Dogs have to feel the same way, and you have to react to them [to avoid] getting eaten to pieces.

TVG: Besides shooting them, do players have the ability to kill the dogs in close quarters like World at War's predecessor?

Yeah, in multiplayer you can stab the dogs at the right time.  It wouldn't be right to do the neck snapping in multiplayer because there would be a lot of neck snapping, and also that would take too much time in a multiplayer session.

What's really gratifying for us in the beta right now is that if you're on a server where everyone is pretty experienced, the moment someone calls in the dogs you'll see the defensive team circle up and watch each other's backs as they deal with the dogs, hopefully they won't get gunned down, and then they'll turn and fight the enemy again.  But if you're on a server where people are still a little bit new and they don't understand yet, they'll just run around like idiots as the dogs take them down. 
It's very cool to see people work together.

TVG: Beyond the dogs, what other kill streaks are available in World at War?

In Modern Warfare there were UAVs, we do recon planes because you need a power up that lets you see whether the enemy is.  [CoD] 4 did air-strikes for their five kill streak, where the planes swoop in, bomb the area, and swoop out.  We do artillery, which feels a little different because it hits a little lighter for longer in an area, and you can see the shells actually lobbing - you can trace the arcs and see where the danger is coming from.  The seven kills has the dogs.

TVG: Call of Duty 4's multiplayer is seen as very much a hardcore experience, where if you go online as a new player you'll get your head blown off in seconds.  At a time when everybody is trying to expand and broaden audiences,  is there anything in World at War to appease that - and how do you balance that out?

There are a couple of different ways we approach that problem.  We wanted to make sure there was gateway to multiplayer who had maybe not played too much multiplayer before.  You actually earn experience as you play through co-op, so you can start off in multiplayer on a little bit of a higher level and not just start off at level one.  That's one way we bridge the gap if you will.  The other thing we did is take a look at some of the things that people were frustrated with and looked for perks and weapons we could improve. So one of the really cool new perks is the flakjacket, which reduces the effect of explosions on you; you take less damage from grenades, which everyone is happy about, and less damage from tank rounds and bazookas.

One of the common things you'll hear from someone is that they'll get into a match where three people will be pitching greandes at them, blow them up right away, and they won't even know what's going on.  Flakjackets are a great counter to that problem.  We've also reduced the number of  grenades you can carry from three to two.  There's no longer a perk one slot for three times grenades, it's now two times grenades, and you're normal grenade is only one.  We recognised that grenades can be a little bit of a problem, so we pulled back on that a little.

We've also brought back 'Capture the Flag' and 'WAR', which are more of a thinking man's mulitplayer experience.  In WAR, which was also in CoD3, there are five points on the map with only one active at any given time.   You're battling the other team for control of that point, and if you capture that point you push them back to their next point, and all the spawn points move.  If they capture the point, they push you back to the next point and you're defending that.  Whoever captures all five points wins.  It means that you can have the highest score on the leaderboard without killing anyone.  All you can do if you want is set up defensive perimeters, take juggernauts or flakjackets, and capture points for a lot of points.  The other really cool thing about WAR is the the new 'momentum meter'.  As you kill people or capture points, the momentum meter will grow until the meter reaches 'two times faster' or until you get to Blitzkrieg, which is 'three times faster'. From a less run 'n' gun perspective if you play your average multiplayer game you might run in and get killed in Team Deathmatch, but in WAR you can sit back and keep killing the oncoming enemy, even let them keep your flags, until your momentum meter reaches Blitzkrieg and then rush out and capture flag after flag, and win the session.

So there's a lot more strategy involved, and I think that players which may get intimidated by Free For All or Team Deathmatch are going to really enjoy those modes, and then we made sure we built a lot of leaderboards so you have the chance to top those, even if you're not the twitchiest players in the world.