Is it the publisher or the development team that influences you to buy a game, apart also from the subject matter of the game and its genre? Wanadoo, the French publisher, has yet to release a truly blockbuster title but that is not for the want of trying, with a worthy range of diverse and interesting titles being released. The development team, Spellbound, is a different proposition, being highly respected amongst the development community and having had a number of the titles released by ‘big’ publishers with ‘Desperados – Wanted Dead or Alive’ and ‘Robin Hood – The Legend of Sherwood’ being amongst their recent releases.<br><br>We spoke with two of the game’s designers, Jean-Marc Haessig and Martin Kuppe, about this title, which was initially going to be called Al Capone, about the interaction and events that go into making this tactical/strategy game based around mobsters and historical events from the 1920/30s.<br><br>After having the basic idea of creating a mafia game, it was decided to focus on the ideas that contributed to infiltration and combat action and on the differences between gameplay in the mafia and police campaigns. Chicago in the 1930s is not wholly about the people/characters or even the weapons but more a combination. The game is about people using weapons against other people who do not readily react in a way you would assume.<br><br>“Chicago Wars is split into two portions. In the mafia campaign, the player takes the role of the right arm of a Mafioso. His goal will be to take control of the city, eliminate his opponents and make his boss the king of Chicago. The police campaign goes the other way round: The player will take the role of federal agent Eliot Ness and free the city quarter after quarter from the iron fist of the almighty Al Capone. To add depth and credibility to the game, we have studied several books about this era: Schoenberg’s Capone biography, the Eliot Ness biography of Paul W. Heimel, and last but not least the book ‘The Untouchables’ by Eliot Ness himself. Furthermore, our artists are doing a lot of historical research concerning architecture, fashion and so on.”<br><br>Chicago Wars offers a mix of gaming ideas and fuses RTS with elements of RPG and a positive stance is conveyed to the theme of mixing things up!<br><br>“Combining ideas is not generally bad, the question is how the different ideas are integrated into the game. The RPG elements in this game improve gameplay and make it more interesting, without being too ‘heavy’. Light RPG comes in the form of gaining experience points and works automatically during the missions. When a character, for example, participates in a number of gunfights, he gets a better shooter and the character will progress and grow. Moreover, the RPG feature makes the game more flexible. We have no characters with fixed abilities, like Cooper can do this, Kate can do that and so on. Every character can in principle use any weapon and improve any skill he wants. It’s the gamer who decides who will gain which ability, not the game designers.”<br><br>The player can compose his mission teams from 17 hoods in the mob campaign or 16 federal agents in the police campaign. Most names are historical, as, for example, Frank ‘The Enforcer’ Nitti and Jack ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn on the gangster side or Eliot Ness, Marty Lahart and Sam Seager on the feds side. <br><br>In both campaigns, the player conquers quarters by playing missions. The mission goals vary from case to case. In the mob campaign, the player must, for example, destroy a rival brewery, escort a top mobster out of a brothel during a police raid, spy out a meeting of rival gangsters or eliminate a prosecutor. In the police campaign, he has to investigate a murder, arrest a group of gangsters, protect an important witness or make a raid in a restaurant. Many missions are inspired by historical events, as the Massacre on St. Valentine’s day.<br> <br>Although the missions are non-linear, they are linked by a big story around murder and dirty money. Of course the graphical design is based on the 20s and 30’s look. Every location will have its own particular ambience. <br><br>“The resources on the map of Chicago play an important role, but the gameplay focuses on the missions. The more conquered quarters you win the more resources you have and things open up! You must, for example, possess one weaponry to use pump guns and switchblade knifes, two to get Winchesters, chloroform and throwing knifes, and three to have access to pineapple grenades and the Thomson sub-machinegun. Other resources provide new recruits, character upgrades, better popularity, etc. “<br> <br>The AI within the game is central to the way things run and like every other feature in the game, the AI is constantly tested by the team during development, and passed through intensive QA tests during the debugging phase. The enemies will show different combat behaviors, depending on the situation and on their orders: open fire, hide behind a desk and fire from the cover, attack with close combat weapon, run to get new ammo, attack player characters from different sides, run to get help, run away and hide, surrender, menace the player characters, etc. <br><br>Chicago Wars has a most unusual look with some views looking almost isometric. It’s blend of tactical action, along with many strategic elements, mark this down as an interesting idea, managing a team of 5 characters with attributes that cover shooting, close combat, throwing, charisma, and first aid. Although we have had surprisingly few games based on the ‘mob’, with none really making their mark, Jean and Martin’s commented about this lack of success in that, ‘ previous mob games did not match expectations of the players who wanted more action than management’, could only be positive for Chicago, although there has not been much press focus on the title, which in itself is not good news in the building and perception of a title.