Operation Flashpoint: Red River - Tim Browne Q&A Feature

In October 2009, Codemasters successfully reclaimed its Operation Flashpoint series after eight years without a sequel. The release of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising retained the hardcore, military-sim styled gameplay of the original title and once again illustrated just how ludicrously unrealistic games like Call of Duty really are. Now, the Operation Flashpoint dev team is focusing on refinement, accessibility, and polish in this latest instalment, Red River. Tim Browne, Codemasters' Principal Game Designer on the project, spoke with us about this and other improvements to the series at a recent press event in London.

Operation Flashpoint, as a series, is well renowned for its difficulty and realism, but could this be seen as a barrier to most gamers in contrast to all the run-and-gun, blockbuster FPS titles out there?

So, one of the core things about Flashpoint is that everyone thinks about the fact that one bullet can kill and it's a very hard game, and we didn't want to change Red River too much from Dragon Rising in that respect, so a single bullet can still kill you. What we did look at was the accessibility of the game, so for people who had difficulty with it, we've made it easier for them. Certainly, with Dragon Rising, the tutorials were more of a page of text and it taught you but, if you skipped it then that was it. This time around we've been very serious about tutorials - a lot more thought has been put into them, they guide the player a lot more, we use help text as well so rather than just a hand coming up to say, 'you can interact with this', now it will say, 'press this button to do this'. Little reminders come up, like when you're running low on ammunition, 'press X to reload' and that kind of thing.

Obviously this is on the easiest difficulty level and we heavily focussed on player choice, so we're well aware that some people would be disgusted that we're telling them how to do stuff because they're the hardcore or FPS games are very much ingrained in them. We allow you to play on the easiest level but we also allow you to turn all of the HUD off and turn all the help/tutorials off. The whole point is player choice and a customisable HUD. Obviously you can play on hardcore if you want - it's entirely up to the player if they're into the hard game, hardcore is still there and it's still just as hard as it was in Dragon Rising because, although some people found it too hard, some people also loved it and we even had some people saying, 'Can you make it harder?' And we've been careful about how we've balanced the game but I think what you'll see in Red River is a lot more of a polished, solid game - it's a lot more accessible to a new user.

How far do you think Dragon Rising went beyond the series' niche appeal and how much are you looking to expand that with Red River?

Something that we've always said with red River is that it's a tactical shooter. It's not a tunnel shooter; it's not particularly arcadey compared to other tunnel shooters on the market that are coming out and have been out recently. We wanted to make more of a thinking man's game. A lot of people now have got a little tired of certain games where you don't really have to do anything to complete the first mission. We've seen the reaction and we know that what we're doing is something for people who want more of a challenge. This is why we wanted to make the game more accessible, to allow people who are maybe used to the really arcadey shooters - because our game is harder - to allow them easy access to the game to get used to it, but also to offer a challenge.

If you go run-and-gun style into our game, you're probably not going to get far. What we've found with people playing the demo that you will have a go with, is that often the first thing they'll do is treat it like some of the arcadey shooters. All it takes is to be shot a couple of times and be dead or take a wound and go, 'Christ! I'm bleeding already; I need to run away'. You can't just be shot and carry on shooting - you'll get shot, you'll have to react, and you can't just fire back because in real life, the first thing you'll think isn't 'I'm going to shoot back', it's, 'What's going on?' So it's a bit of a wake-up call but, that said, with the niche that we're carving out Dragon Rising was the early carving as it were, and now we're making a more refined element with it.

I think that on a sliding scale you've got military sims on one end and you've got arcade shooters on the other end and we were, with Dragon Rising, closer to the military sim than the arcade. We're now around the same area that we were but we're also carving out a bigger chunk, so we're allowing it to be more accessible for the people who are more used to arcade shooters but there are certain things we will not change. A single bullet can still kill you; it can still be quite unforgiving, but we want to let the player know what they've done wrong and teach them how they can do it right.

The story appears to touch on more real-world events and conflicts this time around, whereas with the previous game it was set on a fictitious island with a kind of distant reference to global oil disputes...

We looked at potential hot-spots. A lot of people say that if China and America go to war then it will be World War III and that kind of thing. Personally, we as gamers were a bit tired of the usual, 'Oh, we're fighting the Russians again' - that sort of thing - and we thought it would be quite fun to have the United States teaming up with the Russians because it's implied in Dragon Rising and who's the superpower to fight against? The PLA - it would be quite cool to fight against the Chinese.

But yeah, you're right: it was set on a fictitious island. This time around, we've seriously looked at what could happen in Afghanistan and our game is again set slightly ahead into the future - 2013 in Tajikistan - and there is actual fighting going on there now, which there wasn't when we came up with the story but things are progressing, slightly scarily so... That said, we wanted to create something that was a believable future conflict but we didn't want to just base it in Afghanistan fighting against the Taliban or an unnamed enemy. This is why, in this game, we thought it would be good to have insurgent involvement but also have the PLA that you fight against later on. I won't spoil too much of the story but it's now three factions fighting.

The trailer you showed was eerie actually, where it had a map of the Middle-East and the populace of various nations rising up against their rulers. I mean that's timing, right? Given the events of the last few weeks...

Well that video, believe it or not, was written well over six months ago; it was produced  4-5 months ago and it was actually made externally by a company. It is slightly scary - the recent events; what's going on (although obviously not about Tajikistan) - and this is why we've been careful about where we base it and what we base it on. But also, as you've seen in that video (and this is not what we're predicting) we were looking for a potential event that would trigger massive involvement and why the PLA would be fighting the insurgents and, as you saw, the attack at the Olympics which is next year...

Let's hope that doesn't come true... [The video illustrated two Chinese athletes being shot on the running track of next year's Olympics]

Well absolutely. I wouldn't be happy with that; obviously you can't stop that. Again, it's one of those things where we've tried to have a fairly authentic feeling to the storyline but obviously set in the future and let's just hope it doesn't come true.

I was just playing Homefront, and it's a very different game obviously, but I was looking at the introductory video thinking, 'Well, some of this stuff is kind of already happening!' There's a sort of suspended disbelief to it.

But you've got this more real-world setting that plays off current conflicts to a degree. This is something that Medal of Honor got into trouble for last year (obviously this was more of a multiplayer thing with people fighting as the Taliban) but are you worried that Red River could attract similar controversy?

I don't believe so. I don't think similar parallels can be drawn really. The player doesn't get to play as the insurgents or the Chinese; they're fighting against both of them. The game is co-op, it isn't player-versus-player (PVP); this was a deliberate decision. We've heavily focussed on the co-op gameplay this time around and I don't think close enough parallels can be drawn so I really don't think it will be an issue to be honest.