Tom Clancy's EndWar - Q&A Feature

TVG: So, you were at Creative Assembly on the Total War games before you started on EndWar and that was about three and a half years ago?

Yeah, basically straight after Rome: Total War finished.

TVG: What prompted the change?

I wanted to work on console for modern warfare games and I'd been in touch with Ubisoft at the point we were pitching Spartan at Creative Assembly, so I really liked them and the chance to go to Shanghai was pretty cool as well.

TVG: Would you say the idea behind EndWar was originally your brainchild?

I think it was really collaborative. One of our testers described EndWar as the bastard child of Ghost Recon and Tom Clancy, and I think that's quite true. Ubisoft had a goal to do a Tom Clancy RTS and I wanted to do modern warfare on consoles, so I think there was a really natural fit between what we both wanted to do. As I've said, most of the ideas that are in EndWar are in Ghost Recon - the squad commands, the tactical gameplay, calling in airstrikes, and the UAV. It was just taking that and putting it on the scale of Total War basically.

TVG: The Riflemen units in EndWar certainly look and behave very similarly to the soldiers in Ghost Recon. Did you bring in animators from the Ghost Recon development team to help sculpt those units?

Yep, exactly that. In particular, our Lead Animator is directly from Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, our user interface guy worked on Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six, while our Art Director had worked on Splinter Cell. It was a huge advantage to be able to have that expertise and experience from all these guys who've worked on tactical shooters like Brothers in Arms. They had all worked on tactical shooters and console games but hadn't done a strategy game, whereas I'd done the strategy game but not the console shooter, so it was a really good experience.

TVG: It does feel a bit like Total War, just in the way you're constantly flashing around the battlefield to get to all your different units...

Yeah, you have them organised into units, you have line of sight, and you've got the combat chain. If there was a model of modern warfare Total War on the consoles, it could look exactly the same. It's interesting that they're doing Stormrise [Creative Assembly's in development modern warfare RTS] in Brisbane. You know, I think they've almost self-consciously tried to do something different, rather than just doing what would be natural - I think Total War would be quite easy to convert to console.

TVG: The RTS genre on consoles is a graveyard of games unfortunately, just in terms of getting that PC control system onto the consoles...

But traditional PC RTS games are very different to Total War. They're about building, resource management, multiple resources, and lots of clicking, so I think that sort of game is really hard to put on console. But, as you said, just having a limited number of units, like 12 units or whatever, with tactical manoeuvres is a much easier and more natural feel I think.

TVG: You've ripped out all of that resource management for EndWar and simplified it down to Command Points, and that does eliminate those problems. It's a game that's been built for the consoles up rather than from the PC down. Was that your mantra during development?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the fact that there's not a PC version at launch demonstrates that. There's no reason it couldn't be a good PC game - it's just a philosophy. We had it drilled into us to be totally and utterly focused on making a console game and, as I've said, 80% of the team's prior experience was on console games, so we were very focused.

TVG: So you obviously want this to be the RTS to conquer the consoles at last and bring a standalone, dedicated game?

Yeah, and I think more than just a game, this could be a direction for the genre in future. I can imagine Halo Wars on console being much more like this, where it's a big tactical game with manoeuvring stuff around and you're really on the battlefield. Blizzard really understand that Starcraft is a PC game as it is and, if they were going to do a console game, I'm sure they would do something more like this, where it's more of a tactical game with space marines and not about building and stuff. I hope this will be the direction for the genre.

TVG: With piracy the way it is, there seems to be a small minority of publishers - like Blizzard or Valve - who can stay primarily on PC because they've got such a dedicated fan base. On the other hand, big publishers like Ubisoft really get hit hard on RTS titles and games that have traditionally been at home on PC, so they're going to have to move to the consoles eventually...

I'm really interested to see how Diablo and Starcraft are going to go because obviously a big part of World of Warcraft is that you get around piracy by having the online subscriptions. It'll be interesting...

TVG: Can you tell us a little about how the MMORTS elements in EndWar are going to pan out?

In a way, the main thing is to make it easy and fun to find matches, and that each time you go on there will be a different set of match-ups. Each day there might be 10 matches available, but we're going to be concentrating players into those ten on that front. It's not really a big strategy game; it's more like a big setting or scenario that gives a cool, meaningful context to the matches you would find with pretty much the same flow if you were playing Halo or Call of Duty. You go in; you pick a mission; you fight it, and you might want to go and see where that mission is [on the campaign map] and how it affects the whole war, but if you just play matchmaking like you would normally in any other game, it'll work in exactly the same way only you'll come out and see that you've made this difference to the evolving war. You'll also get the experience, money, and persistence to build your character.

It's designed so that each war should take about three weeks - about twenty turns. It could go back and forward a bit more, but then we'll probably reset it and start again. We even found in the beta tests that it just gives an emotional connection and a context. People don't even have to check it in-game - they can go to endwar.com and see the state of the war online. 

TVG: And that's one map for the entire world?

Yep, and when you go back the next day there'll be more missions available.

TVG: Another Ubisoft Shanghai developer mentioned to us earlier that as the wars pan out, the game's online community team might issue themed missions to balance out the conflict. So, if America is getting too powerful, then the team might instigate a d-day landing in New York for example. Can you tell us a bit about how that might work?

We can adjust and tweak. Basically, depending on whatever's happened we can reset the victory conditions, change the state of the map, and constantly keep it alive. Another good thing about having it online is that we can rebalance the game on the service side.

TVG: You mentioned each player's identity as a General earlier, so you'll have your unit preferences displayed and things like that. Does that come up in some sort of profile?

Yeah.

TVG: And is your identity as a General going to be a big deal. Will it link with player rankings and thinks like that?

Yeah, hopefully. Well, it'll affect the ranking, so I hope so - it's partly bragging rights. Another nice thing is you can attach your replays on your profile on the leaderboards, so you can download the top players' replays and watch the best matches as well.

TVG: Are you thinking of adding more game modes to the existing list (Siege, Raid, Assault, and Conquest) with DLC down the line?

Yeah, thinking about it. It's interesting, actually. We were looking at the experience of Rainbow Six 1 and 2, and they actually removed game modes because there were certain ones that were really the favourites of players. So, like them, we'll wait for the release and see what people's favourites are, and then we can react and give people what they want rather than just adding variety for the sake of adding it.

TVG: And you've talked a little about the story crossovers between previous Ghost Recons and EndWar...

Scott Mitchell is in there and he's now one of the generals of the Joint Strike Force. Actually, some of the AI commanders are ex-Team Rainbow guys and we've got little events of Third Echelon giving intel, so it's just making sure it's really embedded in the Tom Clancy universe. The fact of it is, this massive World War III gives it the scope to be an umbrella over events.

TVG: Kind of like an apocalyptic Ghost Recon. I mean, it's a World War so presumably it can only end in tears...

We've made the story big enough and global enough for EndWar 2, 3, and 4 - we don't have to invent World War 4, 5, and 6. It's more like World War II, and then we can go and tell it from different points of view and produce what other superpowers are doing. Yeah, explore the rest of the whole global thing.

TVG: We've also heard that there's going to be over 250,000 lines of dialogue in the game, which ties into the non-linear campaign map...

Every time you hear a briefing it'll tell you what the state of the world is, who you're fighting against, what the mission objectives are, and all the chatter for the soldiers as well. When you get down close there's like 30 or 40,000 lines of dialogue just for that.

TVG: Do you have other little touches as well, like news broadcasts once you get past a certain point in the campaign?

Yeah, actually exactly that. There are little events that pop-up turn by turn and let you know what's happening in the world.

<i>TVG would like to thank Michael de Plater, the Creative Director on EndWar, for taking the time to speak with us about Ubisoft Shanghai's RTS, which is due out on next-gen consoles in the very near future.</i>