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Act of War: Direct Action Q&A Feature
Derek dela Fuente
13/01/2005
Strategy fans prepare for the first next-generation PC title, as TVG chats to the team responsible...
Developed for Atari by Eugen Systems, Act of War is a RTS with some inventive ideas and is full to the brim with the kind of day to day events seen within the US Army - many which may leave other similar games flailing. Add to the equation best selling author Dale Brown consulting with the dev team.
Set within a new futuristic environment, and there is plenty more to stir the attention of the strategy fan.
As troops gain experience automatically, and become more powerful as they do so, marines can be promoted through experience, and a three-chevron Marine can single-handedly defeat five non-chevron Marines. Therefore, you can gain a great advantage by 1) deliberately speeding up your troops' promotion to three-chevron status (primarily by taking POWs), and 2) making sure that you medevac and/or heal/repair your seasoned troops in combat.
A class act is in the making with a graphical quality that is nothing short of stunning, with real world locations, actions and presentation in abundance! The pure encompassment of Act of War will present RTS gamers with a real challenge as was discussed when Derek dela Fuente spoke with Alexis le Dressay, CEO and lead designer on the game.
TVG: Please can you tell us a little about the set up at Eugen Systems and what individually or collectively you have worked on before?
Eugen Systems was created about five years ago, and Act of War is our third RTS game. We're about 25 people, and most of our staff don't actually have a lot of industry experience, but do have excellent records from other technical or artistic branches. I believe this allows us to approach our work without preconceptions about how games âshouldâ be made. I have a background as an architect and my brother, Cedric who's the co-founder, has a background with traditional systems engineering work, and we work according to processes and methods from our past experiences.
TVG: What has been the inspiration and vision for Act of War?
Well we've always been huge fans of both RTS games and techno-thrillers, so it was sort of inevitable to end up with Act of War... We both wanted to create something really innovative without confusing players with complex mechanics, so a lot of work has gone into creating elegant game mechanics and an extremely compelling story.
TVG: How does the collaboration with best selling author, Dale Brown, work and what other kind of input does he have in the creation of the game seeing he is a expert in military affairs?
Through Atari, we got in touch with Dale about a year ago and we immediately started brainstorming about what our near-future world would look like - who could be believable protagonists, what the technology could be like, and so on. Dale helped us build a framework, a universe if you like, where the game story could take place, and Atari also licensed the book rights to Dale. So the Act of War book and the game will both come out Spring 2005, neither is based on the other but they both co-exist in the same universe, and follow roughly the same plot with the same characters. Although, we were very careful not to try to retell the book in the game or vice versa, as they're two separate media and need to be approached differently.
After this, all through development, Dale has been available as a sounding-board for ideas and consultant on stuff like dialogue and terminology to get everything as right as necessary.
TVG: The game is set in the future, can you give us the basic background scenario to the game and what kind of latitude, scope, does it offer seeing it is the future or was this merely done to be politically correct!?
Sometime in the near-future, a secret Consortium of energy companies gather together to gain total control over the global oil resources - and when this plot escalates into outright acts of war against the US, a special Task Force, Talon, is dispatched to go and take out the bad guys. On the surface it's a pretty straight-forward good vs. evil kind of story that has certainly borrowed elements and sentiments from current headlines, but this isn't a documentary or sim or any kind of statement, it's just fun, entertaining action in a story filled with plot-twists, intrigue and suspense.
TVG: For an RTS Act of War looks very detailed. Was this a part of the objective for the team to ensure the game looks and feels realistic as opposed to many other RTSâs that are number crunching and very clinical?
Totally, it's all part of the techno-thriller formula to be both accurate and entertaining - realism shouldn't be about fifteen different armour types and loads of military acronyms for various types of anti-aircraft missiles, it should be about empowering the player to do what they feel like and intuitively understand the game mechanics, so we built the game from the ground up with this in mind.
For example: most people understand intuitively that you really want to think twice before sending helicopters in over enemy territory, tanks into an unsecured city, or infantry across open terrain, but in games built around the rule that âif you can see me, I can see youâ, this all has to be reflected in terms of armour and firepower, making the game either complex or unbalanced. In Act of War, the line of sight mechanics (using real-time raytracing) allows all weapons and units to behave the way they âshouldâ - you reach the intuitive feeling without making the gameplay too complex in any way.
Also, as said before, the whole âsuspension of disbeliefâ aspect about techno-thrillers is impossible to achieve without allowing the viewer/reader/player to mentally travel to the game world, and this is certainly facilitated by very realistic style graphics. This is also why we decided to do live-action cinematics; to actually see people react. I think films like Final Fantasy proved once and for all it's very difficult to cross that limit with CG (unless you go for an animated cartoon style), and I'm very happy that the in-game visual quality is now at a level where there isn't an automatic disconnection between live action footage and in-game visuals, as it allows us to push this limit even further.
TVG: What kind of extra background research has the team done and how difficult is it to convey fear, tension, and suspense into a game and is the 'emotional' factor of the game one you are focusing on? (Tell us some tricks to give the games it 'mood'.)
Obviously the live-action cinematics go a long way towards this, but also the music is a phenomenally important part in this project, as well as the overall visual design - interface design, menu design, visual effects, terminology, etc. It all has to be treated as a whole and follow the strong creative vision we've had since the start of the project. We had loads of fun with the background research: re-watching all Clancy and Ludlum movies and TV shows like X-Files, 24 and CSI, and re-reading a lot of the books in the genre to refresh the feel for what's so captivating about this genre.
Some unique little tricks... we have put a lot of effort into the whole audio environment, both with interactive music and a tremendous amount of variety in the unit acknowledgments, and weâve also approached the in-game cinematics in a way that I haven't really seen before in other games â“ even though we see it all the time on TV.
TVG: Can you tell us some of the basic items and personnel you will have in your control and what kind of progression the game will have?
There's a wide variety of contemporary, experimental and conceptual near-future technology in the game, to create a realistic projection of what a near-future battle-field could look like. Dale has, of course, also contributed with his expertise to create this âfirst look of tomorrow's warâ, and this reflects in both air and ground units, vehicles and infantry, tactical weapons and strategic technology... with some creative license thrown in.
Some examples of the equipment in the game that only exists today as ideas, concepts and prototypes are: the remotely controlled multi-purpose âSpinnerâ drones, which can be customised to be used as reloadable bomb drones, or as anti-tank or anti-aircraft drones; the âSHIELDâ units which are basically combined infantry personnel protection suits and weapons platforms, âmech unitsâ if you like; and stealth vehicles that use optical camouflage technology as well as technical detection prevention devices, sort of like James Bond's invisible car... This is, however, not science fiction; the technology exists in theory at least.
Like in most stories, the most advanced technology and âdoomsday devicesâ only feature towards the climactic conclusion, it's a pretty smooth ramp-up of gadgets as you progress through the chapters.
TVG: Could you give an overview of some of the objectives and tasks that the player will have to undertake and are there many eventually to each strategic action?
Of course, all the battles and chapters take place within the story and each chapter has a specific purpose: to save crowds of peaceful demonstrators, save a nuclear power plant from blowing up, save an Egyptian refinery from being destroyed, destroying the enemy base in Russia or saving the majority of the US Senate from being assassinated by terrorists that have captured Capitol Hill.
TVG: How technology focused is the team and perhaps you can tell us about one innovation on offer?
Our producer keeps saying, âwe do stuff that can't be done, because we don't know it can't be done..." I'll let that stand for him. We're fortunate in being the first of the next-generation PC strategy gamers so we will set the standard for where our competition will need to be over the next couple of years to come. Primarily, what's most technically impressive in Act of War is the massive scale of everything. I've never seen a game that displays so many polys at the same time with such level of detail, definition and lighting. Of course technology is important, we're all kind of dependent on what possibilities the programmers can offer us - but you can also turn it around and say that with technology everything is possible, it's just a matter of how long it will take to develop. I think when I start to feel constrained by a perceived technical limitation; it's time to hire a new game designer!
TVG: Tell us how the terrorist organisation works within the game? How aggressive, clever, are they and what are some of their directives!?
It would be kind of a spoiler to give that away... you'll just have to play the game!
TVG would like to thank Alexis for taking the time to answer our questions. Act of War: Direct Action is scheduled for release on March 18th 2005; weâll have a closer look and more information soon.
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