More Articles on Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII
Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWIIBattleField Expansion Pack DemoLatest Features
WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Q&AMassive Entertainment: Moving ForwardsGC08 - Empire: Total War Q&AToo Human Q&AThe Godfather II Q&AUser Reviews
There are currently 0 User Reviews for Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWIIWrite your own review for this game today and you will receive 100 Gamer Points.
Click here to register
Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII Feature
Derek dela Fuente
14/08/2003
Derek drops down to Sweden to interrogate the guys behind the Battlefield 1942 expansion pack...
The Battlefield 1942 brand is growing with each release and with Secret Weapons of WWII, the second expansion pack to the highly acclaimed series the next up, which significantly enhances the gaming experience by bringing the most bizarre and deadly weapons from the German and Allied laboratories to the Battlefield our man on the spot spoke with Armando 'Aj' Marini, Creative Lead, working at DI to find out more.
Already this title is sound extremely noteworthy and the fact this is coded by one of the worldâs premier dev team in Czech based DI you just know this will be exceptional.
From top secret, cutting edge weapons to secret forces and secret places, a new level of drama and excitement will be added to the Battlefield experience. Many of the new vehicles and weapons featured in Secret Weapons-futuristic for the WWII timeframe-were considered extremely powerful yet experimental. While these armaments and vehicles are rooted in WWII history, many never saw actual combat, however, they are put to use in the game. The Secret Weapons lets gamers control and use new weapons and new vehicles in eight fresh WWII combat battlefields including, Telemark, Peenemüende (V2 research facility), Essen and The Eagle's Nest (Hitler's hideaway). All new battlefields offer unique settings from nightfall during the summer in Prague to a winter battle in Norway.
The first and central question put was, why go the expansion pack route when impact is lesser, whereas a stand along game will make more impact? " Just consider, when we looked at the 1 new game mode, 2 new forces, 7 new hand weapons, 8 new maps, and 16 new vehicles we thought, 'hmm, feels like an awesome expansion pack." Now, imagine what you can expect when we release an actual new standalone game. What we've done with Secret Weapons is push the BF1942 gameplay and technology to the limit. Given that, and with the short development cycle, there wasn't time to make more dramatic changes to code -which is what you could expect with a standalone product. And, you get the equivalent of a new game at a lower price-point."
Battlefields offers eight maps and rather than focus on a particular campaign, the team focused on the more covert operations of the war. This brings the player to a wider variety of locations from Italy in the South to the Netherlands in the North. The White Cliffs of Dover in the West to Prague in the East.
DI has learnt from their previous their creations and added: " People like to be in the action. At times, BF1942 maps could isolate players so in SWWWII, we have tried to keep the players as close to the battle as much as possible."
Secret Weapons brings the total of playable vehicles in the game to 46. In addition to the 30 vehicles in the original game that includes jeeps, fighter planes, tanks and aircraft carriers, players can operate16 new vehicles including a Horton HO 229 fighter plane that is equipped with a 30 mm machine gun. Other vehicles include a US Sherman tank with a T-34 Calliope (rocket launcher), U.S. Super Heavy Tank, Sturmtiger, Goblin jetfighter, C-47 cargo plane, Armstrong Whitworth AW-52, the German Wasserfall guided anti-air missile and the German Natter rocket plane.
Armando highlighted his fav new vehicle: "I think players will be most intrigued by the C47. Its overt offensive capabilities are almost non-existent, but the way this vehicle can affect the battle is unparalleled. It allows a team to drop players on key positions making it one of the most threatening vehicles in the game."
In addition to offering innovative weapons and vehicles, the game also improves on gameplay by adding an 'objective based' mode. In this new mode, players will be tasked with a specific objective to win the battle (e.g. destroy a secret facility).
DI tried to find examples that theoretically could have been seen in combat!
XXX
Research is still essential to the team in getting new idea and creating a realistic look and feel. This is a never-ending process but one the team believes is important. " We read books, watched movies, etc to find covert operations. In many instances there were several occurrences in the same location. Telemark is an example of this. There were several attempts to sabotage the Telemark heavy water research facility. What we did in SWWW2 is combine those raids into one battle. As much as possible, we used archived footage of the locations to try and recreate the battle as authentically as possible. The key however is that authentic is not necessarily fun, keeping the map fun and highly playable was an overriding factor."
Many will enjoy the objective based mode within the game and the basic principle behind it is to focus players on one location of the battle. Rather than having the team spread out across the map, the team needs to work as a unit to infiltrate and eliminate the objective. As defenders, the same team principles hold true. In order to win, you'll need to defend as a team in order to hold off the onslaught. DI e are very encouraged by what they experienced so far for players are playing as teams and utilizing the classes in supportive fashions!
Rather than adding a new country to the battle, the team have kept with the idea of covert forces, namely the British Commandoes and the German Elite troops being introduced. All the new weapons have been assigned to these two forces. Most notably, the engineers have more offensively capable weapons now and this means that forces are comprised of more varied classes, which adds to more team dynamic.
SWWWII presents snow levels and nighttime levels and these changes to the environment s have an affect on the way players play the game. The specific affects on offer differ based on the context. For instance airplanes are much harder to spot against a night sky. Commandoes wear winter camouflage that is difficult to detect against the snow. What players do with these circumstances is up to them!
The interview was completed with a look to the future and how the PC and console sat with the team: â Iâm a big proponent of consoles because, as a developer, you always know what your customer will be using and you can design specifically for that. You also know your limits. With PCs, the sky's the limit. Working with a minimum spec machine brings people down to earth in terms of what they are doing. They have to be more efficient with what they are creating. In the end, having a low minimum spec is good because it means more people can play your game."
As far as the next big step, I would say that it is small steps. What I mean by that is, as the technology grows, the speed will become so great that the difference will be hardly noticeable. We are already seeing this with traditional office environment programs. Users tend to notice very little difference in these programs running on 3-year-old machines or new, high-end machines. This will eventually be the case with games. Someday, the minimum spec will be so high that time and manpower will be the only limiting factors in game development."
