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Blitzkrieg Feature Feature
Stephen Leyton
31/01/2003
CDV is known for quality war strategy titles and Blitzkrieg looks like it will continue this trend.
TVG's Derek dela Fuente hooked up with Mike Allenson, spokesperson for the project, to answer a series of probing questions put to him.
Most of the Nival Interactive development team based in Germany have worked on one or more of the teamâs previous titles, including Rage of Mages I & II, Evil Islands and Etherlords. In total there are 32 people working on Blitzkrieg with a wide range of specialisation but the one constant factor being their addiction to compute games.
Inspiration, following others, the need to succeed - what gets a game started?
"We start projects based on a lot of different decisions, but there is one part of the equation that always has to be there - we have to be crazy about the subject. We give every project 100%, and if you don't feel very strongly about the subject matter then it will show over the course of development and the gamers will notice it immediately when they start playing. We knew when we started that there is a lot of WWII games out there to compete with, but at the same time we felt that it has been underrepresented in the RTS genre and we knew that we could do an outstanding job creating a truly great game for both WWII and RTS fans."
CDV's own press statement perfectly sums up the game. 'Blitzkrieg is the fine art of strategy, but with more finesse! Dissect your enemy with surgical precision, halt the enemy's advance with strategic tank and air assaults, and maintain your offensive momentum. You can prove your tactical skills by triumphing in the various historical campaigns from around the world during WWII. Command German, Soviet or Allied troops who, if commanded well, will gain experience and fight more effectively over the course of the war. Progress through the game is rewarded via access to the latest warfare technology, so strategic guile is recommended. Accept the challenge and launch your assault, and remember... Attack is the best form of defence.'
A superb looking war strategy game is on offer and to get to this point the team started off the project with a full week of lectures by a well-known military historian in Moscow. He then joined the team full time in order to ensure that every detail in the game was historically accurate. Add to that a large bookcase that is filled to bursting point with WWII books in Russian and English, as well as frequent movie nights watching documentary and feature films. This was not all as was explained. âWe also dug into archives, both in the local film and sound studios here, as well as military and historical archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Our goal from the beginning was to make a fun simulation of WWII - taking all of this historical information, like vehicle and troop speeds, armour, loading times, ammunition supplies, cannon recoil, etc. and working it into a fast-paced RTS that would be an accurate depiction of the war."
You assume the role of commanding officer - starting out at the rank of Major. Your main objective is to lead your troops and units to victory throughout the historical Chapter missions that make up your campaign. For each of these Chapter missions you'll be able to take an unlimited amount of random missions based on the historic one - in other words - if your main battle takes place in 1942, you'll only have tanks, artillery and other weaponry that was available at that time and the landscape and weather factors will all be based on the main mission. The more you fight the more promotions and medals you garner for yourself, and your troops and units will gain experience and follow you from mission to mission, like an RPG, so that the more you play, the easier the main missions will be to complete. Another great advantage of employing an RPG-like advancement system is that you'll never play the same game twice.
Getting the focus on making Blitzkrieg a top seller and not one of hundreds of titles that fall by the wayside was essential. "As you mentioned there are a lot of RTS games out there, but very few based on WWII, which we consider to be a great aspect in itself. Blitzkrieg provides a level of detail and historical accuracy that hasn't yet been done in an RTS format - in other words it's meant to be both a fast-paced RTS game, as well as a good simulation of WWII. The realism extends through all parts of the game, from mission and unit descriptions to technical characteristics to landscapes, shell calibres and damage abilities. Truly unique though, is the flexible mission structure with unlimited numbers of random maps and RPG-like arrangement of upgrading units and carrying them with you from mission to mission.â
Blitzkrieg has many noteworthy features and the team consider graphics to be one of their greatest strengths and they spent a lot of time making sure that the locations are not only beautiful, but historically accurate too. Since Blitzkrieg covers the Eastern and Western European fronts, as well as the North African campaigns, they modelled desert, forest and city locations, as well as different weather schemes including spring, summer and winter. Each battle, from the Invasion of Finland to the Siege of Tobruk to the Diadem operation at Anzio, is set on a map that not only approximates the actual landscape in which these battles took place, but also adds to the whole atmosphere of the game. The number of missions and their locations is too great to list here, but it must be added that nearly every major battle of each theatre will be in the game.
There are over 200 different types of 3D units in Blitzkrieg, including tanks, artillery, rocket launchers, APCs, jeeps and aircraft. One of the biggest differences between Blitzkrieg and most of the RTSs on the shelves is that you don't build units - you fight with what you have and what you're reinforced with, just like in reality. This makes tactics and knowing both the strengths and weaknesses of each unit much more important than in other similar games. For example, unless infantry is equipped with anti-tank rifles they won't be able to disable most tanks in the game - just damage treads. To expand this idea further, it helps to have an idea of the penetration value of what you're firing and the armour values of what you're firing at. It may sound intimidating at first, but a lot of it is common sense and it doesn't take long to realize that you're having a lot of fun.
Blitzkrieg comprises 3 campaigns, for the Soviets, Allies and Germans, and a total of 24 missions that are historically accurate. (Of course that's all expected in an RTS - or any other game for that matter.) When starting, the player is given the background of the mission you need to win in order to advance through the campaign you're playing. Then you're given the option of playing that mission right away with your regular forces, or playing different random missions with different difficulty levels before completing this main mission. There are a few benefits to this unique way of playing, one of them is a truly unlimited number of random maps, meaning that you can play 16 missions and finish a campaign or play a hundred (or more) to finish the same campaign - each time the experience will be different, the second is that your units and troops gain experience and upgraded weaponry to carry forward into the next missions, and the third is earning different medals and getting promoted to higher ranks. This kind of system makes the game fun for both hard-core gamers that want something that will continually challenge them and newbies who want to be able to jump in easily and then up the challenge as they develop their own tactics and strategies.
"Because we have such a wide variety of units and infantry, all with special options and abilities, the team created a thorough tutorial system for each campaign, so players can practice with the different types of units they'll have access to in the campaign before jumping into their commands."
Without atmosphere to add believability to the setting you could lose a lot of focus and even credibility but no area appears to have been overlooked or too small to consider. "We have a FMV intro to the game, parts of which we've shown in previous trailers, as well as FMV combined with actual movies for the intro and final videos for each of the three campaigns. The intro's definitely get you into the mood for the game and the final videos present a nice reward for successfully completing a campaign."
With PC games technology is always an issue. The game must look fabulous, play smoothly and offer something special. Mike expounded his own thoughts. "We want to make Blitzkrieg a graphical tour-de-force for it's genre. We had to factor in many different elements to do this and come up with the optimal solution to do everything that we wanted. We looked mainly at what the players want - low system requirements, rich and detailed environments and tons of troops, tanks, artillery and planes. To meet all of these demands we decided on a 2D/3D mix which allows us to place a large number of objects and troops on the maps without over-taxing an older computer and it also lets us show all of this in sharper detail than full 3D allows. The terrain itself and, of course, all of the units - such as planes, trains, artillery and armour - are full 3D models, which give the player more tactical and strategic options - such as using hills and dips to your advantage or calculating different damage to vehicles based on where they were hit. It would be difficult to pin down just a few features. I think what we're most proud of is how many truly unique features we've been able to pack into the game and still maintain the fast-paced RTS play that we set out to create."
The topping to a game is the multiplayer feature and what âmodsâ could be on offer.
Multiplayer has several different modes, such as 1 on 1 and team vs. team as well as various victory conditions, such as capture the flag, destroy all opponents and special objective missions where one side is charged to defend while another must attack and hold the same territory. Blitzkrieg will support up to 16 players and you'll be able to play through GameSpy as well as over a LAN.
Blitzkrieg was designed from the ground up to be almost completely modifiable. Starting with the Mission Editor that lets you open and edit any map from the game, generate random maps or make your own. In addition to this you can link your maps and missions together into entire campaigns, complete with background and objective texts to give that finishing touch. Next up is the Resource Editor that lets you right into the resource files and lets you change or add to practically anything in the game, including textures, landscapes, troops and units, sounds and much much more! Weâre sure that we'll be seeing a lot of creative mods and additions to the game soon after it's release.
Mike parted with the final words on their game. "Blitzkrieg is a rip-roaring action-packed real-time strategy covering the ground war in Europe and Northern Africa during WWII."
