More Articles on Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
Destroy All Humans Veteran Composes Ten HammersFull Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers - Hands OnFull Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers Q&APandemic Confirm Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten HammersLatest Features
StarCraft II Q&AWoW: Wrath of the Lich King Q&AMassive Entertainment: Moving ForwardsGC08 - Empire: Total War Q&AToo Human Q&AUser Reviews
There are currently 0 User Reviews for Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten HammersWrite your own review for this game today and you will receive 100 Gamer Points.
Click here to register
Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers Q&A Feature
Derek dela Fuente
13/06/2005
We chat to the Design Director of the FSW sequel...
Full Spectrum Warrior was about one of the most ambient, cleverly devised, real time, strategic, combat games to date when it appeared on the scene last year. For the first time you really felt the tension of being in a war zone. You had to plan and co-ordinate - one bad move and you could lose a number of soldiers. Every command and movement could have a consequence and you were the person to make those final critical decisions and for once you really cared. In effect you had real empathy with the men you were in control of! Ten Hammers moves the genre on even further with some fabulous new features.
As squad leader you still coordinate the actions of multiple infantry squads, leading them through a variety of hostile environments, but there are even more parameters to take note of. The life of your squad depends on you and so as you immerse yourself you will feel the jubilation, or guilt, of your commands!
We spoke with William Henry Stahl, the Design Director of the FSW franchise, on just a few of the fascinating new ideas being instigated.
With the first game offering the kind of âgritâ and stark realism that gamers have requested for a long time what have been some of the design focuses for the sequel and what has been the biggest request regarding feedback from fans of the game?
We approached FSW: Ten Hammers with several goals. First, we wanted to add more replayability to the game. Second, we wanted to give the player more choice and more âtoolsâ to play with. Lastly, we wanted to tighten up certain areas of the first game that we felt were too âgameyâ and undermined immersion in the experience.
Where is the game set, who are the enemy factions and, importantly, how do you ensure players donât get area repetition or feel too much like the original offering?
We wanted to present a different look and feel this time around so we moved the setting of the game from the south of the Zekestan to the north. The conflict takes place in the city of Khardiman nestled in the Tien Hamir (âTen Hammersâ) mountain range. The entire game tells the story of how a company of coalition soldiers takes an important bridge in the city â“ the Tien Hamir Bridge.
Probably the biggest change players will encounter in the single-player game is that the enemy forces are now randomly generated and also AI controlled. This means thatâs every time you play a mission, the same enemies wonât always appear in the same locations. The enemies that do appear will not always do the same things every time. This was added in an effort to meet our first goal described above â“ adding more replayability to the game.
The rudiments of war is pretty complex so are there any new tactical or emotional aspects of the game you are trying to recreate/reflect in Ten Hammer and is it is an aim to have the kind of empathy that you feel when watching a film?
The FSW franchise, to me, is all about trying to create a connection between the player and the soldiers he controls. In working with the Army on the original game, it was constantly hammered into our heads that soldiers are not robots. The hardest part of being a squad leader is dealing with the fact that youâre ordering people into situations that may get them killed. To reflect this stress more in FSW:10H, we now allow soldiers to die in the game. In the first game, as long as you returned a soldier to a CASEVAC (casualty evacuation location) he would be healed and allowed to re-enter the conflict. We felt this aspect of the first game undermined the principle I stated above.
One aspect of any videogame is to ensure you can achieve long periods of engrossing gameplay but if you were to extend more realism into a war game would you agree that you would see more mistakes, possible panic by soldiers, and also a number of unexpected events that canât be planned for? With this in mind how are some of these parameters worked into the experience and within the sequel are you trying for a little less structure?
First and foremost, weâre making a game. Players are putting down hard-earned dollars to be entertained. We try to infuse aspects of realism into the game to get the player more immersed in the experience. I wouldnât say we are trying to make the game less structured; I would say we are trying to better hide the structure or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, we are trying to make the gameâs structure/rules more logically intuitive. For instance, our cover system in the first game was pretty rigid. Although it allowed for understandable gameplay, it sometimes created situations that seem unfair to the player. Weâve overhauled the cover system so that the visuals seem more realistic but the underlying rules of the game are unchanged.
With a number of squads to control/command, which equates to a lot of men, surely this will mean less precise and frantic gameplay so have you adapted or changed the control method or interface for allow for faster response or more detail on what is going on elsewhere?
Once we had our multiplayer game running it became painfully obvious that we needed to speed-up certain aspects of the controls. One new feature that comes to mind is the ability to now order one team from another teamâs position. This feature alone has allowed players to more rapidly control many units at once.
Is it true that vehicles will now play a bigger and more significant factor within the game; can you throw some light on this aspect for our readers please?
Yes. In an effort to add more choice for the player weâve added more speciality units to the game. The biggest would probably be mechanized vehicles like Bradleys or BMPs. The player controls these just as he does a team of soldiers. In addition to the massive fire-power, these vehicles offer something the player never had in the first game â“ mobile cover! Now, if you want to cross a street under fire and you donât have enough cover to make the move, you can move an armoured vehicle up and use it as cover.
If some of your men die are they replaced and how do you ensure a full collection of interesting personalities come over as unique which creates good empathy with the player?
Yes. Dead soldiers are replaced at CASEVAC but the player only has a limited number of replacements. Even with the added replacement soldiers, we are committed to trying to created individual personalities for each character in the game.
Has much work has been done with the AI within the game and what discernable and not so disenable areas have been extended?
AI is always being worked on. As I mentioned above, the most obvious change players will recognize is in the enemies they encounter. In FSW:10H, players will have to be much more conscious of covering their flanks because the enemies in the game will attempt to flank you if they see the opportunity.
Please tell us about some of the modes and exciting ideas you will be implementing?
The versus-multiplayer component in the game is asymmetrical and objective-based. This basically means that the game plays very differently depending on which side you choose to play as (insurgency or coalition) and that each MP game plays out like a regular mission. Oftentimes, the coalition players are trying to secure or capture territory and the insurgency side is trying to prevent that from happening by destroying a key objective. The very first MP match we created featured tank vs tank battles. That is certainly something we could never do in the first game.
Weâd like to thank William Henry Stahl for taking the time to answer our questions. We look forward to seeing more on Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers shortly.
