more Brothers in Arms details

I've been following Brothers in Arms with great interest, spurred primarily by my shameful penchant for World War II shooters. Officially, I was attracted by the bold statements made by the development team about it resuscitating a tired formula. In this age of pre-game hype, and considering Brothers in Arms isn't even out yet, I found it a bit shocking that a sequel was hinted at in an interview with Colonel John Antal, the military advisor for the game. BIA is to take place during the eight days after D-Day, so Gearbox intends to explore Operation Market Garden, and the Battle of the Bulge in this sequel. In another interview, Stephen Palmer (member of QA and design team) refers to expansion packs as well, no doubt exploring other aspects of the war that were intentionally omitted. It saddens me to think that this new property is already being set up to be milked.

In a Q&A with Col. Antal and Mr. Palmer in Computer and Video Games, additional details about Brothers in Arms caught my attention. Like Pacific Assault, Brothers in Arms is trying to get away from the health packs or canteens strewn about a level. Instead, I think the objective will be to avoid getting shot altogether, as there are some additions to the interface that let you know if bullets are getting close, or if your squad is under a supressing fire. This will allow you to make defensive or offensive maneuvers accordingly, instead of running in guns blazing.

There will also be no friendly fire in the game, and the reason given was "it wasn't good for gameplay". For the sake of realism, this is a terrible decision. Call of Duty had friendly fire, and even though you could be at the mercy of the squad AI that would block your view, it was still better than allowing you to fire off rounds of ammunition with reckless abandon. I've even read of players in Call of Duty who actually kill their AI squadmates, just to recover ammo in particularly heated battles. Obviously not something you would want to do too often, but the risk of killing off your own squadmates is still there.

I was pretty amazed at the squad reaction to the death of a fellow soldier in the gameplay preview, but unless the story dictates a squad member will die, any squad members killed by your actions in a mission will be incapacitated (i.e. unusable) for the following missions. Because each member of your team has their own story, I guess it becomes more of a necessity to keep everyone in the picture to develop a continuous, overall narrative. In Call of Duty, you were accompanied by different soldiers for each mission, and even though they all had names you didn't learn anything about them. As a result they were replacable, as harsh as it sounds. For Brothers in Arms, then, it will be important to keep everyone alive, but I'm not sure if you'll actually have to fight alone when all of your squad mates have fallen.

For multiplayer, there will be a four player limit, with each player getting an AI controlled squad mate to order around. Instead of standard deathmatching or capture the flag, there will be a seperate set of objective-based missions that will pit teams of up to two players against each other. Although Mr. Palmer claims this isn't due to technological limitations, or a streamlined experience for less players, this seems like a decision based on Brothers in Arms being a multi-platform release. I can see this type of multiplayer very easy to implement with a split screen, and still remain accomodating for PC players.

As one would expect, both Palmer and Antal think very highly of Brothers in Arms. But for a game that intends to bring the new definition of realism to World War II shooters, some of these design decisions are questionable. I was impressed at Col. Antal's comments about tanks, because it certainly rang true from past experience. But to turn around and say that friendly fire isn't necessary, or gloss over an incredibly stunted version of multiplayer puts a serious damper on these intentions.

like fire from a busted gun