Brothers In Arms

A lot of stuff. A lot of people are asking why are you making another WWII shooter, and what's so special about it. To answer the question, one is because we love World War II, we think it's a great time period, it's very exciting, we're not afraid to make another product in that environment because we think customers want that. As long as you deliver an experience customers want then they'll buy it. We've seen in this market that there's room for improvement in the genre, so the way we've improved it is by bringing in a really compelling story, by letting you live through history more accurately than you've seen in other games. We've recreated the environments with meticulous detail that truly represent what the environments look like, and we're giving you the ability to interact with your squad in a realistic manner as well as choosing real tactics, so instead of being pressed along in scripted events through the entire game it's up to you to make tactical decisions and to make leadership choices using your squad. We've also given players a really simple interface, so that solves the problem of having something way too complex. We kept it simple, authentic, tactical and most of all fun.

You're a paratrooper for the 502nd parachute Infantry Regiment. You jump into Normandy on D-Day, and we're telling the story of Matt Baker, and Matt is a fictional character, but he's a composite of real characters from history, real soldiers, real battles. Every battle you participate in is real, it happened, and we're giving you a chance to participate in that as Matt Baker and your squad of soldiers. So the game starts you off jumping into Normandy on D-Day and it ends at Hill 30.

18 missions set over eight days [from June 6th 1944] and there's also a closing ceremony when you reach the end of the game.

The intent is to give the same experience across all platforms. The PC and Xbox versions are almost identical. The PS2 version - because of obvious memory constraints we're having to rethink some of the content, but the gameplay and experience will be just as exciting, and from what we've seen so far we're really proud of what they're doing.

No, the checkpoint system, the maps themselves, the goals, everything is exactly the same, the way you command your squads, everything's the same. Visually, though, they've had to make some compromises because of memory limitations, but they've done a beautiful job with it and we're really proud of it.

Multiplayer is pretty unique - we're doing something a little different. We didn't want to just throw in a standard multiplayer game of Deathmatch, so we've taken the best parts of single-player, which we think are the squad combat and the squad tactics and we've amended the multiplayer so you can play with up to four players, and each player is commanding one or two squads of AI characters, depending on how many of you there are; if there's four of you you'll get one squad, if there's two of you you'll get two squads. The idea is it's also mission-based so there's a number of multiplayer missions and they all have unique objectives and you'll use your squad to solve those.

There's not co-op through the single-player campaign, but in multiplayer you obviously get to make a team; we're calling it co-op in the sense that you're accompanying a team-mate to accomplish a mission but in a separate campaign.

Yes we'll have support for Xbox Live, System Link, two-player split-screen.

Performance mainly. It's just a very intensive engine, so we wanted to maintain a decent frame rate on the Xbox.

Yes that's the extent of it, but as I said each mission is unique, with different objectives.

We are really excited about that. We want to finish it as soon as possible because we think it will be the most successful World War II game ever!

Around sixty people. More than half those are full timers.

It depends on the platform. You know how development is, I don't want to make promises, but I sure hope we're done by Christmas. We have a clear picture of what we have to do to finish it and we're working hard to get there. We've made sacrifices in places where we think it will not compromise fun and the quality of the product in order to bring the product out to the public.

Absolutely. Brothers In Arms is just the first in a series of games that we intend to make. This is the start of a new brand, the start of a new world of gameplay, so it's the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of things we haven't done yet that we're really looking forward to doing.

We're going to give the player more content in several ways - full blown sequels, as well as smaller add-on mission packs as well.

We're looking into that...

The Colonel has been great. It's been a fascinating experience, and he's been invaluable to our team. He's been our historian, he's studied the story and knows everything there is to know to make this game the most authentic possible, he's taken us on field training exercises, and given us a little taste of what's it like in the field. He's really put the heart and soul into this team - we're proud to have him. Developers all the time from different disciplines.

He found us, I think!