Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

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For its next Brothers in Arms game, Gearbox Software is focussing on the famous yet ill-fated WWII Allied offensive Operation Market Garden. Hell's Highway, as the sequel is subtitled, is in development for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, and the developer's introducing numerous improvements that'll - all being well - ensure this is the most accomplished Brothers in Arms game yet. It's also got the benefit of having Epic's Unreal Engine 3 steaming away under the hood, and Gearbox is making good use of the jaw-dropping technology in its WWII epic.

We recently caught up with Gearbox Software's president and extremely sociable chap Randy Pitchford and asked him to fill us in on Hell's Highway...

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway's three fire teams go into action

What's the storyline for Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, and what can you tell us about the lead/main character in this sequel?

Randy Pitchford: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway puts you in the boots of Sgt. Matt Baker, a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne. Baker and his men spearheaded the invasion of Normandy on D-Day and now are the vanguard of a bold Allied plan intended to end WWII by Christmas of 1944. The plan called for paratroopers to seize a series of bridges along a highway through Holland towards Germany. An Allied tank corps would charge down the secured highway and into Berlin. That was the plan.

Unfortunately for the Allies, the Germans have the best Panzer divisions in their army as well as elite infantry and fallshirmjager units in the area. The Germans swiftly react to the invasion and counterattack at the point and at the base. The counterattack plan is to cut off the invasion at the base and surround and kill the Allied army. If the Allies could succeed in the mission, the war would end and Hitler, who was exterminating millions and researching atomic weapons, would be stopped immediately.

If the Germans completely destroyed the invasion force, the Allies would suffer a tremendous loss of their Army on the continent of Europe and the entire balance of the war would shift.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway focuses on a group of paratroopers whose heroic actions and sacrifices not only affected the course of history, but affected the men personally.

Are there any new characters we're going to be introduced to that you can tell us about?

Randy Pitchford: Of course! There are real figures from history, including George Koskimaki who literally wrote the book "Hell's Highway." There are the Dutch civilians that were so helpful to the Allied liberators. And, of course, there are the men of Baker's squad - including some replacements for the men who fell at Hill 30.

Eindhoven was on the receiving end of heavy bombing during Operation Market Garden

Can you tell us a little more about the part of WWII you're actually covering - the campaign you're covering?

Randy Pitchford: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is about Operation Market Garden. This is the largest Airborne operation in the history of the world and it took place in September of 1944.

Brothers in Arms does not attempt to be a survey of the entire war. The point is to become a part of a real paratrooper squad and really get into the details of what they experienced. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, like Saving Private Ryan, focuses on a specific time and place and tells an interesting story about real soldiers there.

We'd love to get a few examples of the environments we'll be fighting in in the game...

Randy Pitchford: The Operation Market Garden battlefields are diverse and interesting. There is Hell's Highway, of course, which earned its nickname because of the thousands of vehicles and men that were destroyed along its length during the fighting. There are cities, like Eindhoven, that were populated as fighting pushed control back and forth between the Germans and the Allies. Some of the cities were heavily bombed during the operation creating a landscape of destruction and death that the men had to fight through. There are many waterways cutting back and forth along the highway - this creates rivers and bridges and even marshy areas, all of which became battlefields or obstacles for the fights. There are wooded areas and open fields. Hills and plains. Lots of diversity - makes for tough, but interesting fighting.

Is there any kind of crossover in the storyline with the previous two games?

Randy Pitchford: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is the most exciting chapter of Sgt. Matt Baker's story. If this is your first Brothers in Arms game, you will be just fine and you've picked the best place to start. If you've played all of the games, you're likely to pick up on some things with the characters and their stories that are meaningful and important. There are many connectors as the story consistently progresses from Road to Hill 30 through Earned in Blood, but because of the nature of the operation and the way the military unit interacts, Hell's Highway easily stands alone.

A German '88 taken out in Eindhoven

In terms of atmosphere, Brothers in Arms to date has been somewhat different to, say, the Call of Duty series. What type of atmosphere would you say you're trying to promote and why go down this route? Presumably this will be the same in Hell's Highway?

Randy Pitchford: Brothers in Arms is about true history. It's about becoming one of these guys and going to the real places and fighting in the real battles with the real men. We focus on authenticity and we focus on the brotherhood between soldiers.

The intent is that once you're engaged in the story, in the situation, it quickly becomes less about the larger operation and more about the guy in your squad fighting next to you.

Our intent is to not just create an entertaining experience, but to be reverent and deferential to true history such that the men who were actually there can look upon what we have created with respect. They deserve our respect, so we take great pains in an attempt to earn theirs.

In terms of scale, are we still looking at squad-level combat, with size of maps/levels similar to those in BiA and BiA 2?

Randy Pitchford: You are a squad leader, but the scope of the battle and the scope of the environments is much more vast. A typical Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway mission area is at least 4x the size of a mission area in BiA 1 or 2. The scope of the combat is larger as well. There are more allies and enemies involved than ever before.

Hell's Highway's new machinegun crew opens up

You'll have command over your squad, and your squad is larger. And you'll have other squads around you doing their thing. Sometimes they are supporting you and sometimes you are supporting them. The enemy is also bigger and better. They have a lot more equipment and vehicles and there are a lot more of them.

The whole sense of scale and scope is strongly multiplied over the previous Brothers in Arms games. It's fortunate that we have the next-generation technology to support the demands of the historical operation.

What are the key new gameplay features in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway?

Randy Pitchford: There are many new features that are very relevant and very cool. There is a third team added to the squad. It is a special team that can be a machinegun crew, a mortar team, a bazooka crew or a radio operator. Soft cover, like wooden doors and fences and wood sheds, can be destroyed - torn apart by fire.

The command system has always been very elegant and easy to use, but we've enhanced it with some new capabilities that allow me to co-ordinate sneak attacks or group teams together to make it easier for us to manoeuvre together over distances.

One of my favourite new advances is the addition of what we're calling a "first person actor." The idea is that the player character is no longer a floating camera with a picture of a gun bolted to it at the bottom of the screen. The player character is an actual character in the world. You can see your own shadows, you can see your own body and your hands and feet. You can look down at your chest and see how many grenades you have left. When you vault over a wall, if you look down, you can see your hand plant on the wall and your legs swing over. There are tons of examples of where the first person actor really puts you in the world. It's great.

We'd heard that a machinegun crew is being added as a third team - what effect does this have on tactics?

Randy Pitchford: The machinegun crew is one of the special teams that could be part of your squad. A machinegun is a really dangerous weapon. It can throw thousands of bullets out there... Bad guys will tend to keep their heads down or they'll risk losing their heads. You can use it as a suppression blower so that you can safely move across open areas. The other thing that a machinegun can do really well is chew up soft cover. Wooden fences and horse carts and other things that bad guys used to hide behind can very quickly be made to go away.

What are your plans for vehicles in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway?

Randy Pitchford: The paratroopers were infantry, so they got around mostly on foot. But, when Baker becomes part of a Recon unit, he gets a jeep. So, the recon guys can get around in jeeps. Still, driving around isn't what being a 101st Airborne paratrooper is all about. It's about squad fighting and killing the enemy.

However, there are TONS of vehicles of all types in play on the battlefield. On the Allied side you have tons of British and American tanks and other support vehicles. On the German side, you've got some of the bigger stuff, including Tigers and such. There are also artillery pieces and planes in the air providing support.

It was a pretty intense operation - some very hardcore engagements with combined arms constantly going on everywhere.

Realism is an important part of the series. In what ways and areas are you developing this in Hell's Highway?

Randy Pitchford: We use the word "authenticity" to describe our reverence for the subject matter. For Brothers in Arms that means that we care not just about the theme, but about recreating the actual places, the actual battles and putting the real units and famous leaders where they are supposed to be. For Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, we have a lot more ammunition than we had for the first two games.

First of all, the Allies did a much better job with the aerial reconnaissance photography. For D-Day, we had about 30% coverage of the area with spy plane photos from above and those photos were taken in May. For Market Garden, we've got 100% coverage and we have multiple images from each day so we can see from the top down how the battle actually unfolded. It's amazing stuff and a great study for anyone who is as crazy about the subject and the history as we are. We had to buy those photos from the British government, if you're wondering.

Next, we've had a lot more support from veterans and veterans groups and historians and museums than we ever had before. When we started the first game, a lot of them didn't want to trust us at first. They weren't sure that we were going to "do it right" and some of them have seen how the subject has been handled in other games. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 earned their respect and their attention so now it is a lot easier to get help. In fact, some of the people who really know what happened (because they were there) have come to us. This has been a great help in our relentless, but never ending effort to try to "get it right."

What has Unreal Engine 3 allowed you to bring to the title - from a gameplay point of view, a technical point of view and also your ability to realise the environment?

Randy Pitchford: Unreal Engine 3 is amazing. From my point of view, it's the best total videogame technology package that has ever existed in the world, ever - that is coming from a guy who has seen and used a lot of different tech. I think the results speak for themselves. Take a look at the screenshots.

How's the AI in Hell's Highway shaping up? How are you improving on this in the sequel?

Randy Pitchford: Our goal is to have virtual people. The talented artists and programmers at Gearbox have been pushing that goal further than ever before. I think I could talk about AI all day, but you have to see it for yourself to judge it. We will feel we've succeeded when AI just isn't something you're thinking about when you're playing the game. What happens just needs to feel natural - like it should've happened.

Are you making any additions to multiplayer for Hell's Highway? If so, could you tell us about the stuff you're adding?

Randy Pitchford: What I want everyone to do is to simply erase anything they've ever had in their minds about what they think Brothers in Arms multiplayer is. We're turning multiplayer on its head. Soon we're going to talk in great detail about multiplayer in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. We're really excited about it.

Why are you excited about what you're bringing to fans and gamers in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway?

Randy Pitchford: These are soft balls! Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway is a true next-generation experience. The meaning of "next-generation" isn't just in the graphics, but in the gameplay.

I'm excited because we've been able to look at where Brothers in Arms has been strong and we've pushed those strengths into the next-generation. We've also been able to look at some of the things in Brothers in Arms we wished were better or different or that we've learned from the players and we're able to make new decisions in the next-generation.

I'm excited because Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is the best game I've ever been involved with.

We're sure we recall you many moons ago saying it was your intention to follow the operations of the 101st Airborne in WWII right through to the end of the conflict. Is that still your goal, and in what major ways do you hope/plan to develop the series as you move forward?

Randy Pitchford: Sgt. Matt Baker's story doesn't end in Holland during Operation Market Garden. We intend to follow through, but that is a different story.

CVG Staff