14-Jul-2003 EA dishes the dirt on the latest expansion for the fantastic Battlefield 1942 Already the proud owner of one expansion in the shape of Road to Rome, EA's multiplayer success story Battlefield 1942 is to receive a second add-on in September: Secret Weapons of World War II.
Embellishing the original title with new campaigns, maps and troops, Secret Weapons will also feature numerous super-powerful weapons and vehicles, for the time, some of which never managed to leave the "drawing board" or "prototype" stage during the course of conflict.
Secret Weapons of World War II looking a hot and spicy addition to the original Battlefield 1942, we were more than eager to fire off some burning questions to producer Jamil Dawsari when we met him face-to-face at Camp EA last week.
Battlefield 1942 has an impressive and fanatical following - what's the attraction of the game?
Dawsari: Battlefield 1942 introduced gameplay which hadn't really been seen before, which was a vehicle and infantry experience on massive maps. And we made it fun - it wasn't a simulation. So it's very much arcade action. The same control schemes work for tanks, aeroplanes or for infantry movement, so anyone can just jump into a vehicle and go.
We also balanced the gameplay - we take the philosophy of rock, paper, scissors. So there's no uber-weapon in the game. You could be in the toughest tank possible and then an engineer runs up and drops two landmines in front of you and... boom - you're gone.
So there's something in the gameplay for everyone. If you want to be a pilot, there're aeroplanes. If you want to be a tanker, there are tanks, or if you want to be an infantry guy you can do that.
Did you foresee it becoming as popular as it has?
Dawsari: It's really taken off. We expected it to be popular, but not as popular as it's become. It's the number three game played online.
So what drew you to the secret weapons theme for the next expansion pack?
Dawsari: What we wanted to do in Secret Weapons is try to explore the following: "What can we go for, what can we bring into the gameplay to make it bigger?" We decided on Secret Weapons because you can do jets, you can do the early guided missiles, you can do the prototype vehicles that weren't necessarily in the war but were on the drawing board during the war; and it makes for fun gameplay - it's a blast to play.
We've got 16 new vehicles, eight new maps, a new game mode called Objective Mode, seven new hand weapons - all of these sorts of things.
What's Objective Mode all about?
Dawsari: Objective Mode is a bit like Conquest where tickets are always going down. The attackers have what we call a ticket bleed, the tickets are always going down - they can never stop it. So there's a time pressure on them to achieve their objectives, which in most cases is to blow up a certain... it might be V2 rockets or a fuel silo or turbines, for example.
The defenders have to stop the attackers, and so defenders don't lose their tickets - their tickets are linked directly to the objective. If the objective is destroyed, the defenders lose their tickets. It's very much teamplay-orientated.
Can you tell us more about some of the secret weapons that feature in the expansion?
Dawsari: We went with a lot of prototype vehicles and weapons, things like the Wasserfall missile, which was one of the first guided missiles that the Germans developed, and it was a radar- and radio-operated missile. In-game, the way we did it was... well, it's new gameplay. You jump in, and you guide the missile in first-person mode.
We've included things like the AW-52 advanced fighter, which was a "flying wing" developed by the Allies, which didn't see production in the war, but it was on the drawing boards. The Germans have things like the Horton HO 229 "Flying Wing", one of the famous flying wings.
Do you think that adding these types of vehicles and weapons will broaden Battlefield 1942's overall appeal?
Dawsari: The Battlefield 1942 game is still selling, so the community is still growing. So we haven't peaked out, even with the original Battlefield 1942, in terms of peoples' interest in the game.
Who we hope to capture with Secret Weapons is, not just our core audience, but we want to expand it for people who might not normally pick up a World War II-themed game.
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