24-Jul-2003 We catch up with Infinity Ward to chat about its utterly fantastic looking PC World War II FPS Call of Duty We have, it has to be said, high hopes for Call of Duty. First-hand impressions and gameplay movies of the World War II first-person shooter have left us fully impressed. Indeed, developer Infinity Ward, which boasts ex members of 2015's MoH: Allied Assault team, looks set to 100 percent deliver on its promises of a gritty FPS title that captures the brutality of the conflict.
Recently, we got the opportunity to speak with Infinity Ward's Zied Rieke about the title, so donning interviewer hat we pressed the Call of Duty lead designer to find out more about what's coming.
Why the World War II setting? What is it about that conflict that appeals to you personally? Why does it appeal to gamers, in your opinion?
Rieke: No other war has been so clearly about Good vs. Evil as World War II, especially in the European Theater. World War II involved people from all over the world, which gives the setting a truly international appeal. And last but not least the variety of battles and locales of the conflict are nearly unlimited.
How will Call of Duty expand on what we've already seen from World War II-based first-person shooters and in what ways will it innovate the FPS genre?
Rieke: Call of Duty is the first war game to show the war from the perspective of a truly ordinary soldier. No more missions where the player takes out the entire German Army single-handedly.
Call of Duty is also the first game of the FPS genre to truly show that the Allies were made up of many different nations, by allowing the player to play as a British Commando and a Russian Conscript in addition to an American Paratrooper.
Players will play British-, US- and Russia-focused campaigns and then these three threads will be drawn together in the final campaign that deals with the fall of Berlin. How does this campaign structure enhance the playing experience?
Rieke: The story in Call of Duty is driven by the events of the war. So, it really tells its own story, which is engaging on its own, so we really stepped back and worked to give players a way to get a glimpse of what it was like from in the trenches and as ordinary soldiers, so they experience that thrill of surviving one chaotic and intense moment after another.
In this way, players get the true perspective, in a fun way of course, of seeing the war from different, but inter-connected sides, all working together in their own separate ways.
Were you ever concerned that the game would lose focus or that there would be a lack of connection with the main characters for the player, by splitting it up in this way - with having three main characters?
Rieke: Yes, that was a concern early on, but as the development has unfolded and everyone's work has come together, it's clear how much fun it is playing from each of the three perspectives. With a play time of about 30 hours we've found that the player spends enough time as each character and gets to know the main characters quite well.
We've worked hard to develop the personalities of the major characters so that they come through without resorting to stopping the game play and forcing the player to watch a cinematic.
As for missions, are we looking at a combination of intense action and stealth? Will we always be accompanied by squad mates, or will there be occasions where we "go solo"?
Rieke: There are two British commando missions where you "go solo" for a little while, which is a blast by the way. Examples of this are where we have a mission where you get into disguise and infiltrate a German Battleship, and there's a couple of rescue missions too, but yeah the vast majority of our missions vary between intense action and even more intense action, and that means mostly either squad combat or big battles.
A big focus of Call of Duty has been to create fully-fledged battles involving hundreds of guys; intense action doesn't quite describe the scale of these missions. Remember our aim with Call of Duty is to have players feel completely immersed in the warfare and we've stayed consistent to that throughout the game.
Can you give us some examples of the missions that we'll be undertaking in Call of Duty?
Rieke: The British Campaign opens with the attack on Pegasus Bridge during the early hours of D-Day. Capturing Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of the Normandy invasion. This one bridge controlled the entire eastern flank of the invasion and controlling it was critical to both providing a route for the allies to get into the rest of France and keeping the Germans to the East from counter attacking.
In the game just like in the war, you will ride to Normandy in a Horsa glider, which was basically just a big wooden box with wings and a steering wheel, and crash land into a field near the bridge. After you regain consciousness, you get up and storm the bridge, overwhelming the defenders. Capturing the bridge itself is relatively easy, but holding it the next morning against a massive counter attack of German troops and Panzer tanks is altogether much more difficult.
Another British mission is the attack on Eder Dam in Germany. In this mission you parachute deep into Germany, destroy the anti-aircraft defenses of the dam and then flee to a remote airfield where you and your team steal a German airplane and escape.
During the escape the Germans throw everything they have at you: trucks and motorcycles chase you down a perilous road high in Alps, you smash through road blocks, blow up bridges and shoot down strafing Stuka dive bombers.
We're assuming atmosphere will play a key role in Call of Duty. Could you give us some indication of what you're doing in this area to immerse players into the World War II experience?
Rieke: The atmosphere of Call of Duty is amazing. I've never seen a game with so much happening around the player. When you play through a mission you really get the sense that there is a war happening around you. The number of troops we've been able to place in the levels is probably the biggest single factor in that, but in addition we always have background elements like planes flying overhead, distant artillery or AA fire, or mortars landing around the player.
Our AI also contributes a lot to the atmosphere: the way they have been animated to run forward hunched over and clutching their helmets, the way they will dive into a prone position as they come up the crest of a hill, the way the Germans are always shouting at each other to give covering fire or move forward, the way they clutch their belly when they've been shot in the gut, before slumping to the ground.
You're doing some impressing-sounding things with AI, both for squad mates and enemies. Could you go into more detail about what we can expect here and about the new gameplay mechanics that the AI is introducing?
Rieke: You won't see any of your squad mates standing in the middle of the street with their back to the enemy staring at you in this game. In Call of Duty your squad mates truly understand the world around them and move carefully from cover position to cover position, leaping over fences, jumping through windows and picking up enemy grenades and throwing them back.
One of the greatest things about our AI is that it understands suppression fire. Say you want to cross an open area to attack a position defended by a large number of Germans. You're not likely to make it unless you first lay down suppressing fire on their position, which will cause the Germans to stay behind cover, while you sprint across the open area.
What level of detail can we expect with the main characters in the campaigns? For example, we've read soldiers will limp and stumble when shot - will this be visually represented to the player while they're in the shoes of the main protagonists?
Rieke: Your buddies, and the Germans, will limp when injured, stumble or fall down if shot while moving, and generally show evidence of the beating they're taking out there. The animations and the animation system in Call of Duty are amazing.
We have thousands of character animations, and the system which ties them together is not only amazingly fast (it has to be to animate up to 300 guys at once) but is also extremely powerful, allowing us to keep track of what a guy was doing when he was wounded, where he was wounded, where he was shot from and even what foot he was standing on at the time. The system can then respond with the best animation or blend of animations to represent his agony.
What are your plans for multiplayer Call of Duty?
Rieke: We're not releasing too much multiplayer info just yet, so stay tuned. But I can tell you that Call of Duty multiplayer is going to be a lot of fun. We're doing a lot of tweaking and testing currently with our multiplayer mode and it's shaping up quite nicely.
Our focus with multiplayer is on blood and guts squad combat: you and your rifle crawling prone over the hill, lining up the other guy with the sights of your weapon and taking him down. And our enhanced player control set of prone, aiming down the sight, and lean all seamlessly contribute to a terrifyingly realistic multiplayer experience. We'll have some more info for you pretty soon.
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
