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Gearbox, UbiSoft Confirms Brothers In Arms
An anonymous reader writers: "On Blue's News, there's the official announcement of Gearbox's Brothers in Arms, a tactical WWII shooter with first-person action but the ability to 'command elements, which are your fellow squad members', to be published by UbiSoft, initially for Xbox and PC later this year (though 'PS2 and Gamecube [versions] will follow in 2005'). This was the Gearbox title rumored under a different name earlier this week. But better yet, UGO has the first in-depth preview with screenshots of the game. Looks sharp, sounds like it plays sharp, but we'll see - WWII games are a dime a dozen, but they seem to be getting better in quality recently."
"the ability to 'command elements, which are your fellow squad members'"
is one of the clunkiest things I've ever read. I expect in the original context, the game was described as a shooter with command elements.
This is nearing silly. If the gaming industry hasn't created the perfect WWII game by now, I'm not sure they ever will. Maybe they're aiming for quantity: you make 12 WWII games and one of them has to be the perfect WWII experience.
I think it's obvious that Band of Brothers (the HBO miniseries based on Ambrose's book) served as inspiration for Call to Duty and perhaps also for this title. There's a scene, about midway through the series, in which Captain Winters runs over a hill and is confronted by a young German solider, barely old enough to fill the uniform. Winters shoots, the shot echoes, and the young man collapses in the field. The scene haunts Winters throughout the entirity of the series, and he sees that soldier's face everywhere.
In these games, you see the soldier's face everywhere but that's only because it's a generic skin, not because of any emotional attachment created by the game. So what is the gaming equivalent of that? Would it be feasible for the player to be in a "slow moment" in the game, say transversing between two friendly checkpoints, and for a similar scene to be flashed back or replayed? I think games like Call to Duty demonstrate that developers obviously have the technicalities of a modern war game, so why aren't we seeing these games breach emotionally and attempt to connect to the player that way instead of merely logistically?
From the Gearbox Website:
Gearbox Games: