Gamespot vient de publier sa preview de Brothers in Arms. Il explique notamment le principe des tirs de suppression : vous ordonnez à l’une de vos deux équipes d’arroser la position ennemie pendant que votre deuxième squad avance pour attaquer de flanc. L’article est illustré de neuf screenshots.
Pendant ce temps, HomeLan interviewe Randy Pitchford (le boss de Gearbox) qui a le culot de se vanter d’avoir bossé sur CS:CZ bien que son équipe se soit fait jeter par VALVe. Il explique ensuite que Brothers in Arms est en développement depuis un moment, qu’il sera en démonstration à l’E3 sur le stand d’Ubisoft et qu’il sortira à la fin de l’année sur XBox et PC (et sur PS2 et GameCube l’an prochain).
Randy détaille aussi toutes les recherches historiques réalisées pour concevoir le jeu :[–SUITE–]
- Sorties to Normandy, France to walk the battlefields, map them out, gather photo source, etc. Of course, our military advisor had to go during the same time of year as the invasion – on and around June 6. He spent a week there with a gentleman who is regarded by historians as the leading authority on the 101st Airborne during WW2.
- Lots of time at the National Archives in Washington DC. Anyone who’s done any research there knows the magnitude of this. They have a surprising number of large metal crates full of photos and maps and reports. On one visit, Brian located the actual crusty, old After Action Reports type written by S.L.A. Marshall in 1944 that he used to document the paratrooper’s pivotal role in the D-Day invasion. We’ve digitized the documents and are considering how to get them published (S.L.A. Marshall is a reference in just about every serious book about the invasion and I highly recommend his excellent book, Night Drop).
- Examination and cataloguing of thousands of US Army Signal Corps photos and veteran’s photos.
- Study of aerial reconnaissance photographs and military maps – the same exact sources the soldiers used to memorize the battlefields and plan their strategies and tactics for each objective.
- Working with a military expert, a historian, an airborne ranger and war history author that provided us with months of master’s degree level courses in military tactics and war history.
- A field training exercise managed by an active duty US Army Colonel that was designed to teach our development team combat tactics, formations, leadership and combat. We dug foxholes, marched to cadence, rehearsed battle drills, hand signals and formation calls and engaged in simulated combat of some of the battles from the game.
- Visits to the following museums: National D-Day Museum and National WW2 Museum in New Orleans (excellent museum and is worth a visit for anyone interested in the subject matter); Lots of time at the Ordnance Museum in Aberdeen with Dr. Atwater as a host – Dr. Atwater is amazing and he really cares about the importance of what he’s doing – He helped us digitize weapons that civilians normally would not have access to; Visits to several of the Museums in Normandy, France – The history there is awe inspiring; A visit to the Patton Museum at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Definitely worth a visit; There’s a museum at the military base in Ft. Hood, TX where pretty much every tank I’ve ever heard of is parked in the fields – we climbed all over these things taking photographs and examining every square inch; The Smithsonian Institute, of course. There are great public displays in the Smithsonian American History Museum; A bunch of other places that I’m not able to go into detail on.
- Amongst us, we’ve read more than 500 books on the subject of paratroopers, D-Day, US Army infantry tactics, weapons, uniforms and vehicles, the German forces, their tactics and equipment and many other subjects related to war. I’ve personally read at least 100 books on the subject over the last three years and am now starting to feel a real command over the information and the subject matter. I bet I could teach a master’s degree on the subject – Short list of recommended reading: ‘Currahee!’ but Donald Burgett, ‘Citizen Soldier’ and ‘Band of Brothers’ by Stephen Ambrose, ‘Voice of D-Day’ by Gerald Astor and ‘The Longest Day’ by Cornelius Ryan.
- Extensive use of eyewitness accounts, personal and transcript interviews with veterans (even my Grandfather, Wid Fansler, is a WW2 veteran who served in the US Army Signal Corps. He’s interesting because he signed up in 1939 – most signed up or were recruited after Pearl Harbor. He retired with a rank of Lt. Col.)
- A bunch of us went to a CALFEX (Combined Arms Live Fire Exercise) and witnessed and recorded what the spectacles of warfare look and sound like. I was in NY in 1986 during the 4th of July celebration of the centennial of the Statue of Liberty (probably the most intense fireworks display of all time – including the recent millennium craziness) – that was NOTHING compared to what it’s like to watch a tank blow up another tank.
- We’ve gone out to the gun ranges a bunch of times to fire the weapons and Foley the sounds. Anyone who’s ever fired an M1 Garand (or any sighted rifle for that matter) knows why the blurry iron sights up close feels correct and why the sounds in Brothers in Arms feel so natural. Also, anyone who’s fired an M1 Garand and a German K-98 back to back knows the advantages the standard US rifle team had over the standard German rifle team. Of course, then we have to think about the German MG-42 – the German infantry squad tactics were centered around the machine gun’
- Are you still reading this list? Think about this if you’ve read this far – Each item on this list represents 100’s of man-hours of effort towards the authenticity of Brothers in Arms? The crazy thing is that I can say with sincerity that game or no game, the experience I’ve had with this material was very much worth my time and is worth the study by anyone who chooses to dive into the material.
