uring a press event last week in San Francisco, Game Informer editors Billy Berghammer and Adam Biessener got a chance to talk shop with William Henry Stahl, Full Spectrum Warrior’s Director and Project Lead.
Billy Berghammer: What games did you work on prior to Full Spectrum Warrior?
WHS: I worked on the Battlezone series, 1 and 2, and a few projects that disappeared over at Activision. I worked on Hyperblade, way back when. It was the first game that ever utilized 3D acceleration on 3DFX cards. Yeah, but I’ve been on this project for four years, so I’ve been out of it for awhile.
BB: How long has the game been in development?
WHS: Well, we did the Army version first and then the retail. Total it’s been about four years.
BB: What are the major differences between the two versions?
WHS: On the surface, you can’t really tell. If you played the Army version, the only real difference that would strike you right away is that the Army version has no HUD (Heads Up Display), it’s just a more organic experience. You’ve got your team and you and the cursors. But, underneath, it’s extremely different. We took a lot of the Army simulation systems and we abstracted them to make them more rule-based because the Army version was a simulation. So, for instance, you could do the right thing and still lose, like bullets can ricochet off walls, so even if you move them to a wall where you’re supposed to, a guy can still get hit in the head. But, when you’re making a game you want to create an experience where a player can learn from their mistakes. So we abstracted the concepts so that the gameplay is still the same in terms of what you do, but the systems are more forgiving. It’s much more binary. The idea is that when you mess up, you know how you messed up and why. In the Army game you could do the right thing and still die. All that game was about is that they would stop and go back and look to see what happened and they would get into the real minutiae of what happened. In the retail game, players don’t want that, they just want action, action, action. That’s basically the difference.
Adam Biessener: How did the Army find you guys?
WHS: They found us through mutual contacts. They were doing another training program using Sony Image Works, a movie house that does special effects. They did Spider-Man and Stuart Little, and they were doing some graphics for that. Then they said that they had an idea coming through the works where we want to make this kind of entertainment/training game. And Sony said, “we do graphics, not games.” But, they knew someone at our studio, who at that time was working with me, and we were pitching this idea for an RTS game which was basically Full Spectrum Warrior. This was after Darkreign 2, and we were trying to create something based on that game’s engine. I had read Black Hawk Down the book in 2001, so this was two years before the movie. And, I said that this was something that we had to do; make an RTS game but put the camera right down on the ground, and control everything from the ground. I don’t want to be God anymore and it’s all about controlling soldiers and choosing formations, so that pitch document got to the Army and they said “this is exactly what we want,” but we want it on a console. We were like “are you guys are out of your minds?” At that time the PS2 was just hitting the market and they said they wanted it on a console. So, we spent over a year developing and shaping the idea just to get it on a console.
BB: So the original version was on the PS2?
WHS: That’s kind of an interesting story. The original version was on the PS2. What had happened was that the PS2 was taxed by the US as a potential weapon of war, because of the hard drive. And, Sony doesn’t like that. So, they said “screw you, you’re not making a game on our system.” So, then we were high and dry and thought that was the end of the game. Then, the Xbox was just starting to be talked about and we thought “well, we’ll just put it on the Xbox, that’s a no brainer.” So, we started to talk to Microsoft and at that time they were in litigation to be broken up by the US government and they were like “yeah, we don’t want to work with the US government either.” So then we were high and dry again. But through some palm greasing Microsoft came around and realized that this could really be a good thing for us. And actually, it’s been a full circle for them, since now they’re distributing to barracks all over the world and they’ve really got involved with the military and armed forces now because they really see that’s a good business strategy for them. That’s basically the whole, long story of it all.
AB: So, how do you feel about the America’s Army game as opposed to Full Spectrum Warrior?
WHS: I like the America’s Army game. When we started FSW, we didn’t even know about America’s Army. The Army is a huge multi-conglomerate, almost like Microsoft where the left tentacle doesn’t know what the right tentacle is doing. America’s Army was always developed to be a free game that was meant to get the Army’s name out there, but it was never meant to be a training aid. FSW, quite frankly, was never meant to be distributed to the civilian population, it was only ever supposed to go to the Army. America’s Army was the exact opposite. Only after we kind of showed the demo around did retail publishers get interested and say “hey, there might be something here.” We never through anyone would touch this game in the civilian sector.
AB: What’s the hardest adaptation of the retail market from the internal Army version of the game?
WHS: We thought it would be the controls, but everyone seems to get the controls right away. The hardest adaptation is being able to think like an Army sergeant, because when we made the game we made it for Army sergeants and the analogy that you could make is that we made a flight sim for pilots and then when we try to put regular people in front of it, they don’t know the first thing about flying. In this, it’s the same thing. It’s like “here’s your squad and this is how you suppress,” and then people go “when do I want to suppress?” So, the hardest part for us is trying to get players to understand the assets at their disposal and how to best utilize them. So, we have a bunch of training missions at the beginning, five total, and they’re really deep and really get you up to speed on how the Army thinks tactically. And when you come out of those you could sit down with a squad leader from the Army and talk shop, literally. You’ll know what bounding is, you’ll know what suppression fire is, and you’ll be able to know how to use it. You know, regular players are really exposed to that in games, it’s just about running around with a couple guns in your hands and you can take a couple shots and I can run right on top of you and put two in your chest and that does not happen in the real world. If I were to get by you in the real world, I would suppress on your position and throw so much metal at you that you would duck back and then I would run past - and that’s how it really happens in the real world.
AB: What’s the incentive for a consumer to pick up Full Spectrum Warrior as opposed to another hardcore Army sim like Black Hawk Down or Rainbow Six?
WHS: Well, it’s kind of two fold. For the hardcore militarists, the incentive there is that we are, emphatically, the most realistic experience that they will get in a video game. The reason being that those other games are primarily shooters and once you put the player in as a shooter it has no real world applications, because how you move and shoot in a videogame is not how you do it in the real world. But in FSW, you give commands to your guys and they carry them out in a real-world space. So, the pacing and the time and the flow is completely realistic and the tactics are authentic. What are the tactics in a first person shooter? There are none. For the novice or casual gamer, I wanted to make this game for my dad, because he loves military movies. But, he could never play Rainbow Six 3. So much of the controls are tied to just moving yourself, and then there’s a whole other level tied to controlling your team. Well, this is totally streamlined to just giving simple orders to your guys and then they carry them out in a smart way. So, it’s much more user friendly in that sense. As the game progresses, you have to be really careful about what you tell them what do, and where to go. But, in the end, it’s the intelligence of the soldiers that makes the game easy for me to play. The soldiers in our game represent and were created to reflect real soldiers, not robots who stand around waiting for you to jump into their head and run around and shoot them. These guys will completely take care of themselves, they’ll move to cover if they have to, and they’ll return fire. They just want to know from me where I want them and what I want them to focus on. And, that’s really what a squad leader is all about, it’s about dictating a higher level of tactics.
AB: So, did you get a lot of feedback from the Army about writing the AI for the soldiers?
WHS: Absolutely. From the Army game we had regular subject matter experts who were real squad leaders. These guys are actually active duty and a lot of them are currently in Afghanistan, and some of them are my friends so I got to know them really well. They would come in a couple times a month and sit down with the game and would say “that’s not right, or that’s right.” And what they really gave us were those subtle things that real soldiers do that we put in there. They don’t even really speak to the gameplay, but they’re in there so that when a sergeant plays it in the Army, he can look at them and say “yeah, these are soldiers.” Right away we realized that if a sergeant were to sit down and if the guys didn’t behave like soldiers, he may say that he wouldn’t command them and they’re going to get themselves killed, these guys are idiots, because he’s accustomed to being with real soldiers. So, we got these little nuances like how they stand at corners and the whole idea of lowering your weapon when a guy moves in front of you. I mean, these are things that were unheard of in games and rightly so because who the hell cares in a game? But to the Army person it was vital. All that carries over to the retail game and doesn’t really tie into the gameplay but when people sit down, it looks and feels so real and they can’t put their finger on it and it isn’t just one thing, it’s all these tiny little things that we had to do to make it feel real to the sargeant and feel real to the player.
BB: What kind of Xbox Live features are you guys planning?
WHS: We support co-op mode with two players with one player controlling one team and the other player controlling another. Microsoft really helped us out. They’re whole push now is to blur the lines between online play and single play, they really want it to be, quite frankly, just “play.” In traditional co-op, there’s co-op and then the single player game. In FSW, it’s the same thing. There’s just one mission tree and you could play it and then someone else could come in and start playing and he can leave and then you can keep playing and then even come back and keep playing. It’s Live Aware, so your friend may be like “oh, I want to join in” and boom, he just grabs the other team.
BB: So, you can do that while you’re in a mission?
WHS: Absolutely. And then you could be like “I have to go eat dinner” and you leave, and then you instantly get control back of the other team and you continue playing. In other words, there’s only one tree and no matter how you unlock the missions, either with someone else or by yourself, you just keep progressing through the game. And all the save points and all the cinematics and all the gameplay is exactly identical no matter if you’re playing by yourself or with someone else. It’s the same experience.
BB: How many total missions are there?
WHS: Total, there are 16.
BB: Is that including the training missions?
WHS: That’s including the training missions.
BB: How long do you think it will take the average gamer to get through?
WHS: For the average gamer it’s going to take about 20 hours. That’s because the game is kind of like Resident Evil, where if you just run and try to get to the end, you’re just going to get gunned down. You need to baby step through it.
BB: I learned that real quick when I played. (laughs)
WHS: Yeah, but that’s the way it is in the real world. It’s just amazing. We talk to squad leaders and they say that their biggest headache is crossing the street and moving from one corner to another corner across an open street. They could spend ten hours trying to figure how to get my team across the street because when I look up the street I see windows, cars, alleys, and anybody could just bump out and fire and then jump back and fire eight rounds off in one second and I have eight guys. That’s a one in eight chance that every one of those guys goes home in a body bag.
BB: When I was playing the game, two of my guys died which ended the mission, and you’ve implemented a feature where you can rewind everything. Can you go into the details about that?
WHS: Well, you can’t really rewind it. But, you can play it back. Well, that’s that kind of a legacy thing from the Army version. The Army version was entertainment, but it was also meant to train. So, one of the features that they wanted and they pushed for was this idea that while you’re playing they wanted to record the entire experience. So, when a player was done they could watch it and stop and break the camera off and look at it from different angles and say “do you know there’s a guy up here” and “do you know you’re shooting down here.” So, in the Army game you can literally play it and then go back and watch the whole thing like a DVD and stop it and break the camera off and look at the environment and see where each bullet was hitting. Now all that wasn’t necessary for the retail game but what did manage to stay was the feature where when you’re playing it’s recording and then at any given time during that recording you can jump right back and start playing again. Again, that’s the Army’s idea where they wanted you to watch your mistakes and right before you made that mistake jump back and try something else. It’s kind of like a super save feature. You don’t have to play through the mission again from the save point, you can kind of fast forward through and then at the point where you died, you can jump in and try something else. It’s kind of a neat feature. You can start back where you saved and try again or you can fast forward through everything that you did successfully and where you messed up just stop and trying something new. And another really cool thing is that those replays are very small files and you can trade those over Xbox Live. So, I can save my replay and send it to you. If you’re having trouble getting through a mission, I could send you a replay of me running through it and then you can either watch it and then do it yourself or get past the point where you get stuck and then just jump in and start playing.
BB: Is that utilizing the hard drive?
WHS: Yes, we utilize the hard drive a lot, mainly for sound. But, it is small enough that you can put the file on a memory card, too, so you can put your save file on a memory card and take it over to a friend’s house and pop it in and keep playing. It’s kind of one of those features that is in there and we were thinking of cool ways to use it. The testers will save the game and then get themselves to a point in the game where they get themselves in a bad situation, like get a guy killed or just fire into a wall for 10 minutes, so the team is out of ammo, and then they’ll save the replay and give it to someone to see if they can finish it. When you pop it in, you’re like “no, I’m stuck” and you’re out in the middle of nowhere and with 10 percent of ammo left and a man down and you have to keep moving forward. It’s a feature that we don’t even know how it’s going to be used yet, it’s just pretty cool.
AB: Are you planning to support HD, widescreen, Dolby surround?
WHS: Yes, we support Dolby 5.1, widescreen, 480p, and progressive scan. This is a next-gen Xbox title. Everything that Halo 2 does, we do. Everything that Half-Life 2 does, we do. In fact, we have the same physics, HAVOC, that Half-Life 2 built their whole engine around. You’re not going to get a better looking or playing game on the Xbox this year than this game. I mean, Halo 2 is going to be comparable but we do everything that they do.
BB: What about downloadable content?
WHS: For downloadable content we’re going to support extra missions. In the PC version it will be bundled with that. So, if you buy the PC version you’ll get those extra missions by default. And then the Xbox consumer will be able to download the extra missions.
BB: What other differences will the PC version have?
WHS: Obviously, higher resolution. It will have different control for mouse input. But mostly it will be the same experience We still haven’t worked out how the multiplayer will work, it will probably be through a third party. It’ll still be cooperative. We’re not really looking into incorporating a versus mode in this edition but we are thinking ahead of having a versus mode for the next generation of FSW’s.
BB: So, sort of a sequel perhaps?
WHS: We hope, if people embrace the gameplay. It’s an unusual game and people seem to like it. But, will it find an audience? I hope so. It’s been a long time.
BB: Who’s doing the music in the game?
WHS: You know what, a lot of people have asked me that. Machinehead is doing it - they did the music for Black Hawk Down.
AB: It sounded a lot like Black Hawk Down!
WHS: When we saw Black Hawk Down, I said “that’s the music!” The game is not about body counts, it’s not about running and gunning. It’s more somber. It’s about methodical thinking and caring for your soldiers and you get that from that movie, and I wanted that feeling in the game and I said these are the guys who are doing our music in the game. And we showed them the build and they said “sign us up.” So all the music in the game is by the guys who did Black Hawk Down.
BB: One thing I noticed is that when you lose two guys in the game, the mission is over. Why did you pick the number to be at two guys?
WHS: That’s actually a bonus. In the Army version it’s set at one guy. What a lot of people don’t really realize is that if you take one casualty in the real world, your squad is deemed combat ineffective and you’re pulled out of active duty. Games have distorted the idea of what it takes to be a real soldier. We actually said that that was too brutal and made it two and people were like “why two guys, I want to keep going!” We tried to make a game that was fun, but also tried to make a game that was as authentic as possible. We thought it was one of our major hooks that we wanted to give you a window into how the Army operates and we achieved that in some sense. In the easy mode, if you take a casualty, the guy doesn’t die, he’s just wounded. So, you do have the opportunity to save him. In the hardest mode, which we call authentic mode, that guy could die from that shot, which would be mission over. So, one casualty could result in a mission over. Also, in the highest difficulty level, we take away all of the HUD so you play it like the Army does. So, you don’t know if your guys are covered, you have to actually look and listen and they’ll either tell you that you need to get the hell out of there or we’re OK. It’s much more of an organic experience. It’s a lot harder but it feels more realistic that way.