Tripwire Discusses Latest Red Orchestra Title

[hal]

VE3D rolls out the details - and some tasty screenshots - on Tripwire's soon-to-be-released Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad. TWI remains coy about the release date and reveals only that the release date is "not too soon, not real far" and that there will be a big beta test.

This new version will bring many changes, among them a couple of new gametypes, including Countdown and an interesting Multiplayer Campaign Mode:

They found that oftentimes players will experience a match so intense, they're left dripping with sweat, but the whole experience only lasts fifteen minutes. They wanted a way to encapsulate that experience and stretch it out, while giving the game more depth. At this point in our conversation, John asked for my pen and began sketching out a checkered map on my notebook.

Each box represented a different map in the game, and he explained that this Multiplayer Campaign would act like a metagame of Risk. When players enter into the campaign, it's a giant power struggle. As a team wins a map, it's marked on that large map and the battle progresses into a new area. As teams win they gain Combat Strength, which directly ties to reinforcements and allows them to fight further against the losers. Thus, as one team captures more areas, they both grow stronger but use more strength, leaving them more vulnerable as they approach complete domination. This creates an epic tug-of-war in which those original fifteen minute white-knuckle rumbles turn into a two to three hour war. This brings a new level of immersion to the experience and sounds like it will allow players to truly get lost in battle.

[N1ghtmare]

Sounds promising!

[Sk.7]

No sh*t! I mean look at this building, it looks turrific

http://ve3d.ign.com/images/fullsize/...6th-Screenshot

[ambershee]

As much as I like Tripwire, I do wish they'd invest their time in doing something more interesting.

[hal]

Like what? When I reviewed the mod I knew it was a bit more complex than what fit my tastes, but still saw the appeal and quality. Some of the changes it sounds as if they're making makes the game even more appealing to me.

Are you not interested in the genre? What would you like for them to do?

[ambershee]

Not reinventing the wheel again would be a good start. It's a solid, quality game, but despite that, it's still nothing special.

[zynthetic]

Seen the Gamescon shakey cam footage from last year? Lots a new features in the RO franchise. Given whether or not they're completely original on their own as a generalization of what's been done in game before is moot, because everything has been done already in one way or another to various degrees of success. There are plenty of other Action games if you want to cut a wide swath in the WW2 fps, but there are no other true realism games doing stuff like RO is.

[dragonfliet]

I'm actually surprised how good this looks. The last one was...well, it was pretty ugly and the animation was awful. The animation here still isn't great, but that gamescon footage was pretty flippin' sweet, and the features are exactly what realism nerds have been clamoring for

~Jason

[Grobut]

Originally Posted by ambershee

Not reinventing the wheel again would be a good start. It's a solid, quality game, but despite that, it's still nothing special.

I'd have to disagree. Yes, it's a WW2 game again, but nothing special? that's very short sighted, the only other WWII games out there that take a no BS approach to realism are flight/tank sims and RTS games, RO is really the only shooter that does it, the rest are soft-core "cinematic experiance" games like CoD and MoH that are about as realistic as a Hollywood war movie (which is to say not at all), and slathered in the same sappy patriotic goo as one aswell.

And what other East Front shooters are there really? we've been drowing in the same bloody D-day shooters for years now, and i can't blame anyone for beeing sick and tired of them, but Russia? now that's actually pretty fresh, hell knows it's a lot fresher than playing as Armoured Spacemarine No.17382621937..


But really, the realism is what sets RO apart, it is desperately rare that we see realistic shooters (and no, the CoD series is not even remotely realistic), and even rarer that we see WW2 ones, and that makes it pretty darned special to me.

[Sk.7]

Proper depth with WW2 games always been a problem.
IMO the Brothers In Arms franchise has the most complex stuff going on out there, so more is welcome
(Altho I personally am alienated by many of BIA's gameplay choices. It's like somekind of Mass Effect set in WW... I mean WTF?! )

[ambershee]

You mean Mass Effect is some kind of BIA set in space? One did predate the other by a quite a few years....

[MÆST]

My #1 most looked forward to game.

[Festering Anus]

Pretty excited for this TBH

[Plumb_Drumb]

Sounds great.
Haven't played Red Orchestra since the UT2003/4 mod days and to say I was hooked on it back then would be putting it lightly.