QJ Interview: Mercenaries 2 World in Flames

So a little while back we managed to score a little interview with Cameron Brown, the man behind the directorial reigns of Pandemics Mercenaries 2: World in Flames currently in the works for Sony‘s just released hunk of hot new hardware, the PlayStation 3.

QJ: How long has Mercenaries 2: World in Flames been in development?

Bown: Mercenaries 2 began pre-production in March of 2005.  

QJ: What ideas had you hoped to include in the first game that are making their way into this sequel?

Brown: For Mercenaries 2, we’ve created a brand new engine specifically tailored to next-generation gaming consoles.  One of the most immediate advantages is the level of detail we’ve added to our destruction simulation.  Vehicles can be taken apart piece by piece and buildings will come down in ways that reflect the player’s attack strategy.  

Also quite apparent is the sheer scale of the world.  Because of this, cities in Mercenaries 2 are much more convincing and playing in the world is a genuinely immersive experience.

Then of course, there are simply a lot of gameplay features that we are adding.  Hijacking vehicles has become more skill-based.  We’ve added boats and the ability for the player to swim above and below the water’s surface.  And of course cooperative multi-player was something that both fans and we, as developers, wanted to see very badly and it was one of the very first new features to make it in!

Read the entire interview after the jump!

So a little while back we managed to score a little interview with Cameron Brown, the man behind the directorial reigns of Pandemic’s Mercenaries 2: World in Flames currently in the works for  Sony‘s just released hunk of hot new hardware, the PlayStation 3.

QJ: How long has Mercenaries 2: World in Flames been in development?

Bown: Mercenaries 2 began pre-production in March of 2005.  

QJ: What ideas had you hoped to include in the first game that are making their way into this sequel?

Brown: For Mercenaries 2, we’ve created a brand new engine specifically tailored to next-generation gaming consoles.  One of the most immediate advantages is the level of detail we’ve added to our destruction simulation.  Vehicles can be taken apart piece by piece and buildings will come down in ways that reflect the player’s attack strategy.  

Also quite apparent is the sheer scale of the world.  Because of this, cities in Mercenaries 2 are much more convincing and playing in the world is a genuinely immersive experience.

Then of course, there are simply a lot of gameplay features that we are adding.  Hijacking vehicles has become more skill-based.  We’ve added boats and the ability for the player to swim above and below the water’s surface.  And of course cooperative multi-player was something that both fans and we, as developers, wanted to see very badly and it was one of the very first new features to make it in!

QJ: What sorts of things are you doing to expand upon the idea of factional play?

Brown: One way we are expanding factional play is by introducing Contacts.  In Mercenaries 2, like in real life, who you know is an important factor in your success. The player will meet members of each faction who will provide field support as long as the player and the member’s faction are on good terms.  These are the player’s Contacts.  If the player wants access to all the cool airstrikes and support drops available, he must keep  maintain a positive relationship with each faction.  As was true in the first game, this is no small task, and juggling relationships can have a profound effect on the player’s approach to playing the game.

QJ: Can you explain how the co-op gameplay will work in Mercs 2, what are are you doing to make co-op fun and exciting.

Brown: One of our design strategies for the single-player game is to give the player a set of gameplay tools and allow him to explore the possibilities.  This lets the player solve problems creatively and enjoy the game in his own way.  

So our strategy for creating a compelling cooperative experience is to make sure all the possibilities of the single-player game are not only present, but augmented by the addition of the second player.  For example, in a solo game, the player can drive a car, then park and switch seats to man a vehicle mounted weapon.  But in the multilayer game, one player can drive while the other shoots!  Similarly, in the single-player game, the player might have to blast his way into an enemy compound, but in the multi-player game, one player might airlift the other in.  

QJ: We understand a second player can jump in at any time, how does this affect things from a gameplay and a technical standpoint, and how does the game adjust to accommodate things when a second player joins the game?

Brown: From a gameplay standpoint, very little changes other than now there are two players in the game.  Everything that was possible in the single-player game remains possible in the cooperative game except now there is a second player to interact and potentially solve problems with.  

Even contracts will rarely need to be be changed by an on-the-fly addition of a second player.  That’s because when the player accepts a contract, he is given goals, but is not told how to achieve them.  So while step-by-step instructions would have to be adjusted to accommodate the entry of a second player, a set of goals can remain unchanged.

  

QJ: What sort of things are you doing to make enemy AI challenging and fun?

Brown: The Mercenaries 2 AI engine is completely new and is being written with a great deal of knowledge gained from our experience developing Mercenaries.  One improvement is that soldiers are more capable of assessing cover on their own.  In Mercenaries soldiers used designer provided hints to find reasonable cover.  In Mercenaries 2, AI units find cover dynamically and can cope with even the most unplanned situations.

But beyond improvements over the first Mercenaries, the new AI engine is also able to handle situations arising from new features in Mercenaries 2.  For example, an AI soldier knows how to defend himself from the Action Hijack mini-game.  An AI soldier also knows how to acquire and use watercraft.  The new AI can even deal with attacks from multiple fronts, as it often the case in co-op.

QJ: What kinds are you able to do with the PS3 hardware that has surprised or delighted you that you haven’t been able to do before? Can you give us examples of how this extra power facilitates your general purpose gameplay mechanic?

Brown: One thing that’s great about the Playstation 3 hardware is the ability to offload parts  of the game to the SPUs.  Not only does it free up the main processor, but it parallelizes a lot of logic that would otherwise need to be processed in turn.  Whenever we move heavy calculations to an SPU, we get noticeable performance boosts. The improved efficiency is always very satisfying from an engineering standpoint, and everyone can appreciate the smoother framerates.

QJ: How tough is it from a design standpoint to make these kinds of open world games that feature destructible environments on such a huge scale?

Brown: Developing an open world “sandbox” game is definitely a challenge.  As we design and implement new features we must be mindful logical usage extremes (ie, “edge case” scenarios) as well as the myriad ways in which features will interact with each other.  We must anticipate any potentially adverse usage scenarios and handle them gracefully.

Building destruction is a great example of a feature that could, if not properly designed, quickly become problematic.  Fortunately, many of the potential problems that stem from building destruction were solved for the first Mercenaries, and these solutions can be directly applied to Mercenaries 2.

QJ: Is Mercenaries 2 still a PS3 only title?

Brown: We have announced Mercenaries 2 as a PS3 only title at this time.

QJ:  Have you got your engine up and running on the various SPU’s? If so, how are you utilizing them?

Brown: The general purpose nature of the SPUs means they are useful in many situations, which is great!  Mercenaries 2 is using the SPUs for many things ranging from the calculations for our water simulation to AI processing.

  

QJ: Are you thinking of making use the PS3 controller’s motion sensing capabilities, and in what ways?

Brown: We are very excited about the design of the Playstation 3 controller and have been exploring ways to enhance the gameplay experience using the motion sensing feature.  There are some clear opportunities for us, but unfortunately we are unable to announce specifics at this time.

QJ: Have you had a chance to look at the Xbox 360 hardware, what do you think?

Brown: We have had great success with Microsoft Xbox in the past, but we are currently focusing our attention to development on the PS3.

QJ:  Will you be offering additional downloadable content for Mercenaries 2?

Brown: No new information has been announced at this time (we have not announced any online play at this time).

QJ: Can you give us an idea of the scope of developing content for the next generation?

Brown: Content creation is perhaps the biggest challenge facing next-generation game development.  Each leap in processing power allows for more content at higher levels of detail and quality.  This means that, for example, each human model will be created using more polygons and higher resolution textures than ever before.  Add work needed to take advantage of new shaders, and the time to create a human model is better measured in months than in weeks as it was in the previous generation.  Extend this example for humans to vehicles, buildings, and essentially every asset in the game, and it becomes clear that content creation is a big production challenge for any developer making next-generation games.

QJ: What do you think about this business with the Venezuelan government, specifically their accusations that Mercenaries 2 is a propaganda piece meant to ready Americans for the idea of an all out invasion.

Brown: Though we are aware of the Venezuelan governmentÂ’s concerns, Pandemic Studios is in the business of entertainment. All persons, storylines and events are purely fictional and bear no relation to real events.  As with any number of games, movies and books, the decision to choose interesting events and locations is purely designed to tell a compelling story, as well as provide a fun and rich experience for the gamer.

QJ: Are you getting close to signing a publisher?

Brown: No new information has been announced at this time.