Ghost Recon: Desert Siege
By James Sterrett

Article Type: Interview
Article Date: April 10, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Ghost Recon
Category: FPS Tactical Shooter
Developer: RedStorm
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Release Date: Released
Min. Spec: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here

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Desert Siege is the recently-released add-on to Ghost Recon. Richard Dansky provided answers to our questions on some aspects of the game, which puts the Ghosts into Eritrea for eight new missions. We’ll also have a full review of the add-on pack soon!

James Sterrett (J.S.): Who will the Ghosts be assisting in the upcoming pack: Ethiopia, Eritrea, or neither?

Richard Dansky (R.D.): The Ghosts are going into Eritrea as part of a multi-national force to assist the Eritrean government in re-establishing its borders with Ethiopia. This is all happening in the wake of a military coup in Ethiopia. The government in Addis Ababa that’s directing the offensive against Eritrea is not the legitimate one.

J.S. What new weapons, vehicles, and enemies can we expect to see? Which of the weapons and vehicles will be useable by the player? Will there be technicals (i.e., light vehicles with various heavier weapons mounted on them, popular in the Third World)?

R.D. In terms of vehicles, you are going to see trucks and jeeps with gunners in the back, though you won’t see mounted .50 calibers this time around. As for weapons, you’ll be seeing nine or so. We selected them based on two factors—are they appropriate for the region and are they useful in the game? After all, the game’s storyline hinges on Russian weapon sales to this renegade faction of the Ethiopian military, so it makes sense to see a lot of Russian weapons. And, by the same token, when we add a new gun we do our best to make sure that it’s a new gun that behaves in a way sufficiently different from anything else we’ve got in there that it’s not just a pretty new model doing the same old job. Probably my favorite of the new weapons is the PKM, though the Bizon was surprisingly effective on the Ghost Town mission.

Fighting along an open road

J.S. What improvements are you planning to the sounds and visuals of the game? How does Africa play to the strengths of Ghost Recon's ability to render foliage?

R.D. Sound is something we always try to pay careful attention to, right down to making sure the animal noises in the distance are authentic (and producer Darren Chukitus gets the credit for making sure that’s done right). You’ll hear more and hopefully more useful team chatter in the mission pack, and Jeff Wesevich has done his usual excellent job in putting the sound into the levels.

As for the visuals, the level artists—guys like Brian Reynolds and John Michel—did a spectacular job of evoking the Eritrean terrain. It’s not all desert, but it is all visually striking. The Roadblock and Train Depot levels, in particular, just really blow me away, and then there’s the refinery. It’s the first map of ours I’ve seen that actually had me thinking, “Uh-uh. No way I’m going in there.” I can’t credit enough the research and effort the guys put into making sure the levels look right. When you come out of the insertion zone on the Ghost Town level and just look out at the vista over the town itself, it’s damned impressive.

J.S. In particular, can we expect to see the fog rolled back? Is the fog distance primarily an engine and processor issue, or a game design and realism issue? Either way, could you explain why you made the choices you did?

R.D. The fog plane is primarily a design and balancing issue. Push it too far back, especially in a desert environment, and suddenly you have “Tom Clancy’s Pixel Hunt.” Pull it in too close—except when you have a compelling reason, like, say, the aftermath of a sandstorm—and you unbalance the game by limiting the effectiveness of one or more of your soldier classes. So tuning the precise distance of the fog plane per level is one of the most delicate balancing tasks that we have to do on each mission. A lot of credit goes to the scripters on the mission pack, Matt Dohmen and the inimitable Gary Stelmack, who did some excellent work in that regard.

While some maps are wide open, other areas, such as this refinery, are claustrophobic

J.S. Can we expect larger maps?

R.D. The maps are staying at 400 meters by 400 meters. Now, that may not necessarily seem like a lot (It’s only four football fields on a side, after all), but believe me, there are plenty of times in Desert Siege when you’re worried about making that next five meters to cover, let alone four hundred.

J.S. How many new multiplayer maps can we expect? Will there be any new multiplayer modes of play?

R.D. You’ll see four brand new multiplayer maps, including the Ravines, which still haunts my nightmares from the last time we did a multiplayer session here in the office. By the end of that one, I was just cowering behind a boulder and using the M-203 to go fishing for snipers. There’s also a re-lit classic map from the original Ghost Recon, and believe it or not, the change in lighting makes a great deal of difference in the way it plays.

J.S. Will there be any improvements to the player's control of the teams? The ability to force them to stay in a particular stance has been asked for often; if it will not be included, could you explain why not?

R.D. The team control stays pretty much the same through Desert Siege (though the improved IFF does a lot to keep you from accidentally controlling them through three round bursts). When it comes to adding new features for a mission pack (like the altered stance command you mentioned), it comes down to two questions: do we have the time and resources to do something like this, and is it an appropriate change for a mission pack rather than a full game? A lot of times, a change that seems simple and obvious will actually involve mucking around deep in the code and changing the UI and a half-dozen other things, and you have to ask yourself, “Do we want to do that one feature, or are we better off devoting that time and energy to these other three?” Ultimately, it’s a judgment call, and the criterion we try to use in making those calls is “what gives the player the best experience?”

J.S. Will players be allowed to import their teams from Ghost Recon, preserving the names and accumulated skills? (If you do allow this, how do you balance the scenarios for both teams starting the expansion pack with high skills and those starting without them?)

R.D. You’re not going to be able to import your teams from Ghost Recon. This was a hot topic of debate over on the design side, and the balancing issue is what really tipped the decision toward not allowing it. What we did instead was give the player more stat points to play with at the beginning of the campaign, and to balance the individual soldier types against one another in multiplayer.

J.S. Cooperation with friendly forces in Ghost Recon was a bit of a one-way street: you cooperated with them, and they often moved onwards in general indifference to you (though they did wait up for you at trigger points). Can we expect any improvement in this department?

R.D. The way the missions are scripted, you’re pretty much on your own out there, so it’s less of a concern than it might be.

J.S. Will there be missions in which the player is caught between multiple sides fighting each other? Will there be non-combatants in more of these missions? What about potential combatants (people who may or may not decide to take on the player or some other faction, depending on the player's actions)?

R.D. For good or for ill, these missions are all pretty much (wild) variations on the straight-up slugfest. You’re going into enemy territory, and it’s kill—or at least outmaneuver—or be killed.

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