In Private Wars, you enter the world of modern small-scale
warfare, the world where mercenary is just another
respectable profession, and war is just another type of
business, and human life costs just as much as you wish to
pay. It's our world of 1990s, realistically re-created in
your computer.- Sergey Titov CEO TS Group.
Click for larger image.
At this years E3 in Atlanta I spent alot of time wandering
the rows and rows of games taking a gander at what the
industry has to offer. More than once my curiosity was
aroused by a games graphics as todays games are becoming
increasingly lifelike.
Being a huge fan of the first person shooter genre I was
more than happy to check into next generation of first
person shooters such as Redstorm Entertainment's Rainbow
Six and TS Groups Private Wars. While in Atlanta I had a
chance to meet with TS Group founder and CEO Sergey Titov
and ask him about Private Wars. Far away from his home in
Moscow I was pleased to show Mr. Titov some good old
American hospitality and pick his brain about his plans for
his company's upcoming release.
Ya wanna make some dough
The game focuses around you the player, as an ex-secret
service executive who starts up your own mercenary company.
Being a person of questionable morals you seek fortune not
ideals as you go to the highest bidder. The catch with these
missions is that you won't know which missions will do you
harm in your business or can help your companys reputation.
With a bad rep it's not only going to be harder to find
people who will offer you jobs, but it will also affect
whether or not you can get people to hire!
CSim: How many missions will PW have?
Sergey Titov: 15 missions for the Russian version, and
between 20 and 30 for the international version.
CSim: What style of gameplay can we expect from PW?
ST: There's actually several different styles of play to
this game. You can play it as either arcade, simulation or
even turn based. In the arcade mode you will have the same
superhuman traits we see in games like Quake, where you can
be shot many times and still be up and shooting. Then we
will offer the simulation style where all you actions have
a direct reaction to the world around you you will die if
shot in a killing shot area, so one shot CAN kill in this
game.
In the turn based mode you will control the action from a
typical isometric view you find in all strategy games.
CSim: What about multiplayer?
ST: Basing the game as a TCP/IP only game players can play
over the Internet in up to 16 player co-op play. The game
will come with a mini-server routine in the box that is
very memory friendly only taking up 100-200 k of memory.
CSim: What about voice comms during the game? I'm a big fan
of real-time voice communication?
ST: We're looking into adding voice comms through the use
of a walkie-talkie mode. Where a player can send a voice
message much the same way in which a walkie-talkie works.
CSim: What about the mercenaries you can hire?
ST: You will have a pool of about 50 mercenaries from which
to choose up to 8 mercenaries if you have the cash to pay
for them. Your reputation will precede you here... if you
leave a mercenary stranded on a previous mission you may
find other mercenaries reluctant to work for you. So it's
strongly advised you treat these people with "professional
courtesy" and not leave them behind. :)
CSim: What about weapons? How many will be available and
what other items can we expect to see in the game?
ST: We're planning on having 70 weapons including pistols,
machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and
explosives from all over the world. Being that you are
mercenaries you will be picking from the best buys on the
market to save money. We'll also be including items such as
night vision and flak vests.
CSim: After seeing the demo I was very impressed with the
environment. It's nice to have a real forest to travel
through and not those "forest walls" we see too often in
games. It reminds me of EA's old game Seal Team on
steroids. :)
ST: Thank you, we've been trying to create a dynamic and
realistic world in which you have true to life trees and
vegetation not just 2d sprites. We're very excited about
the physics modeling we have in this game where you affect
everything around you. Pushing a barrel in the water makes
it bob and float along in the water as you saw with the
boat at the dock in the demo. Shoot it full of holes and it
will sink, the same with the boat. We want to make the
environment you play in as real to life as possible.
CSim: From what I've seen in the demo the lighting effects,
the physics of the objects in water and all that, it looks
really lifelike. I'm getting as excited as you. :) What
about the enemies? What can we expect from their AI?
ST: We're excited about this also as we are using what we
call"Situation Awareness AI" where again everything you do
affects your enemies as well. By this we mean the soldier
is completely realistic in that he can see and hear what is
going on around him. If you are moving towards your
objective and find your path blocked by an enemy guard, you
can throw a rock into the water and the guard will go
investigate giving you an open path ahead. He might also
hear you if you make noise. Once he detects you he may call
for help, run away or just stand and fight depending on his
personality.
CSim: Sounds good to me. What about bonuses for extra
objectives met in each mission. Will they be available for
the player as well?
ST: Yes, of course. If a player wants to do a little extra
for his contractor he can pick up an extra bonus or two
along the way as well.
CSim: What methods of insertion/extraction will we see in
the game?
ST: Parachuting, helicopters as well as helicasting.
CSim: Sounds like a real sweet package, now what about the
machine requirements and release date?
ST: We'll be supporting all 3D accelerators and we're
confident the players will enjoy the looks we're creating
with Studio Max and SoftImage. We're releasing it for P166
MMX with hardware acceleration and 32 megs of RAM, 200 MMX
for software rendering but the best is to run this under a
PII 233 with Voodoo 2. We expect to release this one for
Christmas.
CSim: Thanks for your time Sergey, best of luck to you in
finding a publisher for this title.
ST: Thank you and enjoy the demo.
After seeing the demo and speaking with Sergey Titov I am
anxiously awaiting this game to see if it can live up to the
tall order of its creators vision.
I must note that the demo I saw ran very quickly on a PII
but once I ran it on my home machine (a P200 MMX) the frame
rate was very slow. This was a early technology demo so I'm
sure that will change but this game looks to be in need of
serious hardware.