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World in Conflict

Sweden-based developer Massive Entertainment has come out with a huge title in World in Conflict. There's been a buzz about the game ever since the first screenshots were released, but the game offers much more to the table than beautiful graphics alone. World in Conflict is the start of a new era in real-time strategy gaming. It shakes off decade-long conventions of RTS games, shunning base building and resource management for platoon-level tactics, combined across a team of players to create a truly cooperative strategy games. The setting is similarly novel: rather than the stock sci-fi, fantasy or World War II battles seen in so many RTS titles, World in Conflict is set in the 1980s where the Cold War has turned hot.

Single player campaign: our generation's untested warriors

Massive decided to put a lot of money and effort into the single player campaign: to create a likely Cold War escalation scenario, they hired game designer, author and Tom Clancy co-author Larry Bond. Bond is credited as Story Consultant, so he's likely responsible for the premise and broad story arc only, not the actual script or dialogue. That doesn't take away from the game's story, though.

The writers have dug in their literary toolboxes and pulled out every trick: we're treated to carefully measured expositions that flesh out the main characters and their private lives outside of the war, and some recurring themes like your commanding officer Colonel Sawyer's unfailing competence and hardnosedness get hammered in throughout the game. The player gets treated to war movie cliches like the incongruity of war and violence invading everyday life, symbolized by toys, homes and supermarkets, but most of the time they are used quite tactfully. After a dramatic climax, a large part of the story is told in flashback to better explain the global conflict and the main characters' motives alike.

The quality of the writing shows in audio cues during battles throughout the campaign. The way the story is weaved into the gameplay is one of the strongest points of WiC's single player experience. The realistic environments and their destruction is made even more explicit by giving hints of the war's implications, not necessarily in ways that demand player activity, but still adding to the atmosphere. Your fellow officers bicker between each other, make good and bad judgments as well as acts of courage and cowardice.

Every now and then they wonder about practical issues like handling prisoners, suggesting that there's a lot going on that the player doesn't see going on in the battle. This approach fleshes out both their characters and the game world. The writing is rife with stereotypic characters - the French liaison officer not only has a mistress, he also berates the Americans for not having any proper Culture - but some characters like the tank captain Bannon go through many stages of character development during the course of the plot.

Page 1: Introduction & Single playerPage 2: SP campaign qualityPage 3: Multiplayer AnalysisPage 4: Graphics & Hardware RequirementsPage 5: Final thoughts & Scores

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