Uh oh, somebody dropped the "A" word. Speaking to OXM in a lengthy interview published yesterday, Gearbox executives have explained that Aliens: Colonial Marines will not be a complicated squad-style game in the vein of Brothers in Arms, but one you can easily pick up and play.
"I would say that it's an easy leap to say, hey, these are the guys who made Brothers in Arms, they're likely going to have squad control and those kind of things," commented studio co-founder Brian Martel. "The issue with that is that it's really hard to flank an alien."
Squad-mates will play a decisive role in battle - you'll definitely "feel their loss", according to Martel - but you won't be able to order them around.
"We actually wanted it to be a very accessible experience," studio boss Randy Pitchford added. "The goal is not to have complicated interfaces, we're not worrying about having things like squad command, you don't need fire manoeuvres... there's no manoeuvring on an alien."
Gearbox is keen to give Colonial Marines as broad an appeal as possible. "You want to have a great experience when you're by yourself, and you want to have a fantastic experience when you can play with your friends and share that experience," explained Martel. "And those are the kind of things we want to make sure are a part of the game."
"Yeah, so if someone like tries to make the assumption that because we made Brothers in Arms there'll be like, squad command, that's incorrect," Pitchford concluded.
Find the full interview, which covers powerloaders, "red shirts", prosthetic limbs and bullet-proof aliens, here.
1 comments so far...
Jensonjet on 12 Aug '11 said:
This seems to be an odd thing to clarify! I can't imagine many people would have assumed the game is anything but a simple out-and-out shooter.
However there's one tiny, tiny feature I always want to see in shooters, especially in co-op, that I hope is in this game and that's the ability to share/swop ammo with team mates.
With the nature of this game I imagine ammo may be of limited supply at certain times. It also happens to be important aspect in the second movie. And I think the chance to give trigger happy (scared!) team mates ammo if they run dry would add an extra element of tatic as well as being an interesting team-building exercise.
OXM, email your developer mates and demand it. You know it makes sense.