SWAT: Urban Justice Q&A

The last new SWAT game on the PC was the excellent team-based shooter SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle from 1999, which was followed by the upgraded Elite Edition the following year. SWAT 3 was a great-looking, exciting shooter in which you played as part of a Los Angeles, California SWAT team on various missions against heavily armed criminal groups. Among other things, SWAT 3 had outstanding AI--easily among the best we'd ever seen at the time. Your squadmates (or "element") responded beautifully to orders and were valuable allies even in the toughest firefights, and at the same time, your enemies would smartly take cover from incoming fire and even be alerted to your presence by observing damaged furniture and scenery.

Then again, the original SWAT 3 shipped without any kind of multiplayer support--an unfortunate omission that was later corrected in the updated Elite Edition, which was released about a year later. But what was even worse for SWAT 3 was that it shipped around the same time as 1999's most highly anticipated and most important shooters, Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament--two heavyweights that basically stole the spotlight away from the rest of the year's action games.

Since then, the team has gone on to work on SWAT: Urban Justice, a new game whose fictitious nature will let the team sneak in a few "less realistic" features for the sake of making a more enjoyable, fast-paced game. But make no mistake: Urban Justice won't exactly go easy on the realism either. The new game will have improved AI and a gigantic arsenal of realistic weapons modeled after their real-world counterparts, among other things. Will they be enough to help SWAT stand out from this year's excellent lineup of shooters? It looked extremely promising when we last saw the game at E3, but we decided we'd get all the details directly from the game's project leader, Rod Fung.

GameSpot: Rod, when we spoke last, you had some pretty ambitious goals for the game--things like modeling the player's weight down to a single bullet, 5,000-polygon characters, 30 different hit zones, and so on. Is everything still on track, or have you had to make some cuts from the game? Is the game still on schedule for this fall?

Rod Fung: Yes, everything is still on track as far as the above. We decided to make some cuts of nonessential features, many of which will be invisible to the player. We are still planning on being on the shelves this fall.

GS: The SWAT series, especially SWAT 3, is known for its extremely accurate modeling of real-world weapons and tactics, but you've said that Urban Justice will take some liberties. For instance, in Urban Justice, you won't play as the actual LAPD, and your officers will actually carry riot shields, something that SWAT officers don't do. Why the changes? What other kinds of liberties will Urban Justice take?

RF: For SWAT: UJ, we really wanted more freedom in how we portrayed SWAT teams. When we featured LAPD SWAT in our previous games, we had certain constraints placed upon us as to what we could show (tactics and weapons) so that we wouldn't compromise the safety of the real LAPD SWAT. In SWAT: Urban Justice we are featuring a fictional SWAT team based in Los Angeles. It opens the door as to what we can show and tell, most of which is based on SWAT teams and tactics that we have been exposed to the past few years. There are still a number of real-world tactics that we have seen but have been asked not to show in the game, such as unique types of takedowns in specific circumstances.

GS: So why bring in an LAPD SWAT leader as a consultant? What other measures is the team taking to make sure Urban Justice feels as realistic as SWAT 3 did?

RF: Many members of my team have been through various levels of SWAT training. I also have quite a few members of my team who worked on SWAT 3, so they have a very good understanding of SWAT team tactics.

GS: One of the best things about SWAT 3 was its outstanding unit AI. What kind of enhancements is the team making to Urban Justice's AI? What sort of new maneuvers will your element (and your enemies) have?

RF: Thanks on the nice comment about our AI. In all of our games we strive to have the [most] realistic team AI possible. Some of the enhancements include better use of cover, more realistic room clearing, and AI-controlled trailers who will assist the SWAT entry team when necessary.

The Good, The Bad, and The Guns

GS: How much emphasis are you placing on the enemy (and element) AI over scripted events? Will Urban Justice have any scripted events?

RF: Yes, the enemy AI will [have] some scripted events, but they are supplemental to the already advanced AI in our game.

GS: You've said that you want to make Urban Justice play a little faster than SWAT 3, and so you've added the quick start option as part of that goal. Have you finalized the number of orders that you can give out to your element using quick start? Do you have to use quick start before every mission?

RF: Yes, the quick start function is fully designed and laid out. In quick start we keep the command options to a very manageable size so even the most novice player will be able to play and enjoy SWAT: UJ. The quick start command menu is available throughout each mission if you choose to play the game in that mode. At any time during a mission, you can escape out of quick start and pull up the standard command menu like in SWAT 3.

GS: The game will let players choose from just about every recognizable weapon ever made. Don't get us wrong, we've got no problem with that, but do you really need all those guns? Is the MP5K really all that different from the MP5PDW? Are you finding it difficult to balance all those weapons? Is weapon balance even an issue?

RF: Sure, the weapons balancing is an issue, but we have a very simple system that works well. There are subtle differences in the gun types, and we think the players will really like this feature. It will be great to be able to set up a unique weapon for the various types of entries and missions that you might encounter such as indoor, outdoor, minimum penetration, fast entries, night operations, and so on.

GS: What happens to your weapons and equipment in between missions? If your Kevlar pad takes a bullet, do you have to buy a new one? Are you adding any kind of financial aspects to the management of your equipment at all?

RF: In SWAT: UJ, there isn't any financial management or anything like that. If your vest takes a bullet, you'll get a new one in your next mission.

GS: We saw a helicopter in the E3 trailer. Will that come into play within the actual game itself?

RF: No, that was for our opening movie.

GS: SWAT: Urban Justice still hasn't been rated by the ESRB. How are you addressing the inherent violence of this subject matter? With all those hit zones that each character in the game will have, are you aiming for a Soldier of Fortune II level of gore?

RF: No, we are not aiming for [that] level of gore at all, though we are aiming for realism. Realism doesn't always mean more blood. In fact, we are pretty subtle with the blood in this game. Since the game takes place on the streets of LA, we do feature explicit language in the game.

GS: Could you discuss the multiplayer component of SWAT: Urban Justice? When last we spoke, this aspect of the game was kind of up in the air. Have you decided on how many players it will support? Have you come up with all the different gameplay modes yet? Can you give us some examples?

RF: We are planning on supporting 20 players in multiplayer. Game types include various types of co-op games, deathmatch-type games, and team deathmatch games. There will also be a co-op-against-co-op type of game.

GS: The screenshots of Urban Justice certainly look impressive. We haven't seen many of the gunfire effects, though. Is that something you're still working on? And how elaborate will, for instance, the concussive effects of a grenade be? Can the Takedown 3D engine render things like blurred vision?

RF: We have a very nice particle effect set up for SWAT: UJ and are using it for creating the muzzle flashes on the weapons. It looks very realistic and convincing.

GS: What about things that we can't see? Are you sampling the actual gun sounds of the game's entire arsenal? Will grenade explosions affect your hearing?

RF: Yes, we spent a couple days at Gemtech Industries (friends of mine who build suppressors for the military) and recorded all of the gun sounds for the game. At Gemtech, we had access to their entire vault of class-3 weapons and suppressors, including exotics such as the P90 and FiveSeven pistols with suppressors on them. Our gun sounds in the game are very realistic.

GS: Sounds good to us. Thanks for your time, Rod.