E3 06: Frontlines: Fuel of War First Look and Q&A

When the developers at Kaos Studios began creating the Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat, they probably weren't thinking about how they'd be working on their own large-scale combat on ultra-advanced, next-generation platforms just a few years later. Nevertheless, Kaos is now hard at work on Frontlines: Fuel of War, a near-future tactical shooter that will emphasize character-building and complex teamwork over lone-wolf heroism. THQ unveiled Frontlines at a recent press event, and we were in attendance to get the first details on this promising new game.

Expect the best features of Desert Combat to be improved upon in Kaos' new game, Frontlines.

All aspects of Frontlines' design, from the politically tumultuous setting to the load-out of weapons and vehicles, are based on current real-world circumstances. The game supposes that around the year 2024, energy reserves will have been depleted and a new global depression will have begun, resulting in the formation of two rival superpowers: the Western Coalition and the Red Star Alliance. Skirmishes in the game will play out across a diverse series of battlefields that employ a dynamic "frontline" system that will keep the combat centered on a specific point on each map. Your team's objectives will be contextual to the status of the battle, and each goal you achieve will open up a series of new objectives that build on the work you've already done. And you'll apparently be able to approach the frontline from a number of different directions, since you'll have multiple objectives available at any given time, all of which will contribute to the overall advancement of your position.

Apparently, working together as a team will not only be paramount, it'll be absolutely essential to victory. Frontlines will employ what Kaos reps referred to as "next-generation teamwork" in a number of ways. In mechanical terms, you'll have things such as multiple people operating the driving and target-acquisition of a single vehicle or advanced information-sharing over voice over IP. Speaking of those vehicles and weapons, everything in the game will be based on existing technology or plans that are currently on the drawing board, so you'll have lots of fun gear to play with that's plausibly realistic but isn't actually in use on the battlefield just yet.

Your soldier won't be stuck with static abilities throughout the game, either. You'll accrue experience as you blast through one mission after another, and you'll gain role-playing game-like experience in a variety of areas. As you focus on certain weapons or roles, your experience in those areas will increase until you become more proficient or even gain new abilities altogether. We don't know yet how in-depth this RPG-style character-upgrade system will be, but we hope it will give you a good amount of flexibility to mold your soldier in the areas you prefer.

In addition to our first peek at Frontlines, we spoke to Frank DeLise of Kaos Studios about the direction of the game's development.

GameSpot: How did your work on Desert Combat and Battlefield 2 inform Frontlines' design? What popular features from those games can we expect to be expanded on in Frontlines?

Frank DeLise: We learned a lot from both Desert Combat and Battlefield 2. In DC we strived to deliver the first fast-paced modern-day military game with vehicles, learned how to communicate with the community, and to deliver content on a monthly basis. With BF2 we learned a lot about team play and what drives hardcore players. So you can expect fast-paced multiplayer gameplay combined with a new level of teamwork and next-generation vehicles. We learned what was great about those games, and we also learned what needed improvement.

GS: Frontlines is clearly a game designed around the multiplayer experience. What can you tell us about the single-player campaign?

Developers who worked on FEAR, Doom 3, and Homeworld are now contributing to Frontlines' development.

FD: Actually, with Frontlines: Fuel of War, we started with a storyline and designed the single-player game first. We really wanted to nail this, so we got to work on it right away. We even hired solid developers from FEAR, Medal of Honor, Doom 3, and Homeworld, to name a few.

The single-player game is based on our world's dependence on oil and the realities of our future if we don't find alternate methods. It is a global war set 20 years in the future that tells the story from multiple perspectives. Fuel of War is the first theater of this global war. The game mechanic was designed around what we wanted as gamers to play: an intensely cinematic, fast-paced, go anywhere, do anything, destructible war zone. In the single-player missions, you get to join the frontlines as the Western Coalition (US\EU) and fight your way through the Red Star Alliance (Russia\China) all the way up through Moscow. Each mission is an open-world environment with a set of nonlinear objectives that make up a frontline. As you complete these objectives in any order you wish, the frontline moves forward, just like a real war would. This allows the player to devise their own strategies through a mission, not the typical die, redo, die, redo--instead, you chip away the front in a continuous battle.

The [artificial intelligence] in Frontlines is intense. They work as squads, use battle chatter to communicate, and use any vehicle at their disposal, including tanks, jeeps, jets, and helicopters, to name a few. In fact, you can control the AI to form vehicle squadrons for ultimate destruction.