QuakeCon 2002: Enemy Territory impressions

Activision had a number of upcoming games on display at QuakeCon 2002, including Enemy Territory, the expansion pack for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. One tidbit of news, first revealed at Activision's recent European event, is that Enemy Territory will be a stand-alone product.

The single-player game is now also significantly different from that of the first game--the player's character, BJ Blazkowicz, will be accompanied by up to six bot-controlled squadmates. The game's producer explained that once the team got the bot code up and running, it worked so well--with bots recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the classes and successfully carrying out player orders--that adding it into the single-player game was a natural decision. Your character, Blazkowicz, is still the focus of the game and will carry out the most important and interesting tasks. You can't directly control squadmates, but you can use the quick chat system and the new command map feature to issue orders, including waypoints. Before a mission starts, you choose the classes and weapons for your squadmates.

Enemy Territory's campaign is still quite story-driven, but since it's a prequel, things aren't quite the same as in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Blazkowicz is an Army Ranger before joining the OSA, and the first missions of the game take place in Egypt. We were assured that there will be plenty of occult goings-on, but Enemy Territory has no zombies or monsters, which appeared fairly early in the plot of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The missions will include a variety of objectives, including hostage rescue and bridge demolition.

Enemy Territory also makes significant changes to the Wolfenstein multiplayer. In development at London-based Splash Damage (which worked on the Quake III Fortress mod), the multiplayer component now has a skill system, new classes, and a command map interface. The command map, somewhat reminiscent of the Tribes 2 feature, lets you set waypoints and get information on objectives and other players, and it shows icons for teammates, land mines, and structures.

Structures add a new dynamic element to the maps. Many maps have elements--machine gun towers, water pumps, bridges, and more--that the engineer class can construct. It takes time to build them, but these structures often offer a significant strategic advantage to the team. That makes them a natural target for the opposing force. On one of the two demo maps at QuakeCon, the Allied force could construct one or two water pumps that would slowly move water out of a submerged tunnel and into an adjoining pond. The tunnel let the Allies avoid taking the long way through a North African village, but if the Axis forces destroyed the pumps, the water would quickly fill the tunnel back up, drowning the players inside.

There's one new class in the game, but the others also get some new abilities. The new covert ops class has a few exclusive abilities. It's the only class that can carry the new sniper rifle--which is particularly effective when you use the new ability to go prone--and it also has the silenced Sten SMG and a silenced handgun at its disposal. The covert ops soldier is the only one that can spot land mines without stepping on them (mines are pressure activated, so an engineer can be called in to save the lives of careless teammates). The new class also has the ability to finish off a downed enemy and don the uniform of the opposing side, which serves as an ample disguise that lasts until the player fires or is shot.

The soldier was an underplayed class in the original release, so the class has been beefed up with a new weapon, the powerful FG42 assault rifle that was in the original single-player. At the same time, the soldier loses the ability to use the sniper rifle.

All classes benefit from the skill system. Essentially, skills are based on use. The more time you spend as a certain class or doing certain things, the better you get. A skilled engineer builds faster, and a veteran sniper's targeting reticle settles much faster. One addition related to skills is the new minicampaign mode for multiplayer. Since skills that you build up last only until the server resets, usually when a match ends, these campaigns of three or more related maps help extend the use of skills and reward players who specialize.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory has come a ways since we saw it at E3. Both maps in the demo seemed quite polished and had multiple objectives to keep things interesting. The final game will have 15 maps. The game is set for release later this year. For more information, check out our previous coverage of Enemy Territory and the Enemy Territory .