WWII RTS Preview

A tranquil village before hell is unleashed.

World War II is just about the hottest thing in gaming these days, and why not? The war was in many ways one of the greatest dramas in human history. It played out on a global scale, with millions upon millions of soldiers and civilians learning firsthand the horrors of tyranny and the costs of freedom. Of course, World War II makes a great subject for games now that it's more or less a thing of the past. You have your convenient and easily detested bad guys. You have fighting forces and battlefields from all over the world that gamers in many countries can relate to. You also have combat that took advantage of advanced technology without usually removing the soldier from the center of the fray like today's long-range computerized weapon systems can do. One of the stars of the World War II gaming scene is publisher 1C, which recently gave us Maddox Games' superb eastern front flight sim, IL-2 Sturmovik. While an IL-2 expansion is in the works, 1C is also preparing to offer us another WWII gaming experience, this time in the form of a real-time strategy game whose working title is, appropriately enough, WWII RTS.

A Tiger tank takes a hit.

We recently got to speak with Nikolay Baryshnikov, 1C's international sales director. While not directly involved in the development of the game on a technical level, Baryshnikov has a big hand in the overall vision of 1C's games. That's especially true of WWII RTS, since, as he says, it's "his baby." Both he and Yuri Miroshnikov, head of the entertainment and educational products division for 1C, came up with the core idea for the game, which will present some of World War II's most significant battles.

After the success of IL-2, why develop an RTS instead of another flight sim? Baryshnikov says that flight sims remain a "niche genre and our goal is to entertain as many people as possible. RTS is probably one of the most popular genres worldwide with millions of fans in every country. So we decided to target a wider audience this time. And based on our Sturmovik experience, we believe that we can deliver another great product, though in a different genre." In fact, the RTS will be built around a modified Sturmovik game engine, and the development team will include some of the folks behind IL-2.

When asked why 1C wants to stick with World War II as the theme of its next project, Baryshnikov says it's because the war is so widely known and so important for modern history. There are good practical grounds, too: 1C amassed lots of detailed historical data in creating IL-2, and it wants to apply that data to its RTS. "I also think," Baryshnikov says, "that many RTS's based on WWII lack realism and accuracy. It doesn't look right when a soldier can kill a tank with a pistol by shooting it a thousand times. Plus I see a definite trend in RTS development--gamers prefer reality and not sci-fi."