Wargames Confidential: Part 2

There's more to tell you from the field of computer wargames and related strategy titles.

For our second update we've included information on The Operational Art of War, Talonsoft's upcoming real-time games, Pacific Tide, and the apparent demise of Birthright from Sierra.

The Operational Art of WarIf you've ever seen the sheer amount of detail designer Norm Koger puts into his games before and after they are published, you're almost assured that the next title will be just as good, if not better. After Age of Rifles and Koger's fallout of sorts with SSI, he signed up with Talonsoft to produce the first in hopefully a long series of games called The Operational Art of War, covering the period between 1939 and 1953. Recently GameSpot News was treated to a sneak preview in Austin.

The Operational Art of War is built from the ground up in Windows 95, with the capacity to be played in any size window, in 16-bit color. The user interface has the same feel of Age of Rifles though refined completely. For the most part Koger has gone back to his operational-level roots, allowing the player to manipulate large units like regiments, brigades, or divisions, rather than his recent previous titles that were for the most part company-based in size. Despite their large size, the units are detailed right down to the level of individual vehicles and weapons. The maps will feature the various two- and three-dimensional zoom levels that have been featured in the various Talonsoft Battleground series of games.

Currently Talonsoft, the distributor, is contracting out to various designers for scenarios, much like what it did for East Front. Twelve "major" scenarios (or campaigns - for the purpose of the game the two are interchangeable) are planned. Koger has spent a lot of time on his Korea: 1950-51 campaign, a beautifully designed and crafted campaign detailing the first year of the Korean War. The map covers the entire Korean peninsula as well as areas in China and Japan.

One of the more unique features that the Operational Art of War will incorporate is geopolitics - how actions on the battlefield may alter how the course of the war unfolds. In the Korea example, Koger has programmed multitudes of related and perhaps nonrelated variables that can alter the campaign. Chinese and perhaps Russian intervention, use of the nuclear bomb, President Truman's assassination (which apparently nearly succeeded), and other things can change the course of the campaign. Weather can also play a factor.

All of these factors can be entered by the scenario or campaign designer with the game's powerful design utility, which allows the designer to create basically an unlimited number of battles of various size.

The Operational Art of War will be turn-based, but the scale and time constraints can be varied - one turn may be perhaps a month of game time or can be as short as a day or so.

We'll have more on the Operational Art of War when it becomes available.

Pacific TideSimulating the entire Pacific theater of operations in World War II on the computer is a daunting task; few have attempted it, and even fewer have been successful. The most well-known design is Gary Grigsby's Pacific War, a huge monstrosity of a game that was unfortunately mired by a poor interface but in other areas was exceptionally good. Victory at Sea was only released for the Macintosh and died slowly, hampered by too many bugs and numerous AI/gameplay implementation problems.

For the past few years, a small, widely spread-out company known as Star Games has been putting together what could perhaps be the panacea of the Pacific war on the personal computer - Pacific Tide. Up until recently it was almost solely designed on the Macintosh, but now with the funding of Adventure Software, the Windows 95 team has taken the lead. This game will feature all of the major and minor areas of the Pacific war, from India to New York, Alaska to New Zealand, and everywhere in between. The Battle Edition will be the first release, featuring a number of limited and smaller campaigns showing off the game engine, and later on, the Theater Edition will feature the grand huge campaign and include more extra features.

Stay tuned for more information when it becomes available. However, we do have some recently released screenshots of some of the geographical areas, among other things, that should whet your appetite.

Talonsoft Plans AheadBesides the upcoming Operational Art of War and the less-than-serious Tribal Rage, Talonsoft has recently released plans for a new series of Campaign games (the first being East Front). Instead of turn-based games, however, these will be real-time and will be set in the 19th century.

The first two games will cover the entire American Civil War and the Age of Napoleon, set for release in the first quarter of 1999 and the third quarter of 1999 respectively. The games will feature all-new graphics, multiplayer capabilities, and historical detail in a real-time environment.

Birthright Sequels SquashedAs reported last week and on Usenet, the future of Birthright is pretty dim. The creators at Synergistic software have, for want of a better term, been split up, the bulk of them moving to the newly formed Front Page Development offices and the rest to various other internal development teams. While there have been plans for a Birthright Deluxe and Birthright 2, Sierra On-line, the publisher, comments that these titles were just that, planned, and nothing else.

All of the features of Birthright Deluxe were pretty much implemented in the latest batch of patches released, and the revised manual will hopefully be made available online.

As for any continuation of the Birthright series, it remains to be seen if anything else will ever be produced.