Posted: 01-06-05 In: Interviews By: Munro2 |


Halflife2.net: The Last Great War is written on your website as "a realistic first person shooter based the most anticipated game of 2004, Half-Life II." Judging from this statement, will The Last Great War be set in the Half-Life universe or will it just be run on the Source engine?

Mith: It'll be powered by the source engine technology, the same technology that powers Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2. Essentially though, LGW will be a Half-Life 2 Modification the same way Day of Defeat is to Half-Life 1. LGW won't draw any story elements or characters from the Half-Life universe. There will be no gravity guns or combine.

Halflife2.net: The first release your team has coming is the Pacific Theatre of Operations. What can you tell us about that concept?

Mith: The Pacific Theatre of Operations in World War II involved Allied forces pitted against the Empire of Japan. Hollywood only tells us the story of the US Marines island hopping throughout the pacific, and while LGW will cover some of the island hopping campaign, we'll also tell more of the untold stories in the pacific. Japan's goal was to push western influence and western colonies out of the Pacific. This also brought the Russians, Australians, Canadians, and British into conflict with Japan. You'll be seeing some of the battles they fought against the Japanese as well. The pacific will be a welcome change from the European feel of Half-Life 2. You'll be fighting in the jungles of the pacific, on the islands of the Philippines, or even in the ocean with the possibilities of naval battles.

Halflife2.net: According to your website, The Last Great War has three game modes planned. What can you tell us about them?

Mith: We will have a simple mode of TDM and Capture the Flag, but the heart of LGW is going to be found in one game type: Attrition. Attrition is built to offer a more realistic depiction of the combat experience with frontlines, a rear zone, and supply lines. The team's objectives are clear-cut, but your options become more dynamic when you get down to the squad level.

Halflife2.net: In a time where war mods are so commonplace, what do you think will make The Last Great War stand out?

Mith: The Last Great War started just at the start of the wave of these war games, so we're stuck with the ongoing cliché that war games are getting old. On top of the game type, Attrition, which we feel to have a lot of potential, we also hope that our content area and focus can also draw in some new interest. In the pacific, there are many elements we'll be including that have never been covered before, such as British, Canadian, and Australian ground forces in the Pacific with maps like Kokoda Trail, Singapore, and Hong Kong. We wont promise anything for later theatres yet, other than we hope to fulfil our original goals and perhaps cover every theatre, from the beginning.

Halflife2.net: The three classes, Assault Infantry, Support Infantry, and Armour Crew, all sound interesting. What can you tell us about those classes and will there be vehicles in the mod?

B0B: Assault infantry are the backbone of any army. They are flexible enough to be assigned any task so long as there are enough of them with appropriate support. They are the first into an area and often the last out, responsible for anything from assault to occupation. They're armed with a wide variety of weapons well suited to mobility while possessing a fair amount of firepower. They rely heavily on each other in combat, making use of suppress and move tactics. Players can select to play as a number of assault infantry specialists, such as medics, field recon, or combat engineers.

While the medic is expected to do his part as a rifleman, he is primarily responsible for treating those injured in combat. Medics can not fully restore an injured soldier to perfect health, but they can keep injured soldiers alive on the battlefield and possibly bring them back to combat ready status. Medics can also heal small wounds on themselves, however extensive injuries require the assistance of another medic to treat. You can read up on the stamina system to get a feel for what it is exactly the medic can do. Healing other players will also involve a VGUI mini-game.

Combat engineers are highly trained specialists. They're also some of the only people whose job isn't primarily to shoot at you on the battlefield. Very useful for precise demolitions work and laying mines, as well as constructing fortifications and disabling enemy mines. Not heavily armed, but loaded down with a lot of equipment regardless. We'll be making a lot of use of the VGUI system to make laying and disabling mines as well as setting and disabling explosives either 2D or 3D mini-games, adding a nice change from the traditional "hold the button to set the bomb".

Everywhere and nowhere at the same time, recon specialists are an army's eyes and assassins. Armed with long range rifles or short range personal defence weapons as well as binoculars and field radios, recon specialists are responsible for providing an overview of the battle for everyone else. They are capable of directing artillery fire, calling in reinforcements, directing bodies of troops, scouting enemy movement, and eliminating specific individuals from a distance as well as providing sniper support for a body of troops. Possibly the most training intensive and demanding of all specialties.

Support infantry provide heavy weapons support for assault infantry. They're not particularly mobile, but once they get themselves set up they can lay a formidable base of fire. They excel in both offensive support and defence. They consist of heavy machine gunners, flamethrower infantry, and mortar infantry. Although not infantrymen by nature or particularly threatening alone on the battlefield, armour crewmen operate the tanks combat vehicles that can turn the direction of a battle. While anyone can operate trucks or jeeps, only armour crewmen make up the crews of the more deadly combat vehicles.

We'll be seeing a pretty wide variety of light and heavy armour; in fact just about every armoured vehicle seen in the theatre of operations. Vehicles will be operated by multiple players and can have players riding on top also. Armoured vehicles won't be invulnerable, but on the same note they won't be taken out by only one or two anti-tank weapons. Aside from armour, we'll be seeing jeeps, motorcycles, and trucks. These basic vehicles can be operated by any player class.

Halflife2.net: Since this is a war-based mod that focuses on realism, from what sources does your team get their inspiration?

Mith: We have a full department of researchers and historians to find what the artists need to make the content, but most LGW Staff Members work on the mod because they like the time era & online games. Inspiration comes from many sources, from films to books to other games.

Halflife2.net: Tell us a little bit about where your team's background comes from. What communities where your team members apart of previously (or currently)?

Mith: The Last Great War started out very small with a team of less than five, as a simple weapons mod for Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. The team as it stands now consists of roughly thirty talented artists, coders, and mappers who come from all over the world, and from many former mod projects.

Halflife2.net:On your website, you describe the combat system being planned for The Last Great War. How will you make that transition of realism to arcade-like gameplay?

B0B: We actually plan on featuring as much realism in LGW as possible, but it won't compromise gameplay. We'll be keeping crosshairs in game, but they'll only serve as a reference to the centre of the screen. In fact, we'll be keeping a minimal graphic interface, but the interface we provide will give the player most of the information available to soldiers in combat. One of the few exceptions we'll make to this rule is rally points for fire teams; they'll be visible in game in order to make the player really feel like they're part of a fire team as opposed to "just another player tagging along".

We plan on throwing a lot of visual distractions at the player as well. There'll be a lot of shrapnel, kicked up dust and dirt, and smoke to obscure the playing field. On the same note, we'll be knocking the player around a lot in game too; concussive force will knock a player a good distance away flat on his back and getting hit could take a player to the ground (without killing him). Of course we'll be featuring realistic recoil and aiming and realistic bullet and shrapnel ballistics.

One of the biggest changes we'll see is the formidability of fighting an enemy that's "dug in". LGW will be one of the first games to prove that a disorganized frontal assault can't rout an enemy out of a fortified position. Fire team leaders will have to work with their teams to suppress enemy positions, move their teams under cover fire, and bound on positions with reliance on fire support.

Aside from simply the class system, the team will be broken down into squads and fire teams. There will be a server set number of squads, which will be divided into fire teams. Squad leaders will be responsible for coordinating the overall assault using their fire teams, and fire team leaders will be responsible for coordinating movement of individual players. There will be typically three to six players per fire team, and two to four fire teams per squad. Squads and fire teams will consist of a mixture of classes.

Halflife2.net: One aspect that I found particularly interesting is Smart Voice Command (SVC), tell us about that please.

Mith: SVC was a pretty nifty & simple concept brought about in the very early days of development. Most games at the moment have a series of root keys and command menus. While LGW will still have those, we're presenting another possible option to increase communications and teamwork between players. Just like the site says "We plan on making a hotkey you can press that shouts out a voice command by pointing your crosshair towards a target. For the example, let's say the hotkey is X. You see a Canadian Bren Gun position in a balcony down the street. You press X and a voice command will play based on what the SVC script picks up."

Halflife2.net: In conclusion, where do you foresee the future of The Last Great War and what do you think your team needs to accomplish to meet that eventuality?

Mith: We've got a great team full of talented individuals. We're still looking for some more talented & willing staff members to contribute to the progress. We're well on our way of planning out and building up to our first public release, beta 1.0. I see a great future ahead for this mod, and am very proud at how far it has come since it began.