Posted: 08-06-05 In: Interviews By: Munro2 |


Warriors of the Apocalypse is yet another Multiplayer mod that displays some very promising features. However, WOTA is shaping up to be one of the best looking Half-Life 2 mods both in a visual and gameplay aspect. Rather than just being a straight up shooter, WOTA incorporates teamwork through completing assigned objectives. These assigned objectives will require players to use their mind as well their trigger finger. Not only will there be challenging objectives, but there will also be several unique playable factions. Now that you have read what makes WOTA such a wonderful mod that everyone should be on the look out for, lets progress with the interview.

Halflife2.net: First off, I would like to thank Morgan, the leader of WOTA mod for sitting down with me today to complete this interview.

Morgan: Thanks for interviewing me, I’m sure people will like what we have to offer.

Halflife2.net: In a few short sentences, please describe the storyline to the readers who are new to Warriors of the Apocalypse.

Morgan: The storyline is pretty involved but leaves enough open to prevent us from restricting ourselves. It is, however, an alternate reality, so the events leading up to the war are a little different than you’d expect.

Basically, the world was for the most part at peace, the Soviet Union and the rest of the world had found a way to keep the world economy in balance. The United States government was corrupted and built a computer system to make things right and restore liberty to the people without crippling the power of the corporations that corrupted elected officials. The system gets confused and believes that corporations are to blame for people’s unhappiness, so it decides to destroy them, which would destroy the world economy. The Soviet Union invades the American States of Canada and parts of the United States to attempt to force them to stop the computer system, but even the US couldn’t stop it. A massive attack was launched on the main part of the system and it was apparently destroyed. The world was left shattered, torn by the war, bombings, civil war, terrorism, and radioactive fallout.

The game picks up a few decades after the war, in a fight for control of resources, dominance in various areas, and most of all, survival.

Halflife2.net: Creativity held within a mod is a very important deciding factor that categorizes a mod as either noteworthy or yet another average game being developed. In what ways do you think WOTA expresses its creativity to the player?

Morgan: WOTAMOD is certainly going to be one of the more creative mods out there; our weapons are not brand new shiny M4A1s and SOCOM pistols, our firearms will be old, worn, rugged, abused weapons that will jam and need to be maintained to ensure performance. Our melee weapons will be crude, sadistic weapons made from whatever was at hand, such as our street sign battleaxe and scythe, toaster mace, various baseball bats with sharp stuff attached to them, Jagged pieces of aluminium siding on a stick, saw blade battleaxes, assorted knives, etc. Some of these weapons you can make yourself using tools. That’s another thing, allowing players to combine items in their inventory to make various new items (whether they be explosives, equipment, weapons, armour, accessories, ammo, etc.) will surely allow even the players themselves to express creativity.

Aside from that, our maps will not just be death match with rusty guns; objectives will require teamwork and creative problem solving to accomplish goals. Our characters will be customizable by the player, and will vary in ethnicity. Our vehicles will be unique in their own ways (like our Luxury Whaling Sedan, a Lincoln Towncar with a harpoon mounted on the roof) There may very well be too many things to go into, there are some very creative people working on this project and I believe you can see this through our work.

Halflife2.net: WOTA sounds like it would be a perfect single player game as the storyline fits in perfectly. Why was the decision to make the mod multiplayer exclusive, rather than adding a single player portion?

Morgan: Adding single player would require a lot of AI coding and such to make the game worthwhile, and even then it wouldn’t be as enjoyable as playing against human players. People love to talk smack, often make mistakes, and are generally very unpredictable. This makes for a very fun and rich game play experience that doesn’t get boring as fast as single player.

Halflife2.net: Since there will be multiple factions to choose from to complete the assigned objectives, how will each faction differ from one another? Is there a dominant faction that will appeal to players more than other factions?

Morgan: Each faction will have its own weaknesses and strengths. Depending on a map, a faction may be in better or worse shape. Also, there will be sub-factions that may even be at war with each other. Raiders will be known for their gang wars within their own ranks.

I don’t believe there will be a dominant faction that will appeal to players, although everyone will likely have their favourites, the factions will be balanced. Not all factions will be on every map; generally, 2 or 3 factions will be on the map, and they will be balanced in one way or another to make game play interesting.

Halflife2.net: Speaking of factions, which is your favourite?

Morgan: Tough decision, they’ll all be so cool !Although one of the maps will be a drug war map in which villager and raider drug gangs are slitting each other’s throats in a town for control of the town. There will be one leader randomly chosen for leadership of each of the small gangs, a few chosen to be thugs, and the rest of the players will be drug addicts with no predetermined loyalty to the dealers. If they don’t receive their fix, they’ll die of withdrawal. To get their fix, the drug dealers will offer jobs to each of the junkies, such as “Here’s a pistol with 2 shots. Go put 2 shots in the head of that dealer over there. If you do it I’ll give you 2 hits of owl juice and a dimebag of ook. And ya best bring that gun back or I’ll kill ya myself!” Also, the UMA will be sending an anti drug trafficking task force to the area to arrest people, so that may be one of the other playable teams.

I’d love to be a junkie on that level; it would be both hilarious and fun.

Halflife2.net: Since WOTA isn't exactly far in development, can you shed light upon what type of scenery there will be included in the environments? Will the map's architecture be based more upon wide open spaces, or more tighter, confined areas?

Morgan: The maps will all be objective based involving a few factions fighting to complete their objective. As so, the maps will vary in their design. There will be some maps with open areas, but for the most part the maps will be somewhat urban environments.

Halflife2.net: Vehicular transportation is mentioned on WOTA's official website, which can be found at Join us! Whether as a development team member, or as a fan, we could always use more people! Sign up on the forums, I post updates of our progress about 5 times a day, so you’ll get to see a lot of cool stuff that I don’t post on the front page.