It’s easy to look at a game within a genre and reduce it to its special defining characteristic. Some may call this a gimmick (and let’s be real, they often are), but sometimes that defining characteristic is something remarkable. Where would modern shooters be without regenerative health systems like in Halo, or the RPG elements in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare? Sure, at first glance, they might seem like gimmicks, but in hindsight, these elements prove irreplaceable.
Now, if you read our preview of the upcoming Section 8, you would know that developer TimeGate has a rather nifty method to deal with spawning. Called “burning in,” players jump thousands of feet before landing on the battlefield. It’s different, that’s for sure, and the promised combination of deep customization coupled with varied gameplay is definitely ambitious.
Taking the opportunity to speak with Robert Siwiak, the producer of Section 8, I found some insight and clarity on the state of Section 8. Is it a game you should keep an eye upon? Is “burning in” an exciting and interesting change of pace for the genre? Hit the jump for our discussion of TimeGate Studio’s ambitous project, Section 8.
Destructoid: Describe the experience for the game. What can gamers look forward to in playing Section 8?
Robert Siwiak: Well, with Section 8, what we really set out to do is really empower the player with a lot of different abilities at their disposal. We wanted to create from the ground up an experience that was truly unpredictable in that no two games of Section 8 would play the same as a result. Really the key to doing that was to afford the player a lot of control over what he had at his disposal, so everything from allowing the player to customize different load options for weapons, to choosing where on the battlefield he wants to spawn into via a process called “burning in” , and once he’s on the battlefield, he can choose where to create chokepoints by calling in deployable turrets and other support structures, where he wants a vehicle to be delivered onto the battlefield, and whether he wants to participate in dynamic combat missions that pop up during a course of these multiplayer rounds. So it’s very much a player driven experience, and ultimately one that results in no two games of Section 8 ever playing the same.
That dynamic combat system is very unique. Can you describe that for us?
Sure. At its very base layer, Section 8 has a wide-open series of maps with these different strategic control points that these two teams are fighting over. We kinda sat there and decided “there’s got to be more that the player can do, there’s got to be something more fun that he can do”. We started looking at these different arch-types that you have in games. You have people who really love, for instance, to play sniper, or people that love just blowing shit up. In any case, what really set out to do is interject some more flavor into these multiplayer games.
The way that we did that is a system of what we call “dynamic combat missions” or DCMs and what happens here is the dynamic objectives that kick off during the course this multiplayer round are based off the player and the rest of his team’s actions. For instance, if we have a lot of snipers that are out there, eliminating enemies on the other team, it might kick off a VIP assassination mission, where we actually spawn into the game a bot on the other team.One team’s objective is to escort this VIP from one control point to another control point, and the other team has a counter DCM, which is to hunt down and assassinate this VIP. So we actually use bots to accomplish this, it’s a bot playing this VIP. We’ll never put the player into this role. If one team completes this objective, it rewards them requisition points that they can use to purchase vehicles and deployables and also rewards their team with points that contribute towards their victory towards that particular round.
Of course, likewise, if the other team completes their counter-DCM, they are the ones rewarded. So beyond a VIP assassination, there are also things like a convoy escort mission, where you have to jump in and man a convoy and escort it between these bases, a mission that allows you to plant a bomb in another team’s base, and if the bomb detonates, it destroys all the strategic structures associated with that structure, anti-air turrets, supply depots, its automated defenses, making it easier for your team to go ahead and attack it. Really, it’s just these different hotspots that we introduce into an otherwise mundane first person shooter to help add a little bit of variety.
Let’s list a whole bunch of numbers. Number of weapons, number levels; could you sort of describe what we are going to see when we play this game?
There’s a lot of different content categories the player will otherwise be exposed to. For instance, when the player goes to his customized load-out, he has a variety of different weapons to choose from. He can choose assault rifles and missile launchers, the sniper rifle and machine gun, a pistol, a shotgun, etc., so there’s a variety of different contemporary weapons that he has. There’s also, with the rest of your suit, you can customize different sorts of equipment, so things like hand-thrown grenades, shoulder mounted mortar launchers, jet pack explosives, a knife that you can do a melee attack with. If that wasn’t enough, we’ve given the player the ability to upgrade different modules on the suit. So if you want to take shield boosters so that they last longer in a fire fight, or stealth boosters so that they are harder to detect, speed boosters so that you can run faster, etc. So there’s a great deal of customization that are available through the load-out interface.
When the player actually gets onto the map, we have a wide variety of maps at his disposal. With Section 8, right now we are looking at 8 different multiplayer maps, each with a different variety of sizes. There are variants of these maps that are conducive to 32-player experiences , 16-player experience, so usually we have a large and a couple of small different variants as a result. When he’s fighting on these maps, he has at his disposal a wide variety of different deployables, things like supply depots, sensor arrays, anti-vehicle, anti-infantry, anti-air turrets, and likewise, you can call in things like four-man tanks, and anti-armor suits.
So you mentioned 32-player and 16-player options.
Are we going to see that on both PC and consoles?
Definitely on the PC side of things, especially with a dedicated server, 32-plus players. We are still several months out from release, and we are comfortable playing with 32 players. Now, I can tell you between now and release date, we are going to be pushing that number as high as possible. I’d like to think that upwards of up to 52-players might be possible.
On the console side of things, we are working to support a dedicated server solution, that’ll actually allow 360 players to host a PC hosting a dedicated Xbox 360 server that’ll otherwise give 360 players the opportunity to play against 32 other players online.
What about PlayStation 3?
The PlayStation 3 version of Section 8 is something that TimeGate very much wants to go ahead and pursue. Right now, it’s not currently slated to ship at the same time as the PC and the Xbox 360, but for PlayStation 3 fans out there, I think that they’ll be seeing Section 8 shortly after.
For the PC, what’s the distribution model? Will we see this on Steam at all? Or will it be just disc based?
We are still working out the distribution mechanism for the PC model for Section 8. I’m sure you can see it out on store shelves. This title is supporting Games for Windows Live online for its multiplayer component, we are also looking for other mechanisms for distribution for online and in stores.
“Burning in” is a very integral part of Section 8. What came first, “burning in” or Section 8?
Section 8 was actually conceived back in 2005, and at the time we were playing a lot of other first person shooters. Playing games like Battlefield 1942, Tribes, Counter-Strike, Planetside, etc. So we kinda asked the development team “what do we want to work on next?” The first answers we got back was “Let’s make a first person shooter, let’s make a sci-fi first person shooter.” Then quickly it became, “let’s get these guys powered armored suits and let’s have them drop in from 15,000 feet above the battlefield.” The concept of “burn in” spawning was very much in there from the beginning. It was a way of answering the age old method of how do you spawn the character in the game world. “You die, you stare at a 30-second timer, it tells you you’re not going to have fun for the next 29 seconds. Let’s make you stare at your corpse, while we’re at it.” There’s got to be a better way of answering that.
As FPS fans, one of the immediate answers to that was, well, let’s make spawning into the game fun. Let’s let the player see the entire battlefield as he’s dropping in on them. If you’re equipped a sniper and you see a tank moving across the road, let’s give you the ability to hit the brakes, drift over, land behind a rock or on top of an outcropping where you have a good sniping position and otherwise respond to what you are seeing on the battlefield below you.
So yes, very much from the ground up, “burn in” spawning was one of those components that was there from day one. Whereas something that got added to the game was that we introduced this concept of “burn in” spawning, and we found that players were choosing anywhere on the battlefield to spawn into. They were dropping directly on top of control points, and that was making it very easy for control points to shift between these sides. As a result, we countered it with anti-aircraft turrets that would shoot players down as they were spawning in. So if you get control of a base, you would gain access to that AA-turret, and help protect it. Then as a counter to that, we saw in our internal play tests, guys would become very sneaky. They would send in one of their squad mates with explosives, blow up the AA-turrets, and now your team could otherwise drop in on that point.
Can we expect DLC for the game?
We fully intend to DLC for Section 8. Post release, players can expect to, at the very least, see new maps make their way into the game, but we have some other, interesting concepts up our sleeve that we are looking forward adding into our mix.
Finally, when can we expect to see Section 8 release?
Section 8 is due out on store shelves this fall for the PC and Xbox 360.
