Army of Two EA Interview

EA's Matt Turner tells us about getting the OK to keep the game in development, and why the team chose to focus on the present day.

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Kikizo: One interesting thing is that with a lot of military orientated stuff, a lot of games and shows avoid mentioning any specific countries, to the point it just becomes jarring - "your country this", "his country that". Why did you choose not to go down that route?

Turner: Because we have guts! Just take a shot at it and do it. You're not going to make everyone happy no matter what you do. It's alright to take relevant places that people are actually talking about today, and set our game there. It's just a good choice all around.

Kikizo: The "Aggrometer" sounds like a great addition, how does it work and why do you think it fits co-op style play so well?

Turner: Well the aggro idea, it exists in other games but it's not as solidified as an idea. We really took the idea and wanted to make it a major aspect of our game, and it really emphasises the co-op aspects, because you've got to be communicating and manipulating that aggro feature, and the AI is totally into that, so that they respond to it as opposed to it just happening randomly.

Kikizo: You have focussed on weapon customisation, what are the real benefits of this to players?

Turner: You can fully customise the weapons to the way you want to play the game, first of all. If you're a sniper or a sneaky guy you can have those kinds of weapons - you can be a heavy weapons man, or a balanced person, and have all those types. But you can also really customise the weapons themselves, upgrade them, make them more powerful, you can add features that give them more aggro like pimping them where you plate them gold and diamonds, and that will give you more aggro so you'll be clearly noticed while your partner can slip under the radar. So you can really take the base gun and make it into what you want it to be.

Kikizo: How big a task has sorting out the graphics engine been? Any particular difficulties for either platform?

Turner: PS3 obviously was more difficult to use, just because it is newer and the whole process hasn't been fine-tuned yet, so our team is still learning how to develop on PS3 whereas a lot of the team has previously developed on Xbox 360 so they know the ins and outs, and that's where most of the problems were coming from. But with regards to PS3 it's not like that version is bad or anything. It's just been more of a learning experience this time around on that console. The graphics are Unreal Engine, and it has been pretty useful for us, it's pretty established and you can see the results in the game, it looks fantastic.

Kikizo: Seriously, what was all that tampons business about?

Turner: It's been cut. The concept is a real concept. Military guys will carry tampons when they're in battle, because it absorbs blood from a wound really well and it's actually a functional method of field medicine. We were told that from our PMC who we hired, and we were like, really? So we put it in the game as a healing mechanic, but as we were focus testing the game, it kind of took you out of the experience, and as you progressed, it took away, and it kind of got frustrating rather than gratifying. We love the concept because it was different and edgy, so it was a tough call to decide to take it out, but we have a new healing system now, the drag system. It really retains you in that feeling where you're always in the fire fight no matter what's going on, and you never lose that urgency, it's always intense.

Army of Two will be out for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on 7 March.

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