Interview: Gearbox's Randy Pitchford

We talk to the President and Co-founder of Gearbox Software to find out what makes Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway worth your attention.

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The selflessness demonstrated during those dark days has been translated into gameplay in a novel way. Players will be able to play through sections of the game as they wish, allowing teammates to die along the way. At the end of each mission, though, they will be presented with a choice to either revive characters key to the storyline or to play through the mission again, so that they can do a better job of keeping everyone alive the next time around. A simple feature, you may say, but it's one that should get people thinking of their squad mates not just as lifeless AI routines but as real people worth giving a damn about.

The repertoire of your squad has been expanded for Hell's Highway, with new teams bringing in some much needed variety to the battlefield. In addition to fire and assault teams, there are others that will stand back from the front line, such as the new bazooka team. Slinging brutal projectile weapons over their shoulders, these new squad members will be indispensable for clearing paths through scorching kill zones.

To see how much work has gone into your squad mates, simply send them into a hot area. Using the analog stick, you point to wherever you want your characters to go. Instinctively they will crouch down to avoid being seen by the enemy and lower their voices, shouting muffled commands as they orient themselves. These postures, as Pitchford calls them, will stretch to other parts of the game too, putting squad members into a suitable frame of mind while on patrol, or when stealth is key. The controls are context sensitive too, so the same action that moves your assault team into position can be used to order your bazooka team to take out enemies in the distance. For those that need encouragement during combat, the game will provide continuous bite-sized rewards in the form of slow-motion close-up video sequences showing off particularly impressive kills.

Of course, that the designers have been able to spend time working on touches like these is a direct result of the tools being used during development. Like many studios, Gearbox has enlisted Epic's Unreal Engine 3.0 engine, though Pitchford says that so many additions have been made that it's perhaps more correct to call it "Unreal Engine 3.5". Among the additions are a new shadow model, better dynamic lighting, enhanced support for destructible environments and new navigation features. The team has also worked on streaming data from the disc so that you won't see loading screens.

"The technology's awesome," he says. "Since Gears of War, Epic's also invested in the technology and they've improved it quite a bit. So it is higher fidelity than Gears but that's because of the work that they've done and the work that we've done."

But don't think that because Pitchford likes technology - and he really does; at one point he gets excited at the idea of addressing 64-core processors - that the team is forgetting what Hell's Highway is all about. "The graphics are a vehicle for the fantasy and the experience," he says. "They're not the end. A pretty game that sucks, I'm not interested in. So we've spent more of our time thinking about the experience. The graphics helps us believe it, helps us get immersed."

One modern shooter staple that won't be appearing in Hell's Highway is melee combat, something Pitchford feels "isn't relevant" to the gameplay Gearbox is going for here. He gives Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as an example of where hand-to-hand combat didn't work as well as he would have liked. "I loved Call of Duty 4," he says, "but you know what, my least favourite part was the fucking dogs. You know what I mean? You can't win there. It's not what makes these games fun. It's shooting. And especially in this game where it's tactics and squad commands."

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