Tom Clancy's EndWar: Julian Gerighty Interview

We talk to Ubisoft Shanghai's all-round top-bloke to find out if this really is the war to end all wars.

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Kikizo: About the voice control - you've said you can play every aspect of the game using only your voice. If that's the case, why use a controller at all? Also, how is it going to deal with different dialects, speech impediments and so forth?

Gerighty: The voice command was the second thing that we looked at, and it's a simplification of the controls with accessibility in mind. How do we get a control scheme that everybody can use? And you're right - it does seem ludicrous that you can do everything on the battlefield with just your voice, but you know what? You can. That was one of the things we really wanted to do. And the other thing that was important was getting perfect recognition. If [you don't], you break the illusion, you break the accessibility, you break everything.

We don't have 100%, but we've got 95%. We managed to get 95% by focussing on about forty words, individual words that you can string into sentences - that make an infinite number of sentences for all the actions you can do in the game. Basically I can talk about it or you can play it, and I'd rather you play it.

Kikizo: I'm intrigued by the notion that there will be more and more cross-over between the different Clancy titles. What do you think is the vision for how that will be executed?

Gerighty: I hope it won't interfere with the gameplay and experiences that we're trying to get. I hope it won't be shoehorned in. But I definitely think there's potential for a really, really cohesive game with all the characters, with all the settings, that brings everything together. We're the closest thing today to a game with a lot of different Clancy aspects, because we have Ghost Recon units - we have Scott Mitchell from Ghost Recon in it, giving you intelligence - the HAWX planes are in there, doing airstrikes, stuff like that.

It's not yet at the level that maybe strategically Ubisoft wants to push it, but it fits within the game. We're not trying to shoehorn things in, to absolutely get Sam Fisher running across the battlefield - that wouldn't have made sense. Even getting Rainbow Six in the game doesn't make sense - they're an anti-terrorist, non-military police unit. There's just no way.

Kikizo: They probably wouldn't be around when everybody's panicking about the end of the world, anyway.

Gerighty: [Laughs] By 2026, Rainbow Six becomes a little less relevant...

Kikizo: We'd like to think so. Maybe they're still running around defending the White House or something... You've changed the tagline to "Let The End Begin" from what I thought was an awesome tagline, "Everybody Dies". Why?

Gerighty: I have no idea. It changes from time to time, different people take care of the marketing. I think "Let The End Begin" is OK but everyone -

Kikizo: Yeah.

Gerighty: EndWar, the war to end all wars - a reference to the First World War, which was of course the FIRST World War. All of these things we set out as a team, and then we supply Marketing with them, and they choose what they want, so unfortunately we don't have final say.

Kikizo: But what's the incentive for the player if he's led to believe that the world's going to end at the end of the game?

Gerighty: Honestly that's a tongue-in-cheek reference to World War 1, which of course wasn't the war to end all wars, but which was referred to as the war to end all wars. So "Let The End Begin" - this is the beginning of the end. It's really linked to this apocalyptic vision of the world, World War 3, Clancy stuff. We'll even maybe roll with [Toby] Emmerich's style, cause there's some tongue in cheek in there too.

Kikizo: Thanks for talking to us dude.

Tom Clancy's EndWar will release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 4 in North America and November 7 in Europe. DS and PSP versions are also on the way.

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