We’re back with the second part of our interview with Julian Gerighty, Editorial Content Director of Endwar…

Is the combat in the game based on a lot of real-world research?

Well, I’m not the military nut – Michael is! (Michael de Plater is the Creative Director of EndWar.) All of the stuff we feature in the game – the weapons, the armour, the upgrades – it’s all based on actual equipment and prototypes. Nothing’s invented.

Have you had military advisors looking at it?

I think so. The Red Storm office is very close to military installations and we send them versions to check for authenticity. Also Colonel Antal the authenticity advisor for the Brothers in Arms games, absolutely adores EndWar – he thinks it’s great, he thinks it’s an accurate representation of where war is going and where weapons are going. The main hesitations that the US military might have over it is that they don’t see themselves going to war with Europe… Russia maybe, but not Europe.

Have you employed real military strategies and tactics into the game design?

Michael is very interested in military history and tactics, and working with the AI team, I’m sure they’ve developed things both on your teammate AI and on the enemy AI that employ genuine military tactics.

I know that your lead AI has a background of programming AI for chess simulations. It sounds like if you develop a purely intellectual approach to the game, it may be more successful…

Absolutely – the intellectual approach will work better to be honest, The chess analogy is great because our game only has seven different unit types so it’s not about the complexity it’s about the accessibility and then the depth of what you can do with those units.

It’s good to hear that you’re limiting the number of units – I think RTS developers just about killed the genre in the late-nineties trying to add more and more unit types…

Advance Wars was a huge inspiration on EndWar. That and other Nintendo games like Mario Kart – you know, the last lap on Mario Kart where the person who’s in second place almost automatically gets a red shell and can turn the tables at the last moment – that’s the WMD (weapon of mass destruction) in EndWar, it allows the losing side to try to turn the tables in the last five minutes.

Is the final goal the same for all three participants in EndWar?

Yes, it’s global domination. It’s like Risk really, it’s controlling that theatre of war.

And there are quite a few environments to fight through to realize this goal?

There are 40 different territories, based in the East Coast of the United States, Europe and Russia. Each of those territories has strategic importance, so maybe it’s in close proximity to an airbase that’ll give you air support if you capture it. It’s much like Risk – every space has an importance and can be played in different ways. There are four modes in the game. In Conquest you have to capture over half of the uplink stations and hold them for five minutes. Another one is Siege which happens in capital cities where you’re either attacking or defending one critical uplink. Then there’s Raid where you have to attack or defend some key buildings… All buildings are destructible in the game. The last one is Assault and that’s just massive war – 12 units vs 12 units, last man standing wins.

This emphasis on uplink facilities and verbal orders – is it intended to reflect the importance of communications in modern warfare?

I think it does reflect something of modern warfare. Voice control is also something that we wanted to put in because it’s very immersive – a commander shouts orders and that’s what you’re doing in the game. The comparison Michael likes to use is the plastic guitar in Guitar Hero – it’s that sort of artifice. Your voice is your weapon.