I entered the Tripwire Interactive demo booth on the showfloor at Pax East 2016 to demo Rising Storm 2: Vietnam I was asked what side did I want to be on, America or Vietnam?
Tripwire had pegged the sequel to the 2013 WWII game to have asymmetrical gameplay, meaning everyone would have a different experience. And since I’ve had experience with other FPS games like Call of Duty I wanted a different experience. I chose the Vietnam side and dove right in.
And man I was not ready for this. Rising Storm 2 is a very brutal and unforgiving game where seemingly one shot means certain death. An atmosphere where movie-style paranoia sets in for every player no matter what side you choose.
It’s the kind of atmosphere that Vice President and Co-owner of Tripwire Interactive, Alan Wilson wants to convey in his much-anticipated sequel and after some tough rounds of eight vs. eight, I got to speak with the Wilson about Rising Storm 2.
iDigitalTimes: This is a brutal game. It seems like everything is one shot, one kill.
Alan Wilson: “One of the things we were messing around with, this is pretty much an alpha build, we’re actually just tweaking around a little bit with some of the weapon mechanics especially with the automatic weapons. A shot in the head is going to kill, but you may get away with a few in the arm or the leg. We’re just crunching those numbers around and see how it feel.”
The first game took place during WW2 but was it hard to make a Vietnam game? It wasn’t the greatest time in the world.
“Well, none of those wars ever are. But with the first it was the Eastern front and even though it was a simulation there was no redeeming features to the Eastern front. Millions of people went there to die. With Vietnam, we were looking and thought what we wanted to do next with the franchise and we thought about bringing it forward in time and messing around with more modern weapons.
“We thought about it, but we ultimately decided not to go to modern warfare. Warfare today is getting done to death. And then it was just dropped on us one of those days where we thought ‘I haven’t seen a very good Vietnam game in forever.’ So we thought it was a good point, it has pretty much all the modern weapons, automatic weapons, rockets everything like that but no one has done it for ages. And with Rising Storm, we were experimenting with asymmetrical gameplay with the US versus the Japanese and once the penny drops, it was a logical progression.
“We went to the US versus the VC, you have a big disparity in forces the Americans have this immense firepower and all those good things. And the VC still managing to win, and we can go into what ‘winning’ really means [laughs]. But we wanted to go and explore something different.”
You wanted to go more asymmetrical with the gameplay. How was it getting it to do that?
“Well, it was interesting because you can argue that the first Rising Storm was a little asymmetrical even though it wasn’t very much. The forces were fairly even. With Rising Storm when we went US versus the Japanese you start to realize you are dealing with more of a disparity. The Americans had more powerful weapons,the Japanese using older, crappier weapons. How do you balance that? We gave the Japanese the knee motor, a forceful piece of hand artillery, you start to mess around with booby traps and things like that.
“In Vietnam, some of the VC class can place all sorts of booby traps around the place, the sniper has a handful of mines. It’s very handy and if I wanted to jump in on the VC side and we rush to the objective, grab that and I’ll just lay down mines on the obvious approaches. It’s very gratifying when some of the players on the other side think they are winning the room and BOOM [laughs].”
On the showfloor you have just one small area map but from the trailers and footage there seems like there’s going to be larger maps will we see that?
“Oh yea, the demo here we wanted people to get their heads around very quickly. We actually got another map with us that’s pretty much jungle based. The catch with that is in the jungle, it tends to look all the same. So we realized for people who haven’t played the game, leaping in with unfamiliar controls, unfamiliar weapons and the map that was just jungle would be too much to cope with. But the map we have here is easier to cope with. The size is reasonably open with a giant tire in the middle so you can orient yourself where in the jungle, it’s just dense jungle.
“And then you’ll have people see a stream and say ‘uhhh we’re going that way!’ but again with the jungle we’re messing around with ideas. The movie side of me you need people creeping around in jungles you need to hear the rustle of the leaves and think ‘is that one of mine or one of theirs?’.
“We’re going to test out ideas and mess around with different feet sounds. Americans with the big boots, heavy trapping sounds. The Vietnamese, lighter equipped, moving lighter, and then you have the whole ambient thing in the jungle. It’s going to be fun to try out.”
That’s the thing, there’s so much going on in the jungle with animals and the wind rustling leaves, you guys are going to lock that down?
“Yea we have it looking really nice now. We haven’t done a lot of sound stuff, but for the jungle you’re going to have the birds and things rustling around, the wind rustling leaves. You want that, one of the things we wanted with the jungle side is you want people to doubt themselves. It’s one of the thing to go through a rainforest on a guided tour and you go ‘ooo that’s pretty’ but in this environment you want every sound to be ‘oh shit, what is that?!’ You want people worrying, you want the paranoia.”
Like in ‘Predator’ or something.
“Exactly! Some American walking around with an M-60 is going to hear all this sound on his left and go ‘Oh shit!’ [Makes gun noises].
Friendly fire, sorry guys [laughs]
“That’s why we’re working hard on squad mechanics, just so people are thinking and know where the rest of the squad is. If they’re not thinking they can still hose them down.”
And what about the vehicles? Videos have shown helicopters and other vehicles what’s the deal with those?
“Well we haven’t announced any plans regarding vehicles. We are just trying a whole bunch of stuff at the moment. We’ll have more to announce in the coming months.”
Would you say Rising Storm 2 more of a returning player game or can a newbie jump on?
“We actually want to do both. It’s going to have... what we have is a new game type we’re trying out. We have eight v eight with smaller, sharper engagements. Yes, we have all the classic stuff with the big 64-player maps, large maps so people can jump into 20-30 minute matches. So all that stuff people are familiar with will be there.
“But you can’t sit still. We wanted to bring forward all the stuff everyone loves but we’re actually working on what are new and interesting takes on that gameplay. Holding faithful to the core that everyone loves. So it’s always an evolution.”
Do we have a release window for the game?
“We do and we’re not talking about it [laughs]. We’ve made that mistake so many times in our lives. Our stock response these days is ‘when it’s ready’.
“We are going to do a whole bunch of tests, a series of closed alphas with people who we know and love and try out this mechanic and that mechanic because just trying it out on developers is never a good idea. Because we know what it’s supposed to do and how it’s supposed to work and so you play it the way it’s supposed to be. But you bring in someone fresh and that’s why these shows are a great example.
“Stur is our lead coder and he’s been watching what people do and people are coming in completely fresh and they are not doing how we expect them to play. And the things they do makes so much sense, because as a developer you get tunnel vision. You’ve been working on a game for two or three years and you know what the answer is supposed to be and you work towards that. And that’s why we’ll go through an alpha or beta over a period of time and we’ll do it enough times to get the feedback. So it’s going to be when it’s ready.”
