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Preview

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Format PC

Developer Splash Damage

Publisher Activision

Genre First Person Shooter, Action

1-Jan-2007 Massive hands-on with Splash Damage's awesome PC strategy-shooter

2 Comments

It's a predictable way to introduce the article, I know. We've mentioned it every time we've brushed up against Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - but Splash Damage's studios are in Bromley, Kent, a place that wouldn't be missed if it spontaneously sank into the ground tomorrow. It literally goes: kebab shop, corner shop, tanning salon, birthplace of one of the hottest-looking shooters of 2007, then a supermarket. In fact, so hidden is the office in which Splash Damage have been hammering away at their latest multiplayer masterpiece, that I couldn't find it.

Turns out it's tucked right behind the supermarket, meaning it's probably one of the most unassuming and uninspiring places I've ever been. That is, until I get inside and see that what they're working on is both inspiring and assuming. After introducing himself, co-founder and creative director Paul Wedgwood submits me to a brief tour of their modest and dimly lit office space. This includes a glass vault reminiscent of Magneto's prison in which to house their massive 'Megaserv' server - which not only hosts their frequent LAN games, but also renders the gigabyte-straddling Quake Wars look so detailed - and the delightful corridor of concept art, which displayed some rejected character ideas such as the mutilated female Strogg.

"Yeah, we didn't think that one was very appropriate," admits a passing coder, noticing my morbid interest. The short walk back to the meeting room then takes us past a cabinet displaying award after well-deserved award for Splash Damage's previous title, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. In all, it's really not a bad place to work.

QUAKEWALK
Having sat me in front of a projector screen, Wedgwood wastes no time in getting to the interesting stuff. He tells me how the visuals have improved since their astounding E3 movie, before taking the easier route of loading up the Valley map and letting me see for myself. He really isn't lying, and while the difference might not be monumental, it's certainly noticeable.

The terrain texture is far more defined, right out to the horizon. The mega-texture ensures there are no repeating tiles either - compare that to a game like Oblivion, in which detail only exists up to a certain point before turning into a distant blurry green texture. The game's maps, in terms of size, are roughly on par with Battlefield's, but in terms of scale and design, Quake Wars contains the most elaborately constructed maps of any online shooter.

Thanks to the mega-texture technology, fogging is only ever used aesthetically too - and it all runs on a machine that can run Quake 4. This is a major technical achievement for PC gaming, and as if it needs stating, one that obliterates any notions I had of the Doom engine being a useless, clunky shadow simulator.

QUAKE ZERO
"With each of the maps in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars," Wedgwood explains, "we retell one of the battles which were a turning point in the run-up to the retaliation against Stroggos in Quake II. For example, in Quake II we know that Earth was able to retaliate against Stroggos using slipgates, so one of our maps features the GDF discovering slipgate technology. Quake Wars is a brand new id Software game, it's a pure multiplayer online combat game."

Splash Damage have worked closely with id to ensure proper homage is paid
to the classic FPS franchise, shown by the presence of a clock on the meeting room wall set to Central Standard Time (aka Texas o'clock), should anybody ever need to make a long-distance phone-call to Mr Carmack.

"The game charts the initial invasion of Earth by the Strogg," Wedgwood tells me, "so in that sense you can think of it as Quake Zero, but with Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory-style gameplay. Because we started with the Doom engine as a foundation, the player-physics and the first-person weapons are as perfect as they've always been in id games - it's a more reliable combat experience.

"And of course, placing Enemy Territory in the Quake universe has given us the ability to have asymmetrical gameplay. The Strogg race use advanced alien technology and the Global Defence Force use more conventional weapons - contemporary tanks, rocket launchers and grenades, that kinda stuff."

DIVE IN
With the basics thoroughly conveyed, and the game's limbo screen beginning to burn into my retinas, Wedgwood begins the demonstration proper. In order to show me exactly how the mechanics of the shooter operate, Valley is emptied of allies and foes alike, and Wedgwood's character stands alone in the GDF base. Currently, the GDF objective is to construct a bridge (well, repair a broken bridge) about 100-yards down the road in order to move their mobile command post forward. On the far side of this destroyed bridge is the tunnel you may remember from the E3 trailer, the one that hotshot-pilot fl ew through. The Strogg objective is simply to defend.

ACTION STATIONS
"You'll see that at the moment the mission displayed in the top-left corner of the screen is to secure the bridge," Wedgwood explains, gesturing at the HUD. "But if I go to the bridge and create something that would be a threat, say for example a Strogg anti-armour turret..." He brings up the console, turns on no-clip mode and flies to the opposite side of the bridge before spawning a black, menacing-looking, semi-organic gun.

"That's a threat to my team because it will attack any vehicles that come through," explains Wedgwood as he zips back to the GDF base. "You can see that it doesn't appear on my command map because I don't have radar up yet. My team hasn't gathered any intelligence about the fact that it exists, so currently my task is still just to secure the bridge. But one of the things that I can do as a Covert-Ops character class (responsible for gathering intelligence) is to deploy radar. And so if I deploy radar..."

Wedgwood selects the deployable radar from his weapon list, and an RTS-style grid appears on the ground in front of him. The interface is instantly recognisable, glowing a healthy green when it's safe to deploy it in a given area and an angry red when you'd be blocking a path. Once placed, it can even be rotated, where it remains as a holographic blueprint until a massive sky-crane airdrops the desired deployable into place. Strogg deployables, on the other hand, plummet down from orbit with a satisfying 'whumph'. In this case it's a radar dish, and it instantly picks up the Strogg anti-vehicle turret on the other side of a bridge.

"Now that the turret's been discovered on the radar, I've got some missions that I can go and do," enthuses Wedgwood, the HUD indicating that there are now mini-objectives available besides the central bridge-securing fare. "Now, because I'm still Covert-Ops, I can accept a mission to hack the turret to disable it, whereas a Soldier would receive a mission to destroy the turret instead. You see, even if I didn't know what class I was, or what I'm supposed to be doing, it tells me I can go and do this mission if I want. I'm picking up missions to go and do things which help my team."

WORLD OF QUAKE WARS
Genius. Splash Damage even go so far as to loosely compare Quake Wars to World Of Warcraft, in that even though you may not understand everything the game is doing and throwing at you, you'll always be able to boil it down to some simple objectives. These mini-missions, once assigned to you, are given to nobody else. They're class-sensitive too, which means that if you're a medic you'll get mini-missions to go heal team-mates, if you're an engineer you'll receive mini-missions to repair vehicles. Or you could ignore the mini-missions and concentrate on the main objective.

It takes you by the hand without restraining you in any way. Having armed me with the basics of Quake Wars' inner workings, and noticing how anxious I am to begin playing, Wedgwood leads me to the testing room which is already populated with people who look like they just might live there.

First up is the Valley map I'd just been shown, and I choose to play as a GDF engineer. "Construct the bridge," my HUD cheerfully informs me. But it isn't that easy, and within minutes the Strogg are already setting up a rock-solid defence by the bridge. By the time I get my head around how it all works, the rest of my team have managed to hold off the enemy attack, build the bridge, move through the tunnel and set up camp on the other side.

For all its attempts to make itself accessible, the first ten minutes of Quake Wars are simply chaotic. "We were worried that the Strogg's bigger weapons looked far cooler than the GDF's," an unhelpful nearby tester chimes in, as a terrifyingly massive beam of orange death from orbit strikes the ground nearby and slowly drags super-heated destruction across our base, killing me and everything else in its path. "But we realised that everybody will get to appreciate them," he laughs.

GET IN MY CAR
Respawning amid the battle once more, I spy Wedgwood standing next to the Anansi gyrocopter. "Get in!" he shouts, oddly, as he is sitting next to me and could've just asked politely. I comply, sprinting in terror towards the air vehicle. So much is going on around me that it really is quite overwhelming. Strogg infiltrators zip over buildings with their jetpack-style Icarus machines, gun-turrets blast round after round at approaching targets, everywhere things are just exploding.

Despite the fact that it doesn't support as many players as games like Battlefield, the objective-based maps create focus points, battlefronts on which everybody can be found. There's very little reason to be anywhere else on the map, meaning it's insanely action-packed. "Don't shoot me," orders (or pleads) Wedgwood to the other testers as we lift off and go on a brief tour of the map, a wise move considering the carnage below.

ROGER, ROGER
At first, it seems to handle like a helicopter: the Anansi dips forward, diving towards the lake surface before levelling off and speeding across the water and under a bridge. The Anansi's onboard systems, which I assume are programmed to feel abject terror, beep endlessly, thoroughly unappreciative of Wedgwood's near-terrain piloting skills. He explains that by holding the control key, you can unlock your gun reticule and fire your guns and rockets in any direction - of course, this means effectively taking your hands off the Anansi's wheel, and as such it's the reserve of the more confident pilot.

The aircraft's boost feature turns it into a jet, something Wedgwood demonstrates by rocketing at full speed towards the tunnel opening at stupid-miles- per-hour, narrowly avoiding the burnt out cars and barricades inside, surprising at least two Strogg Oppressors and emerging triumphant and unscathed at the other end. He's done it at least 100 times I'm sure, but he obviously gets a kick out of bringing a co-pilot along for the show. An errant tester who was out of the room when Wedgwood requested immunity blows us out of the sky, and the round ends. I've just experienced Quake Wars - so that's what all the fuss is about.

WEDGWOOD'S ARK
"Our 12 maps follow three themes: arid, temperate and arctic," Wedgwood tells me, as the next map loads. An arctic map called Ark appears on-screen. I'm actually stunned, it looks even better than the map I've just played on. Ark is based in a remote location in Norway, in which a company researching Strogg technology has constructed an underground bunker beneath the aforementioned bio-domes. There are snow-covered mountains with strips of bare rock along the steeper gradients and bio-domes containing foliage of near Crysis-quality.

There's also a shimmering body of water, a village, and once inside the bio-dome the detail doesn't relent. Quake Wars' interiors are just as astounding as its exteriors. The Strogg begin their attack in the south-east corner of the map, working their way through the village to destroy the GDF jamming device before asking their orbiting overlords to drop a massive mining laser on the map's central island. They use this to blast open the doors of the bio-dome, before planting explosives inside the massive underground complex.

ALIEN FRIEND
This time around, I side with the alien scum. With no direction from anybody at all (I'm beginning to get the hang of things now) I deploy a strategic strike gun, a massive Strogg missile launcher. I then make my way to the GDF base on the other side of the village and paint a nice big laser tag on the GDF spawn point. That's right kids, I'm a bona fide arsehole. Back at my missile launcher, a missile has launched (gasp) and it begins to arc slowly and ominously through the sky, leaving a billowing black trail of smoke.

"Everything in the game has a counter," continues Wedgwood. "Every ability, tool and item has something you can do as an enemy player to stop them getting away with doing that same thing again."

A recently deployed GDF anti-missile turret ends my missile's flight prematurely, leaving a spectacular explosion and a magnificently shaped cloud in the sky. "That's the case across the whole game," Wedgwood laughs. Unhindered, my missile would've decimated the enemy forces, but the GDF's foresight ensured that wouldn't happen. As the round flows on, we end up breaching the GDF bio-dome and becoming embroiled in a game of plant the bomb/ defuse the bomb. Indoors, this game smacks of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory more than ever, and the solid engine nails the feeling of proper corridor shooting in a way few other games can.

Wedgwood is right when he claims the id engine provides a reliable combat experience. This is classic Quake, but on a whole new level. We won, by the way. The victorious jeers of the testers met with a tut from Wedgwood: "Could we please not use the term 'teabagging' in front of the journalist?" he pleads.

NEW DAWN
Once ejected back into the bleak Bromley evening, I grab a sandwich and head for the station. Having arrived with the preconception that I'd be playing a game not entirely unlike BF2142, I've been well and truly proven wrong. Every map tells a story, featuring progression, changing objectives and moving frontlines. It adds several more layers of depth to an increasingly rich universe, and it's the by-product of a holy union between
Splash Damage, those connoisseurs of multiplayer gaming, and the legendary id.

What's more, it's stunningly beautiful to boot. Not only is Quake Wars a huge technical achievement, but it looks set to be one of the most refined, polished and successful online shooters the PC has ever seen. Be excited.

Steve Hogarty