On the sixth anniversary of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, it's developer Splash Damage released a teaser for their newest project: BRINK. The teaser honors its name by teasing us with an eye, some concept art and a release time frame: Spring 2010. BRINK is going to be published by Bethesda Softworks, who have developed and published popular franchises such as The Elder Scrolls and the third installment in the Fallout franchise. That was all information we were given, until E3 started.
The Story
Apparently Al Gore is not that far off with his predictions about how global warming will affect the climate. BRINK takes place in the year 2035, at a point in which humans have once again brought themselves to a chaotic situation, as most of the world has been flooded by water, and there is one place of refuge left: The Ark. Originally built by some smart people who wanted a place to live in peace once all hell would break lose, The Ark is a city floating on water, composed of hundreds of happily floating islands (at this point Splash Damage has not yet commented on whether the islands are kept afloat by being built on mega turtles). However this cool place was soon overrun by refugees who have seen their homes turn into aquariums, bringing chaos to The Ark, and eventually leading to the civil war forming BRINK's premise.
At E3, Bethesda and Splash Damage demonstrated the game in front of a small audience, which were not allowed to film or make pictures. Based on that demonstration, various previews were written on the Internet. Bethesda also released four official ingame screenshots at the first day of E3.
The highlights:
Vehicle-less combat
Pretty much an anti-feature, but a very welcome one at that. BRINK will not feature vehicles like we saw in Splash Damage's previous game Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. There will most likely be scripted vehicles best compared with the tanks and trucks in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, as already pointed out by a few previews which mentioned one of the maps featured in the demonstration required a team to move a robot through the level.
This “centaur” robot imitates a W:ET tank
Continuation of the class based system
Just like W:ET and ET:QW, BRINK features a class system. From what I can tell, the following classes will appear in the game: Soldier, Medic, Covert Ops and Engineer, meaning the game will not feature the long standing Field Ops class from W:ET, ET:QW and RTCW. Switching classes seems to be handled in a different way as it was in previous SD games, apparently you can only change class at various command posts found throughout the map. It was not mentioned whether these command posts had to be constructed by engineers first like in W:ET, or would act like spawn points which had to be captured like in ET:QW, or would just be accessible for anyone.
Just like the previous games, the classes in BRINK all have separate gear and abilities. We will most likely see various of the abilities presented in W:ET return, as well as some new ones.
In BRINK, everyone has to play his role in order to take home victory
Objective based gameplay
Just like W:ET and ET:QW, BRINK will feature the extensive object based gameplay Splash Damage are well known for. BRINK also builds on the mission system presented in ET:QW, which means there will be both main objectives and dynamically assigned missions to complete.
BRINK will be putting an higher empathize on both narrative and cut scenes, which will likely lead to a more cinematic and epic feel to the game. As Edward Stern, senior game designer at Splash Damage mentions in an interview with Gamesutra, BRINK will attempt to blur the line between multiplayer and singleplayer gaming.
Free movement
BRINK praises itself with it's SMART (Smooth Movement Across Rugged Terrain) button, which allows you to do a lot of movement tricks in the game not possible in previous Splash Damage games. Want to jump over a wall, slide under some laser beams, hop over some obstacles? The SMART button is there to help you. Splash Damage make it clear they have chosen to make moves like this as easy as possible, as they don't want the feature to distract from the game's core gameplay elements, such as the objective system.
The SMART button in action
Character customizing
In BRINK, every character is uniquely put together by the player. This means there are no more generic looking players based on the class someone is playing, because in BRINK you pick your own clothes, tatoos, armor and are even able to customize your character's face, hair and body build.
Characters can be highly customized
The Tech
BRINK will be running on a modified and improved ET:QW engine, with a major improvement being the new rendering engine which is one the main reasons of the game's amazing graphics. Splash Damage said astalavista to the megatextures featured in ET:QW, and added their own technology: Virtual Textures, which allows a larger amount of details for characters, and brings realistic environments, lightning, effects and atmospherics.
Conclusion
In many aspects Splash Damge is returning to its W:ET roots in BRINK, by not including features like vehicles, which were much hated by the Crossfire community. BRINK adds more depths in various other departments however, with all the character customizing options and the expansion of the ET:QW mission system.
Personally I can't wait to see more about this game, what do you think?
The Story
Apparently Al Gore is not that far off with his predictions about how global warming will affect the climate. BRINK takes place in the year 2035, at a point in which humans have once again brought themselves to a chaotic situation, as most of the world has been flooded by water, and there is one place of refuge left: The Ark. Originally built by some smart people who wanted a place to live in peace once all hell would break lose, The Ark is a city floating on water, composed of hundreds of happily floating islands (at this point Splash Damage has not yet commented on whether the islands are kept afloat by being built on mega turtles). However this cool place was soon overrun by refugees who have seen their homes turn into aquariums, bringing chaos to The Ark, and eventually leading to the civil war forming BRINK's premise.
At E3, Bethesda and Splash Damage demonstrated the game in front of a small audience, which were not allowed to film or make pictures. Based on that demonstration, various previews were written on the Internet. Bethesda also released four official ingame screenshots at the first day of E3.
The highlights:
Vehicle-less combat
Pretty much an anti-feature, but a very welcome one at that. BRINK will not feature vehicles like we saw in Splash Damage's previous game Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. There will most likely be scripted vehicles best compared with the tanks and trucks in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, as already pointed out by a few previews which mentioned one of the maps featured in the demonstration required a team to move a robot through the level.
This “centaur” robot imitates a W:ET tankContinuation of the class based system
Just like W:ET and ET:QW, BRINK features a class system. From what I can tell, the following classes will appear in the game: Soldier, Medic, Covert Ops and Engineer, meaning the game will not feature the long standing Field Ops class from W:ET, ET:QW and RTCW. Switching classes seems to be handled in a different way as it was in previous SD games, apparently you can only change class at various command posts found throughout the map. It was not mentioned whether these command posts had to be constructed by engineers first like in W:ET, or would act like spawn points which had to be captured like in ET:QW, or would just be accessible for anyone.
Just like the previous games, the classes in BRINK all have separate gear and abilities. We will most likely see various of the abilities presented in W:ET return, as well as some new ones.
In BRINK, everyone has to play his role in order to take home victoryObjective based gameplay
Just like W:ET and ET:QW, BRINK will feature the extensive object based gameplay Splash Damage are well known for. BRINK also builds on the mission system presented in ET:QW, which means there will be both main objectives and dynamically assigned missions to complete.
BRINK will be putting an higher empathize on both narrative and cut scenes, which will likely lead to a more cinematic and epic feel to the game. As Edward Stern, senior game designer at Splash Damage mentions in an interview with Gamesutra, BRINK will attempt to blur the line between multiplayer and singleplayer gaming.
Free movement
BRINK praises itself with it's SMART (Smooth Movement Across Rugged Terrain) button, which allows you to do a lot of movement tricks in the game not possible in previous Splash Damage games. Want to jump over a wall, slide under some laser beams, hop over some obstacles? The SMART button is there to help you. Splash Damage make it clear they have chosen to make moves like this as easy as possible, as they don't want the feature to distract from the game's core gameplay elements, such as the objective system.
The SMART button in actionCharacter customizing
In BRINK, every character is uniquely put together by the player. This means there are no more generic looking players based on the class someone is playing, because in BRINK you pick your own clothes, tatoos, armor and are even able to customize your character's face, hair and body build.
Characters can be highly customizedThe Tech
BRINK will be running on a modified and improved ET:QW engine, with a major improvement being the new rendering engine which is one the main reasons of the game's amazing graphics. Splash Damage said astalavista to the megatextures featured in ET:QW, and added their own technology: Virtual Textures, which allows a larger amount of details for characters, and brings realistic environments, lightning, effects and atmospherics.
Conclusion
In many aspects Splash Damge is returning to its W:ET roots in BRINK, by not including features like vehicles, which were much hated by the Crossfire community. BRINK adds more depths in various other departments however, with all the character customizing options and the expansion of the ET:QW mission system.
Personally I can't wait to see more about this game, what do you think?
