Hunters of the lost ark. Brink is the first online shooter with a singleplayer and in the ocean

What? Command shooter with a detailed setting and unusual appearance.

Where? London, England.

The settings of most FPS with a slope into the online team defmatch do not differ in variety: if this is not an orbital station, then some kind of futuristic arena of death, and if not an arena of death, then something historical. In the first free online shooter of the London company Splash Damage Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Everything happened in the scenery of the Second World War, in the second – commercial fps Enemy Territory: Quake Wars -on a rather banal background of the land attacked by stricts. The action of their new shooter Brink , published in 2010 on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, unfolds on the territory of a giant ark of hundreds of artificial islands, pontoons, rafts, bacons and floating wave -cutting, dangling in the middle of a flooded planet.

The idea is not the most original (the Water World was released in 1995), but in online shooters we have not seen anything like that. In addition, unlike the previous Splash Damage games, Brink will have a full -fledged single -user campaign – and not even one ..

Forbidden ocean

“No one knows why the global flood happened,” the producer and chief screenwriter of the game Edward Stern tells us. – Ice polar hats melted, the oceans came out of the shores, hundreds of millions of people died … By 2038, tens of thousands of refugees settled on the ark lost in the ocean. From a scientific laboratory and a resort for the elected ark turned into a city with a population of fifty thousand people ".

An ark is a fairly interesting and unusual invention so that a socio-psychological level of level can be arranged on it BIOSHOCK or role -playing game Fallout 3. Here you have social inequality (in the center – modern urban architecture and skyscrapers of the islands, along the edges are slums from rusty containers and ship fragments), and various interesting designer finds (home -made wind generators, agriculture based on algae and hydropower). Instead, such a diverse and detailed setting is put to the FPS service about two warring teams of four classes in each.

In the multiplayer, in general, we do not care whether an endless ocean or space lies around-there is no time to look around. But, as the creative director Richard Ham explained to us, the single -user campaign will be “the soul and heart of the game” – Brink will be equally interesting to play both online and in splendid loneliness. Ham previously worked as a senior designer Fable , Fable 2 , the first two parts Syphon Filter , And now he puts all his design experience in the Brink single.

“There will be two plot campaigns – one for the security service of the ark, the other – for resistance. The most interesting thing is that after passing the first campaign, all skills, weapons, upgrades and bonuses are preserved and they can be used when passing the second campaign ”. We choose who to play for, during the first mission a civil war flashes – and in order to get a complete picture of what is happening on the ark, the game must be passed for both sides.

The ocean is practically not visible in the screenshots – only smoky holds and slums from containers, in which people in special forces shoot people with tattoos naked to the waist. Ham says that at the early stage of development it was decided not to make water procedures in the game: “The reason is one – in the water everything happens very slowly. And we decided to make the most dynamic, swift shooter ". Therefore, all the battles in Brink go to the islands, bridges and in the corridors. You can only look at the ocean, you can't swim in it.

This magic smart sheet

Splash Damage developers do not want Brink's heroes in the midst of shootings to cling to tables or could not overcome a miserable two -meter wall. A well -prepared fighter must quickly and smoothly move, jump over some obstacles, ride under others, climb into third ..

In the control circuit Brink, a smart button is responsible for the fast and smooth delivery of the hero from point A to point B-this is simultaneously running, and jumping, and tackle. By holding this button, you can calmly pursue a runaway opponent and not worry about trifles such as timely jumping and squatting. The hero will do everything himself ..

Smart Knocks have another important function: if you squeeze it and run to the enemy, then you will cut it beautifully and put it to the ground. A very useful tactical maneuver for disbandment of a gaping opponent! But keep in mind – the enemy knocked down is able to shoot off, so try to finish it off as soon as possible.

The path of the robot

The technique in Brink is not used – the developers wanted the players to “shoot each other point blank (well, or at least from the middle distance), and not hid in tanks and helicopters”. Due to the active use of smart covers (see. Our insert), introducing the elements of Parkuru into the game, to run on your two in Brink is much more interesting than in Quake Wars.

The game will have four classes of characters – combat, medical, construction and spy (here they are called a soldier, physician, engineer and operative). The selected class at any time can be changed to another depending on the circumstances of the mission. “Suppose you play a doctor and guard the escorted prisoner. Suddenly, resistance fighters explode the bulkhead and attack your team from the flank. You can switch to an engineer, quickly build a barricade and change the tactical picture of the battle in your favor. ".

And if the barricade is already being built, you can switch to the operative, stun the enemy, and then interrogate him – in case of successful interrogation, your team will know the whereabouts of all fighters of the enemy team. Then you will not bypass you from the flank with all your desire, and the engineer will be able to calmly complete the work on the barricade. And if you were sitting the whole battle in the skin of a medic, there would be a little sense of you and your group, most likely, would be destroyed.

As a typical example of a mission, Brink Ham recalls a showdown in a container. We play for the security service, received information that the resistance is developing new biological weapons in the secret laboratory … Your team accompanies the repair robot through the slums of the container-City, the resistance arranges an ambush and builds barricades. The fortifications must be exposed so that the robot can move on. Then it turns out the bridge between the pontoons is blown up, the engineer in your team should fix the nearest crane and with its help drag the robot to the other side.

This is only the first fragment of the mission – and, of course, when playing for resistance, you will have to build barricades, hunt for a robot with a grenade launcher and generally do everything so that the security service does not penetrate the laboratory. By the way, whether biological weapons are really produced in it? Or still something else? In briefings for different directions, you deliberately give conflicting information.

Hyperrealism

At first glance it is difficult to understand what is wrong with Brink pictures. The engine ID Tech 4, the standard, in principle, graphics with claims to photorealism … And only having taken a closer look, you understand that all the heroes of Brink are several, mm, are stretched vertically.

The art director Olivier Leonardi calls Brink's visual style “exaggerated reality” in the style of hyperrealists of the seventies of the last century. In terms of quality and number of details, this is practically photorealism, but with some significant amendments. The proportions of the body of the characters are hypertrophied, separate details of clothing (lightning, buckles, rivets, seams and pockets) are protruded, the contours are simplified … Moreover, Richard Ham assures that only an insignificant part of the “very characteristic custom characters with interesting body proportions” is visible in the screenshots ”.

The color is also very important: for playing on the engine ID Tech in Brink, very little gray and brown. Red, blue, green and gold-color scheme in the style of Edward Hopper, David Hokni and other representatives of the pop art of the sixties.

Big and small

The most important option of customization of the character is associated with the presence of smart covers-its total size. The selected armor, glasses and tattoos on the hero’s behavior do not really affect, but his height and weight … The largest fighters can carry heavy weapons – and they are very difficult to kill. Heroes of the middle weight category are faster than thugs-tanks, and possess a majority of available types of weapons. The most skinny hero is the fastest, but at the same time dies instantly. The smaller your character, the higher he can climb when using a smart key. Small light ninja can climb a five-meter wall-the heavyweight barely flows through the low railing. The developers took into account these features in the design of cards: Brink will have caches and shorts, which only selected players can get to which only selected players can get to.

The unique appearance of the game (“We wanted our game to recognize by any screenshot or random frame from the video”) is due not only to the general graphic stylization (see. our other insert), but also using Virtual Texture technology.

“I myself am a designer and in technology I understand even less yours,” says Ham, “but here is the general principle of work … Imagine a picture: a helicopter hangs over the evacuation point. In normal mode, everything is loaded in memory – even what you do not see (the insides of the helicopter, dash panels, and so on). Only visible textures are loaded in our memory, and all the invisible is cut off. The player does not notice anything, but a lot of memory is released. In a regular game on the screen there are about 32 megabytes of visible textures – we have these textures for 500 megabytes!"

* * *

Professional developers of multi-user maps and mods from Splash Damage have long covered in single-mode (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was originally conceived as a single-user commercial game). Hence the interesting setting, a bilateral plot, and the lack of embarrassing bots of technology, and Parroku elements, pleasantly reviving claustrophobic levels.

The developers are well aware that many players will https://sister-site.org/hopa/ never launch Brink online, and try to arrange a series of command duels with bots in a coherent and exciting plot, in which there are no aliens and obvious villains, but there are only ordinary people who do not want to be dropped into the ocean. It seems that Brink can be the first online shooter in the world with a playable singlePleer – attention to the details, including plot, the game is quite enough.

Percentage of readiness: 75%