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Six months doesn't seem like a lot of time to churn out a vastly improved
sequel, but Gearbox is sure aiming to try. Basically, they held back
in the first game in terms of enemy artificial intelligence, because
they were afraid that having players learn a whole new way of playing
first-person shooters would be tough enough without having to worry
about a cutthroat opponent. The German AI is a lot more intelligent
than before, and it will constantly try to shift positions to prevent
from being flanked. It will also spot opportunities, like an unguarded
flank on your side, and move to exploit them. Earned in Blood will be
closely tied in to the events in the first game as approximately 25
percent of the game lets you take part in some moments from the first
game, but this time from a different perspective. You'll play as Sergeant
Joe "Red" Hartsock, one of the team members of Sergeant Matt Baker again.
However, this doesn't mean that you'll rehash the exact same moments
from the first game, as Harstock was usually dispatched to perform different
tasks during missions. The rest of the game, however, picks up immediately
after the events of Hill 30 and will carry the story forward. The sequel
will be set in a lot more urban-type settings, as well. If you think
of Road to Hill 30 covering the first half of the D-Day campaign, Earned
in Blood will cover the second half, when Allied units fought to secure
the Norman countryside, to liberate French villages and towns, and to
wipe out pockets of German resistance. This means a lot more war-torn
settings to run around in, and the environments will be more complex
than before, giving you more room, as well as options, to maneuver.
Your AI teammates will draw upon thousands of different lines of context-sensitive
dialogue, and they'll have different things to say as the game progresses.
There's new shader effects, so now you can see sunlight glisten around
the edges of a leaf and improved texture resolution. There's also new
types of destructible environments, and a number of new weapons in the
game as well, including a mortar that you can order your squad to man
while you direct its fire, and new types of machine guns and submachine
guns. There's a new cooperative skirmish gameplay mode that will let
you and a buddy play together in a campaign mission, or you can create
your own battle by selecting an existing map and editing the parameters,
like having you play on offense or defense. You'll even have a chance
to play from the German point of view in skirmish mode. |
