If the words "World", "War", "2" and "FPS" make you weep tears of boredom then I feel your pain. As far as I'm concerned the original Medal of Honor and Call of Duty pretty much nailed the visceral action while Company of Heroes and Brothers in Arms worked well if you wanted to use your brain a bit. But they are the cream of a huge pile of mediocre games set in WW2, most of which add nothing to the basic Nazi-blasting formula. So I was genuinely interested to hear about a new game set 30 years before - yes, finally we are getting a World War 1 first person shooter.
"To End All Wars" - working title, though I quite like - is set in the trenches of WW1 and will use the Unreal Engine 3 technology, famously used in Gears of War. That's about it for details but I can't wait to see what they come up with. The static nature of WW1 is a trickier design proposition than the more fluid WW2, and you can imagine the developers - Kuju Sheffield - having to be more than a little creative with the truth. How will they capture the boredom/terror of life in the trenches without resorting to fantasy? And what about the unreliable and basic weaponry? Medal of Honor brilliantly captured the horror of D-Day but will To End All Wars do the same as it sends you over the top?
There's probably a longer blog here about the morality of using WW1 - or any combat - as a basis for a game, but that's for another day. For now I'm just looking forward to spending my next bout of world war gaming in Flanders rather than Nazi-occupied Europe.
