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Brothers In Arms Hell's Highway screenshot

VideoGamer.com: Have you managed to get graphical parity between the two console versions?

RP: Yeah. There are subtle differences but they're pretty close. Most people won't be able to tell the difference. The hardcore technophiles will be able to see things. Some people say 'hey you know the colours on the PS3 version they're a little more vibrant' or other folks say 'man on that 360 version I'm seeing a little more interest in some of these atmospheric effects with the pixel shaders'. Most gamers, they don't see those differences. We do. We care about them. We use the hardware as best as we can for what that hardware is good at. PC with a crazy ass machine with DX10, you're not going to beat it, but that's what you pay for you know? You got to pay a lot of money for that kind of hardware.

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VideoGamer.com: The game uses Unreal Engine 3. How have you found developing with it?

RP: Unreal Engine 3 is awesome. It's the same engine that powers Gears of War. It's great technology. We have a lot of really hardcore technology guys at Gearbox and they'd love to write their own engine but they know every minute they'd spend doing that they couldn't be making our game better and they couldn't be optimising for what we're specifically trying to do. Epic does such a great job we don't have to worry about millions of lines of code we don't have to write. They've written great code there. They're such a great technology company because they support their technology. Since we've licensed it, since Gears of War came out, they've created a lot of new things, they've invested in the technology, it's faster, it does more, and so we've been able to get that. And we've done our own things on top. We've added a lot of technology that we created. Some of our programmers, some of our hardcore technology guys have optimised to get more speed here or to create a better graphical outcome with shadows or lighting here or there. And so the sum of all of Epic's reinvestment in the technology and them giving us that stuff and our own reinvestment, the sum of that means we're actually higher fidelity than Gears of War. So we're able to create a better image using their technology because of that extra investment they put into it. And that's why it's really nice to work with tech guys like that. And I've used a lot of different engines in my time, but I'm very impressed with the technology and I'm very happy to be using it.

VideoGamer.com: Moving away from the tech side of things, Nick our video producer is a WW2 re-creator...

RP: No way! We gotta hang out dude!

VideoGamer.com: He likes to dress up in all the gear and he knows his stuff. Will Nick be impressed by how authentic the game is?

RP: We got a lot of hardcore WW2 guys. We got a group of different friends of ours and friends of the Colonel's, we went out to Zavala, Texas, and these guys are amazing. We went out with two squads, a squad of American paratroopers and a squad of German soldiers, fully decked out in all authentic gear, with the weapons. We did audio recordings, video recordings, we shot all the weapons with high speed film, too, so it captures 4,000 frames per second, so we could see even the metal warping when the round explodes in the chamber. We got all the movement down so we could animate it all right and see here's how the guys get into position and set up their MG.. Now anyone who is on an insane expert level, you're going to find little niggly things. It isn't real life, it is a video game. But in the spectrum of all the video games we go way farther in authenticity than everybody else.

But even still there's going to be things here and there that people find when they're really looking for them. And it's kind of fun to find those things. I remember when I watched Terminator 2 and I was so excited when I caught the RV coming off the bridge and I saw the glass smash out and the next shot he's in there and the glass is back. Sometimes you catch little things like that. But it's kind of fun. When you catch them that's when you know you know a lot. But we've done our homework, we've invested in it.

VideoGamer.com: Are there any surprises you're holding back on what you haven't talked about?

RP: Whenever we talk about the game and what people love about Brothers in Arms is this immersive, narrative action experience where you become one of these guys and you're playing with the squad in this event. These events are so intense. This backdrop, the story of Market Garden is such an intense dramatic backdrop. So that tends to be the focus. But there's also this really fun competitive multiplayer game there and we haven't really talked about. But it's really cool. We're playing it a lot in the office. You can play with 20 people. I get up to 16-player skirmishes in Halo so 20 people, these are bigger skirmishes. It's a different kind of game. You're not going to play free for all deathmatch kind of stuff. It's about squad combat. You get sorted into squads. One of you is going to be the leader and you can give commands or call in artillery. The others are going to be in a fire team or an assault team and you're going to work together. It's kind of like playing the PC game Counter Strike. It's very tactical, fast rounds, really hardcore. We like this kind of stuff. We're able to go that way because we know that most people are playing it because of the single-player narrative experience and so we're able to make a game that's kind of fun for us that we're going to have fun with. And I think there's going to be a lot of people that look at it because it's different than anything that's out there on the consoles. But we're not doing what everybody else does. You know, here's your team deathmatch and your deathmatch and your CTF and 16 players, go for it. We're not doing that. We're doing something that's very true to what the Brothers in Arms promise is all about. We haven't really talked about it and I think it's pretty neat and I think some folks are going to have fun with us playing online.

VideoGamer.com: So the multiplayer will be a surprise for many Brothers in Arms fans?

RP: I think so, for two reasons. One, because it's so different than what you'd expect. And two, because it's different to what we've done in the past with Brothers in Arms. That might backfire. People might go 'what are you doing? You should have just copied Halo or CoD and done that!' and it's like, come on people, give me a break, we're trying to do something we haven't had before.

VideoGamer.com: Are you guys likely to do a demo?

RP: Yeah we do have plans for a demo. We haven't actually specifically decided which thing, which bit of the gameplay we're going to put in the demo yet. We're going to do it. I don't know if it will come out before the launch or not. It might not, it might come after. We'll see. But we're going to give a demo, because there are some people who really want to check things out before they buy. But our priority is making the best game we can. We've had Brothers in Arms games before, people know what the brand is about. In general we've got a reasonable amount of trust. There's a lot of people who know that they want the game and they're just tired of waiting and they want us to get it out as soon as possible so we're focusing on that. But there are some other folks who might be new to us, they don't know if they should trust us yet or maybe they haven't played a Brothers in Arms game before. We'll get around to a demo for them and we've got it in our plans for that.

VideoGamer.com: Thanks very much for your time.

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