BattleForge Hands-on Preview

“RTS games lack some kind of things that I think are necessary to be successful online,” Volker Wertich says, his soft German tones barely audible over the EA Games label showcase event din. “Things like accessibility, persistence, rewarding, socialising and ongoing. They lack all those features. I wanted to do an RTS that fixes those things.”

And thus the online only fantasy RTS Battleforge was born, Volker’s latest PC gaming baby. Now creative director at EA Phenomic, Volker is considered one of the leading RTS developers in the world, having conjured up the Settlers and Spellforce series before Phenomic was bought by EA in 2006. Now he’s back with Battleforge and he’s determined to make online RTS gaming accessible to the masses.

But what’s his problem? We kind of like modern RTS games at the moment. Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Command & Conquer, none of them do anything wrong. But maybe our hardcore gaming nature has blinded us to the cold, harsh, truth – playing RTS games online these days is like trying to get into The Ivy without a reservation – ie, dauntingly difficult.

“Usually in an RTS game you go online and you get killed by other people,” explains Volker. “The communication is usually like good luck, good game. What we are looking for is a cooperative game mode which will ensure people can learn the game together with friends, together with people they don’t know and get familiar with the game without getting beaten all of the time. So if you are losing at least you are losing together, which is much less of an issue for your ego!”

A pick up and play cooperative and online RTS, huh? There’s a lot of things about Battleforge that feel different and fresh. Take, for example, the lack of a build time, or a tech tree. Instead Battleforge employs a card-based system. You simply click on the card of the unit of your choice then click on where you want the unit to spawn on the battlefield. Cue some colourful, pretty effects and bobs your uncle. Simple.

The cards are divided up into colours, each representing a different play style. Fire (red) cards are offensive and frost (blue) defensive. We spotted two other colours, nature (green) and shadow (purple), although we’re not sure of their specific roles yet. And unlike other RTS games Battleforge lets you construct your own army by allowing you to tailor your own deck to your own play style and opponent.

One of the most interesting aspects of Battleforge, one that was pushed by EA Phenomic at the Games label presentation, was the cooperative player versus environment play. We were shown, and then allowed hands on time with, one map where two players were forced to work together to take down a skeleton summoning Soul Harvester (aka a big bad ass). Once you wrap your head around the specific nuances of Battleforge, (gameplay is territory based, moving from one skirmish to another as you convert areas to your army’s colour) the skills you employ are similar to other RTS games, and, for us, rekindle memories of dungeon raiding in MMOs. Typically one force needs to tank the big bad guy while others heal or do damage from a distance. There were moments during the final skirmish at the end of the level, where a number of enemy forces were being tied up by tank-like units, when I felt like I was playing an RTS version of World of Warcraft. This isn’t a criticism at all, merely an observation. Turns out the reward for killing the Soul Harvester is the Soul Harvester itself. Once dispatched you can add it to your deck and employ it on the battlefield yourself. Nice.

But how is all of this going to work from the game’s front end? “We have a feature which is called World Map,” says Volker. “On that World Map you can try and pair with people who are of similar skill who are trying to do similar things that you would like to do. So you can choose a map, a difficulty level and check for people are who are doing the same stuff. This is the way we team up people. Also we have a different approach of bringing people together. Normally you’re sat in a lobby, like a matchmaking system. People are pulled together, or put together. We have a grouping system which allows you to group before you start match ups. If you’ve finished a match, if the group wants to stay together you can just say let’s do another thing, or let’s replace one person who has to go, and the group stays together. The group is something that’s more tied together than just pick-ups and always getting together with people you don’t know.”

Battleforge will support 12 players at a time across three maps simultaneously. So while all 12 players won’t be confusing the hell out of each other by being on screen at the same time, it might be that one or two players need to complete an objective which then enables other players on another map to fight a boss. And particularly tough challenges will require certain players to concentrate on one play style over the other. We can see this resulting in some players having specialist decks and roles in battle, say for example healing or attacking, which again ties in with the MMO raid feel.

Getting the ideal deck won’t be easy either. Smart players, we’re told, will constantly be trading with other players. And you’ll be able to purchase cards from the game’s marketplace in the form of booster packs. You won’t know what you’re getting, but there’s guaranteed to be at least one rare card. Initially around 200 cards will be available, but there’s the promise of more. It all feels a bit Magic the Gathering, doesn’t it fantasy fans?

Is Volker trying to revolutionise the online RTS experience? “We are looking for that. We have lots of online features, additional ones, which are around the game. So you’re not only playing the game. In game you can also trade cards, we have a marketplace, we have direct trade with other players. We also have in game mail so you can have communication with guilds. We have guild chat of course, which ensures that as you get online you have people you know around you. So there’s a lot of community features that we are adding.”

We get the distinct feeling that EA Phenomic is trying to make the online RTS more sociable, which we welcome. From our hands on with the game we can smell a distinct MMO odour permeating from its virtual pores. The grouping, the cooperative play style, the potential for tailoring your army, the card purchasing and trading, which could almost be an auction house, the guild support and the mail system all combine to give Battleforge a distinctly MMORPG feel. It’s an interesting, fresh idea that we reckon could evolve into a surprise PC hit when it’s released. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.

Battleforge is due out for PC this autumn.