
	Platform PC Genre Strategy Developer Massive Entertainment Publisher Sierra ETA Q3 2007
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World in Conflict

Historical “What if…” scenarios can be a ton of fun. What if Germany won WWII? What if Japan was divided among the Allies after the war a la Berlin? What if Rome never fell? What if Zheng He invaded Medieval Europe? There are so many interesting possibilities to explore. Now Massive Entertainment is working on a new PC strategy game that will take place in a world where the Soviet Union never collapsed, and is currently at war with the United States.

Helping to add authenticity to this scenario, author Larry Bond has been brought on board this project to lend his Cold War expertise. In World in Conflict, the year 1989 saw the Soviet Union in a state of decline, but instead of simply seeing communism fall there, the country went on one last, desperate stab at expansion in order to survive. As such, the Soviets poured into Europe, and when NATO went to stop the invasion, they suddenly realized that they were fighting a war on two fronts, as the US was being invaded as well.

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One of the first things that players will notice in the game is that the visuals are pretty darn spiffy. Massive will be rolling out a bigger, better, newer version of their MassTech engine for World in Conflict. Just looking at the screens and footage thus far, one can see that the graphics are looking tops for the genre. What will likely be a nice touch for

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many is that the world is also completely destructible, so if a tank fires on the side of a building there will be a big whole there after, assuming the structure even survives.

Players will have a very large number of different units at their disposal, ranking from artillery to infantry to air support and everything in between. It’ll be up to you how you go about using them. The game is trying to make people use their heads, and not just zerg their way to victory, so expect brains to win out over brawn in most sorties. One nice feature that is planned for World in Conflict is that there isn’t all of that resource gathering and moseying up the tech tree like one will find in other strategy games. Instead, players are presented with certain units in finite numbers at the start of a mission that they will have to make due with. When one of these units is destroyed, they slowly regenerate in a pool of reinforcements that can be called in over time when in the thick of things, so it isn’t the end of the world when a unit dies. A new one just like it will be ready to go shortly.

As one would expect, there will be a multiplayer option in the game, where one can play in groups of up to 16 gamers in head-to-head and team based battles. This will take place on Massive’s Massgate proprietary servers.

It feels like it has been an eternity since World in Conflict was announced, but the release date is just around the corner with a Q3 2007 release. The question now is who do you want to play as, the Red Army or the Americans.

Jeff Nash

June 12, 2007