To say that the WWII FPS genre is a bit played out would be like saying that the Grand Theft Auto is a little controversial. Over the last four years or so gamers have seen the cliffs of Omaha Beach, the deserts of North Africa, and the ruins of Stalingrad enough times to qualify as tour guides for those parts of the world. When ÜberSoldier was announced I have to admit that I rolled my eyes a bit but further inspection of the press release indicated that we may actually have something a little different on our hands. We were lucky enough to get an interview with one of the team member of the team and we’ll let him explain what makes his game different than every other WWII game out there.
GamingNexus: Can you introduce yourself and describe your role on the project? How long have you been in the gaming industry and why did you get into game development?
My name is Maxim Volkov and I work as a designer for ÜberSoldier. I’ve been involved in multiple development aspects for the game, including creation of character sketches, scenes, scenario correction and am the guy who screams and shouts. The game industry has sucked me in from birth – I was born with Famicom gamepad in hand, and this predestined my future life. All joking aside, I’ve been in the game industry for about six years.
GamingNexus: Did you create the game’s engine from scratch or did you use an existing engine?
Maxim Volkov: We’ve used the X-Tend engine previously developed by our programmers for Kreed. After the release of Kreed we began the development of its add-on -- Kreed: The Battle For Savitar, while at the same modifying the engine for East Front (which became ÜberSoldier.) The engine itself has been altered and upgraded so much that it’s just the name that’s left from the original technology. Thanks to the engine's very stable core, we were able to devote more time to the creation of various special effects and gameplay improvements that positively affected the whole project.
GamingNexus: What was the inspiration behind the game? The WWII FPS genre is rather crowded, what makes ÜberSoldier different from the other games on the market?
Maxim Volkov: From the very beginning we wanted to create something different, and not just another “pseudo-historical WWII game” because as you have already mentioned, there’s a great number of such games these days. So, we’ve rejected the stereotypes and tried to make something unusual.
For example, we’ve tried to avoid the overused atmosphere particular to WWII games and put the stress on entertainment. Yes, the subject of WWII is extremely serious, but we make games, not documentary films. That is why when we were developing the game we focused not on the historical authenticity, but on fun. This is one of the reasons why the main character is a real (a former, though) Nazi. In general, this is more a parody of games and movies of this genre.
Page 1 of 3
