The Outfit @ E3 2005
Relic Entertainment has three new titles in the works, including The Outfit for Xbox 360, the PC RTS game Company of Heroes and an expansion to the PC game Dawn of War titled Winter Assault. Their studio is about to uproot and move across downtown Vancouver into much more spacious digs. Relic is on a hiring rampage to fill up their teams and get their production pipeline cranking out even more high quality product. Their studio has never been busier.
This is a tale of Relic’s venture into newer territory. Relic is about to expand into console territory, specifically the Xbox 360. As you may or may not know, Console games have not been Relic’s forte. Certainly they have members of their staff with console experience, and the vast majority of their staff is comprised of gaming fanatics, but this will be the first console title the studio gets out the door. My concerns over this lack of experience have been put to rest after visiting with the Relic and THQ crew at E3 2005.
I traveled to LA for this E3 to take a look at Relic’s three projects. Upon arriving at the THQ booth, I found myself staring at the The Outfit’s bunker. Geoff Thomas managed to sneak me into the front of the line to get inside the bunker, which was actually a theatre showing a video of game play footage narrated by one of their crew.
Prior to heading south to LA, I had managed to catch the launch of www.theoutfitgame.com, and had viewed the screenshots available there. As such, I had an idea of what I was about to see. The demo rolled, and I was treated to a run through of the game’s feature set, and a run down of what the full game would be like.
At the end of the theatre demo, I was mildly impressed. I had some reservations about the direction they were taking the color palette (instead of a World War 2 game in olive drab and grey, it is a much brighter and vibrant colour scheme with bright blue skies and vibrant green vegetation), and some niggling complaints about how your shopping was delivered. Overall though, I could see Relic’s The Outfit team had so far cooked up a big batch of kick-ass Nazi-wasting fun!
We arranged for a behind closed doors viewing of some hot The Outfit co-op action on the last day of the show. I spend the remainder of Wednesday and Thursday checking out Relic’s other titles, and of course some of the competition. By the time Friday rolled around, my previous reservations had settled in, and I was feeling a bit wary of how the demo would go. Let me just say, as soon as I saw the game running, in the first 10 seconds my faith in Relic was restored. The game is hot!
To take a step back, you control one of three heroes (JD Tyler, Tommy Mac, and Deuce Williams) in an over the top, behind enemy lines, blow everything up campaign in the style of A-team meets The Dirty Dozen World War 2 era game. You have two squads to control via a play calling system, and lots of action points tospend on stuff that kills virtual Nazis. Let’s be clear, this will not be a historically accurate simulation, but it certainly looks like a trainload of fun!
The game play demo was running on the alpha development kits. These kits have substantially less power than the final Xbox 360 hardware is specified to have. As such, a ton of the graphical features were turned off or otherwise not implemented. That being said, boy does the game look great! All the graphical goodness one would come to expect from a modern action game is there in spades. The character models and textures look really good. The buildings, plants, trees and other shrubbery fit right into the world. The vehicle models, especially the tanks, are amazing to look at.
However, it is what you can do to those in game objects that are the fun parts. You can level pretty well everything. Certainly there will be game objectives that you can’t blow up, but otherwise, completely destructible environments are awesome! There is a stone wall blocking your shot at some infantry? How about you just level it and then shoot the bad guys? You can! There is a building in your way? You can blow a hole in one side of a building, fire a shot through the same opening and blow out the opposite wall, then fire a third shot at a target through both holes.
If you are a fan of Relic’s past titles, you will probably by now be lamenting the lack of RTS type game play. Well my little fan person, do not lament! Relic is indeed taking what they have learned over the years from their games, and other games that they have enjoyed and incorporating the good bits into The Outfit.
As you fight the enemy, take objectives and win battles, you are awarded Action Points. You spend these action points by using a radial menu system. Each of the three main characters has a technology tree in which they can spend their points on purchasing items and abilities for use on the battlefield. Some of the abilities will require that you capture certain structures (such as a vehicle depot) on the battlefield.
Once you can buy an item, most or all of the items are delivered via parachute. Call in a tank? It drops into the game. If you need a machine gun or anti-tank gun then you can get it and its crew dropped into play and setup. It is the same mechanism for pretty well all spending. Relic has not finalized the limits, but right now they estimate that you can have about 75 individual soldiers per player.
The single player looks like it will be 12 missions set in a linear story with writing assistance from a professional (but unnamed at this time) Hollywood writer. What was really encouraging for me was that Relic has multiplayer features via Live embedded into the game. You can co-op play the game via splitscreen or Live. There will be additional content for download including badges and tattoos.
Most of the multiplayer game modes have not been setup yet, but it looks like there will be some standard fare style ones, as well as some objective based missions. The sample one we were shown involved a Train Engine and a fuel tank train car. You had to capture the train engine, and then drive it back along the tracks to the heavily defended fuel tank car.
In summary, this title does not look like it will just wander out of Relic’s front door, onto store shelves and into people’s play lists; more like it will blow open their doors with a Sherman tank, then drive over anyone that gets in its way to the retail shelf, where it will assault its way into the top ranks of Xbox 360 console game fun. Where can I pre-order?
I have tried to be as objective as possible in this review; however, you may find my enthusiasm for all things Relic may have boiled over. You might say, I am one of Relic’s biggest fans, if not the biggest. My love for Relic comes from their innovative take on game play in the RTS genre. I fell in love with Homeworld, had great fondness for Impossible Creatures, thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the Homeworld series with Homeworld 2, and have an ongoing torrid affair with Dawn of War.
I strongly encourage anyone reading this to watch the www.theoutfitgame.com and www.relicnews.com as well as adding the game to your watch list for further information as it comes out. You can discuss this article here.
