A Rant On Bosses: Final Fantasy & Shank
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RTS's have had a pretty rough history on consoles, Age of Kings and Command and Conquer have both tried and failed to make a huge impact in the console arena. So where does the future lie for RTS's on consoles? Thats a question both Lead Designer of Massive Entertainment Magnus Jansén and Senior Designer Mark Brendan of Swordfish studio's (who are developing the PC and the 360 versions of World in Conflict) are willing to discuss.
Can a Real Time Strategy game ever find a true home on consoles? Its one of those deep questions that has seen four generations of console gamers argue the merits of a controller over a keyboard and mouse with their PC counterparts deep into the early hours of many drunken nights. To date, it has been no contest as the genre has excelled solely on PCs, with console ports merely coming off as cheap substitutes. But the next-generation machines have bridged the gap between the PC and console markets, certainly in terms of hardware, and all of sudden the humble RTS has a fighting chance on consoles. All of a sudden, there is the real possibility that the RTS may be as equally at home in your lounge-room, as it is in your study.
Over the coming weeks we are going to have a chat with some of the developers that are currently seeking to create a console RTS that the hardcore genre fans on PC simply cant ignore. To explore whether or not the next-gen machines really can carry across the RTS experience in its full glory. First up weve taken a look at upcoming gem World in Conflict which and we can say this from experience is one of the finest RTS games weve ever seen. The PC version of the game is being developed by genre legends Massive Entertainment (who brought us Ground Control). It is been developed alongside an Xbox 360 version of the game, which is being built by Swordfish Studios. We asked both developers the same questions, to see if we could find a realistic truth in the fate of the RTS genre.
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I am already picturing the armies of Toad mounted on Yoshi fighting Para Koopas who glide towards them.
It could work really well if items could be equipped, like fire flowers and different armours, each character could be fully customisable. That would make for a nice RPG-ish throw in so that it would be a random game with a Mario label slapped on, as it would have a feature which could make it seem like the original platformers but at an army level war scale in doing that.
On that note, the PC's real advantage would be mods really.
One game I'd like to mention here is Battalion Wars. It's a console RTS, although it has quite a bit of third-person shooting as well (although it was mostly just locking in and pressing A to shoot). It handled the genre very differently, it was designed for console use. You directly control one unit at a time (as in, full control), and you can switch through any other units and give commands. The second analog stick let you switch between groups, then select individual units if you please (you could also control everyone). You had commands such as Follow, Wait and Attack. You could do things like lock on to specific enemy and command a group to attack, then they will do so and kill anyone else afterwards. They could directly support you if you put them on follow, or they could wait. It was an interesting game, and I think it was a great example of how to create an RTS on a console. Not to say that it wasn't flawed, it definitely was. It just had little lasting appeal, after you beat the relatively short single player campaign there was nothing to do (no multiplayer, period, and no extra modes). However, it just worked, something most console RTS games don't do.
A couple of developers to note the game (off the top of my head, I remember Itagaki), but it still is pretty much a sleeper hit. Personally, I think any RTS developer thinking of developing a real-time strategy game on a console should look at the game.
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