Persistent frontline decided by multiplayer victories
Now, EndWar focuses just on the US/European war but is set within a global war scenario, so what about everyone else? What about Russia, China? Are they kicking off too? If so, who against? Michael says that EndWar focuses very firmly on what he calls ‘The Atlantic War’, so for now we have to be content with just the US vs. Europe. However, he did hint that sequels or expansions will focus on other areas of the globe, with a possible Pacific War (those damn Americans again!) or what about South America or Australia?But one thing you’ll be glad to know is that although this is a war fought between the US and Europe, it isn’t confined to European soil... yep, if you do well playing as Europe you can take the fight across the Atlantic and take the fight to the Americans on their home soil for once. This is a new direction for Tom Clancy games and makes a nice change to see it in a realistic RTS too.
Click for larger imageNow any of you who’ve played some MMOGs will know all about online persistent worlds and the multiplayer side of EndWar features one of these as well. Basically, any multiplayer match, be it 1v1 or 8v8, will count towards the overall results for the war, as if you were fighting on a small part of the battlefield on the front line. So a win for the Europeans means the US loses ground and vice versa.
For multiplayer matches you’ll be able to pick and choose which battles to drop into with different mission styles such as open tank battles, special ops, city sieges... Imagine being able to drive the US forces out of Europe and back into the US... I’ll bet the smack talking on Live from the Yanks will get mighty blue if that happens.
Of course, longer term players will receive ranks and a variety of achievements.
Now, given that there’s this persistent online world, my first worry was that the US would see the game first and by the time it reached European shores the front line would have been shifted to somewhere near Switzerland but Michael had the one covered too... EndWar is going to have a simultaneous global launch, hitting the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC all at the same time in February 2008.
Click for larger imageGet ready for some ass-kicking, yanks.
