At E3 last month, a new first person shooter was showcased that got some attention; Alliance: The Silent War from new developer Windward Mark Interactive is a game that has a decades long real world setting and the ability to mix and match weapons and teams from different timelines. FiringSquad got a chance to chat with Windward co founder Asi Lang to find out more about the game.

FiringSquad: First, how did Windward Mark Interactive come to be formed?

Asi Lang: The five founders (being myself [Asi Lang], Chris Colosi, Brad Kittenbrink, Palmer Truelson, and Eric Tulla) all knew each other while we were undergraduates at Harvard from 1999-2003. Several of us had been working on advanced graphics research, and eventually we all teamed up and decided to put our heads together and come up with something really new and unique in gaming.

FiringSquad: How did the idea for Alliance: The Silent War come about?

Asi Lang: Eric and I had always been huge fans of military hardware and history, and we actually became friends while chatting on and on about infantry weapons while trying to get through some particularly painful comp sci assignments in our sophomore year. I never thought much of it, but later he and Palmer ended up approaching me about actually turning it into a game. At first we really just wanted this massive collection of firearms from throughout the 20th century- bigger and more exhaustive than anything that had ever been done- and really well researched and modeled, from a ballistics standpoint. We then scratched our heads and thought, “huh, now how do we string this together into a coherent story?” Hokey ideas like time travel were out of the question, so we really hunkered down and started crafting a story that logically drew all the time periods together.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the fictional back story for the game?

Asi Lang: It’s deep. I mean really, truly deep. We took something like 4 straight months researching every aspect of the time periods and wars we wanted to hit. You begin the game essentially as a peasant in the Russian army in WWI. But you get let in on this story, little by little, piece by piece, which ends up taking you through nearly 90 years of warfare- you end up playing through several generations involved in a war that has been raging for a very long time. You fight in Berlin during the 1920s communist uprisings, in Cuba during the Castro revolution, in the Middle East during the War of 1973, and a lot more- and you actually end up causing and influencing a good bit of what happened in 20th century history. You learn that all of these seemingly disconnected events, and leaders, and revolutions, are all tied together by a common thread. The places are real, the events are real- but who causes it, and for what ends- that’s for the player to discover.

FiringSquad: You are promoting the "what if" senarios in Alliance as one of the big gameplay features. How did this idea come about?

Asi Lang: This really came about from our desire to create the WarStudio- where you could finally pit everything against everything. WWI soldiers against Navy Seals, SWAT teams against Cuban rebels, you name it. In the planning stages, this was very important to us- to allow players to set up their own gameplay configurations and options, so that, for example, one side might have up to 30 people, but be limited only to weaponry produced in Eastern Europe and Asia from 1919 to 1937. The other team would have the opposite selection- only weapons, say, post 1980 and from the West, but be limited in team size to only 5 or 6 people. With over 200 weapons in the WarStudio, it will really allow players to try out any sort of “what-if” scenario they can dream up.

FiringSquad: How much research did the development team do in getting the historical details right for the missions and weapons?

Asi Lang: A tremendous amount. Nearly every mission you play in either causes an event that showed up in headlines at the time, or is part of a larger political or military action that really occurred. You’ll see famous people from history, famous incidents, but all through a very different lens. As far as the weapons are concerned, a good number of us are avid shooters and military buffs, and nearly every piece in the game is vetted by us with accurate photographs, and oftentimes, hands-on experience.

FiringSquad: What will the single player campaign be like in Alliance in terms of missions, time periods and locations?

Asi Lang: I can’t say too much at this point, but you will go through six major time periods and locations, sometimes linearly, sometimes as part of flashbacks or diary entries. The missions don’t in any way follow similar threads- at one point you’ll find yourself in bloody, shell-shocked city fighting in Northern Italy in WWII, with soldiers dying all around and heavy artillery fire raining down, and then, in another, you’ll be sneaking through a German embassy, assassinating major political figures who could stand in the way of your organization’s plans. It’s a huge, really interesting medley of gameplay. Any more, though, and I’d have to kill you :)

FiringSquad: What will the multiplayer features be like for the game?

Asi Lang: Options- Lots and lots of options! We will give players a real sense of scope with the WarStudio’s hundred year span. Players will be able to search for weapons by a multitude of search parameters, including date of production, country of origin, ballistic profile, caliber, and so on and so forth. On the server-side, players will be able to set up custom searches or configurations within the WarStudio, or, alternately, pick from a number of pre-configured settings (say, “WWI Western front” against “British spec-ops, 1983”) and jump right into combat.

FiringSquad: What other unique gameplay features will Alliance have?

Asi Lang: One feature people seemed to really get excited about at E3 was what we call the “organic cover” system. Basically, you’ll be able to pick up bodies, both dead and alive, and use them for cover in a bit of a “hostage” mode- you’ll be limited, of course, in what type of weaponry you’ll be able to handle, and it’ll slow you down, but it’ll provide an interesting defensive/offensive tradeoff. We’re also planning on showing soon our troop command structure. In order to achieve your mission, you’ll be taking on the persona of high-ranking commanders in various parts of the game, and you’ll be able to issue commands to those under you who, sadly, have no idea that your mission doesn’t really call for their safety. It’ll be an interesting twist on the whole squad-based shooter approach, to say the least.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the graphics engine you are developing for the game?

Asi Lang: The Alliance Engine is really unique in its ability to do photorealistic outdoor lighting. We decided, about three years ago, to set about developing an engine that would, for the first time ever, be able to truly convincingly capture outdoor settings- from the sunny streets of Cuba to the smoggy towers of industrial Berlin. We found that there were plenty of games out there that excelled in dark, moody corridors, and harsh lighting conditions that were great for, say, alien shooters or stealthy settings. But nothing we saw really screamed out- “okay, this looks like a friggin postcard”- the daytime was always the toughest to nail. And so we set about researching the physics behind outdoor light, and it led us to develop a number of really advanced, patent-pending technologies that capture the essence of natural light in realtime. Everything in Alliance, from the smallest pebble to the tallest, towering spire- is lit with this uniform lighting system we’ve developed. As a result, things just, well, “sit” right in Alliance- everything blends together beautifully, and I think the screenshots really speak for themselves.

FiringSquad: Will there be any mod tools released for the game?

Asi Lang: I can’t get into specifics now, but suffice it say that the mod community will be very happy come post-release.

FiringSquad: Are there any plans for a demo or beta test for Alliance to be released?

Asi Lang: Too early to tell. If there will be, though, you can bet it’ll be announced on our website: www.alliancethegame.com

FiringSquad: What is the current status of the game's progress and when will it be released?

Asi Lang: We’re currently at roughly the halfway mark in development, and expect a release sometime around Holiday 07.

FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Alliance: The Silent War?

Asi Lang: Just that we’ll be giving players something really different with this one. The story, the characters, the mood- it’s enormously filmic. Now I know that terms has been used before to describe “cinematic” gaming, but we’ve really approached this from the very beginning as a more mature, darker title. And that doesn’t necessarily mean swearing and blood. This is going to be dark and mature in a whole different sense. The politics, the manipulation, the history, the effects of your actions- this is one heavy hitting game. Just take a look at the teaser trailer on our site: http://alliancethegame.com/movies.php, and I think you’ll see exactly what I mean!

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