It started out as an Unreal Tournament mod but now the Strike Force mod is on its way to becoming a full-fledged stand alone first person shooter thanks to the game's developer, Vision Studios, securing a publishing deal with new company Grafitti Entertainment. While the game is still early in development, FiringSquad chatted briefly with Vision Studios founder Michael Hamlett to find out more about their plans for Strike Force Red Cell.

FiringSquad: First, Strike Force began life as an Unreal Tournament mod. Was it always the goal to turn the game to a full fledged commercial product?

Michael Hamlett: We always wanted to do a commercial first person shooter, either with Strike Force or another game we design. The main purpose with Strike Force was for us to show off our talent creating a mod and generating interest in the community. The mod itself has generated a tremendous amount of work for Vision Studios. We have been looking for a good publishing partner for a while now and we are very happy to be working with Signature Devices’, Graffiti Entertainment.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the back-story and storyline for the single player portion of the game?

Michael Hamlett: Right now our main plan for the SP portion is to use our military contacts to help us write in true to life scenarios that actually took place or could have taken place in the world today.

FiringSquad: What sort of locations and settings will the game have?

Michael Hamlett: The locations will be set world wide. As I’m sure your aware terrorist activities today happen all around the world. Sticking true to the Strike Force theme we will have map locations all over… from USA, Russia, Egypt, China, Korea, Sweden, Canada, etc.

FiringSquad: What kinds of weapons will be used in Strike Force Red Cell?

Michael Hamlett: Currently the plan is to use modern weapons from around the world.

FiringSquad: Why did you decided to use the Reality Engine for the game?

Michael Hamlett: The Reality Engine is really a great engine…. and it ranks right up there with Unreal 3 and several other next generation engines on the market today. The engine was bought out by Epic last year. Vision was actually one of the last studios allowed to license the engine before it was sold to Epic. Currently our studio holds unlimited development rights using the engine so it’s the best choice for us to use at this time. We also have our co-development team working with the engine to upgrade it for our game standards.

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

Michael Hamlett: Right now we are still in the overall re-design phase, some content is complete but we are reworking things for the Reality Engine. The plan is to release the game once it’s finished.

Blog + Share: Digg • Del.icio.us • Reddit • SU • furl • More: