World in Conflict features a "what if?" story, where the Cold War didn't exactly end as we know it, and the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed, instead invades the U.S. Resource gathering has been replaced by "tactical aid" credits that you can spend on calling in reinforcements, WiC now also sports a first-person view mode, and is, of course, multiplayer enabled.Q: How long will the single player campaign be? How many missions?
DP: The single-player campaign reaches over 14 missions in three different acts, so you’ll experience some jumps in time between the different battlefronts.
Q: World in Conflict’s multiplayer is pretty intense, how does the singleplayer match up, was it just added as an afterthought?
DP: Well, we always wanted to have a single-player mode in World in Conflict, but the way this looked changed greatly during development. Initially, we wanted to keep it simple, to have something that could prepare players for the multiplayer – kind of like a very advanced tutorial.
Over time, both we and Vivendi realized that it was a huge waste of the setting, and that we should aim to really tell the story of these events. So we worked out a number of characters and a story line, with the help of Larry Bond, and we ended up with a very moving single-player story that stands very good on its own merits.
Q: Aside from the World in Conflict single player campaign, will there be the skirmish feature?
DP: Yes, we’d be crazy not to!
Q: Will all maps be able to be played in Skirmish mode (offline mode against bots)?
DP: Yup!
Q: Will World in Conflict ship with a map editor? Would I be able to make a Soviet single player campaign?
DP: At the moment, we’re looking to release the mod tools and map editor online just around release. What exactly these tools will contain is still not finalized, so we can’t really comment on that yet.
Q: The storyline is supposed to be based around Seattle, correct? Is this the first invasion point? If so, then will be playing at all in the heart of the city? Like in the World in Conflict videos?
DP: No, the Soviets first attack Europe, and later make a secondary attack overseas on the American west coast, i.e. Seattle. And yes, you will be playing in the very heart of Seattle, with all the familiar landmarks and everything.
Q: How many difficulty settings are there for the single player campaign?
DP: We kept it at three – easy, normal and hard. And hard is quite challenging!
Q: Is it wise to go after the secondary objectives? Will they give you the edge in the mission if you go out of your way to complete them?
DP: The secondary objectives will sometimes give you some very nice rewards in the mission. Sometimes they’ll grant you new units and sometimes it’ll stop some of the Soviet fronts. For the collector-minded player, it’ll also award you specific medals after the mission is cleared. If you want all the medals, you have to finish all the objectives.
Q: Are there time limits in single player? (Like in multiplayer)
DP: That depends entirely on the mission. Some missions have time limits while others don’t. We’ve tried to create a varied single-player campaign with a lot of different approaches and objectives.
Q: Will there be an 'Army Creator' feature where you can create your own faction with your own units in-game, define bonuses etc?
DP: That’s a pretty neat idea, but it’s not something we included in the game. We wanted to keep the multiplayer very balanced between the factions, kind of like letting both sides have the same weapons in an online team shooter, so the factions and their units are fixed.
While it could’ve made for an interesting idea for the single-player campaign, we didn’t want to break away too much from the original multiplayer concept. Whenever you include customization to the game, it instantly gets much more complex and harder to control. So we’ll keep those ideas in mind for future projects instead.
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