Imagine if you will, a FPS where you start the round in space, can get out your powered armor whenever you see fit and don't ever have to worry about host advantage. Obviously, we're not talking about Halo 3: ODST. The game's name is Section 8, and we have one of the devs here to tell you about it.
Drew Rechner, Community Liaison for TimeGate Studios, took some time out of his hectic schedule to sit down with 2o2p and talk about the studio's upcoming Xbox 360 and PC release, Section 8. Now let’s take a look into what makes this game.
2Old2Play – Introduce yourself and tell us about your role with the studio .
Drew – My name is Drew Rechner and I am the Community Liaison for TimeGate Studios. I am in charge of communicating to the Section 8 community about the game and relaying their ideas to the Dev team.
2Old2Play – Can you give us a brief summary of the game?
Drew – Section 8 is a large-scale, sci-fi FPS that will be released early this September [9/1/2009]. Players will join the epic battle between the 8th Armored Infantry (nicknamed “Section 8” after an old United States military regulation for reason of being mentally unfit for service) against a splinter faction, the Arm of Orion. Players will literally burn-in to anywhere on the battlefield from orbital dropships hovering at over 15,000 feet in the air, customize the nearly limitless options for their equipment loadouts, and purchase a variety of on-demand vehicle and strategic asset deliveries. With the addition of Dynamic Combat Missions (DCMs), no two games of Section 8 will ever play the same way twice.
2Old2Play – Anytime someone mentions "dedicated servers," our readers' ears perk up. Tell us more.
Drew – A dedicated server is essentially a PC dedicated to only running the game for other people. This differs from a listen server which allows a player to host and play the game at the same time. Traditionally, only listen servers are used on the Xbox 360. However, we plan on providing dedicated servers to the Xbox 360 that will boost the maximum amount of players from 16 to 32 or more.
2Old2Play – How will this game different than any other shooter game on the market?
Drew – Section 8 is quite different than other first-person shooters in a variety of ways. We really took a critical look at the first-person shooters available and expanded upon what we liked about them, and disposed or improved the elements we did not like. For example, we have completely removed the predictability of other first-person shooters with burn-in spawning. Because players can burn-in to anywhere on the battlefield when spawning, spawn-camping has essentially been eliminated, not to mention players will no longer be forced to stare at their corpse for 30 seconds after being killed by their opponent.
Section 8 also features fully customizable player loadouts, unlike most other games that railroad the player into choosing between pre-existing classes. Players will be able to equip their powered armor suit the way they see fit, including passive modules, gear and weapons, and can be saved and loaded on the fly or changed in-between burn-ins.
Additionally, Section 8 allows players to dynamically manipulate the flow of combat with on-demand vehicle and asset requisitions as well as participate in a variety of DCMs which ensure that no two games of Section 8 will ever play the same.
2Old2Play – What engine did you use on this game?
Drew – Section 8 uses Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) because we were developing an innovative, futuristic first-person shooter and the engine is clearly targeted towards the FPS genre. In addition to support for all three major platforms, we have a number of developers with extensive experience working with UE3.
2Old2Play – Some people like discovering "easter eggs." Are there any in Section 8?
Drew – Easter eggs are always a lot of fun and you may just find one or two in Section 8 if you look hard enough.
2Old2Play – Is Section 8 going to have DLC?
Drew – We definitely plan on supporting the community well after release. There is a lot more that we plan on adding to the Section 8 universe, whether through DLC or other means.
Thanks, Drew, for taking the time to answer our questions. We look forward to getting our hands on Section 8 next week.
