Enlisting in Army of Two: The 40th Day
Big trouble in big China.
March 13, 2009 - A flooded city, a government conspiracy and a myriad of bullets – when players last saw Elliott Salem and Tyson Rios, they had been busy battling their way through Army of Two, Electronic Arts' co-op action game. The two mercenaries faced incredible odds and battled their way through a number of seemingly impossible situations, including the sinking of an aircraft carrier and a major hurricane that obliterated an American city. It seemed as though the two frequently found themselves in the wrong place in the wrong time. But now, thanks to the recent announcement of Army of Two: The 40th Day, Salem and Rios will find themselves under siege, avoiding wide scale destruction and tracking down a mystery that threatens to destroy them both. At a press event in Montreal, I got a chance to check out the upcoming title to see just what the new title will be about.
The first Army of Two game was a large departure for EA Montreal, both in the since of the franchise being a new IP and the heavy focus on co-op play. While this was commercially acclaimed, the title would up being savaged by some critics, something that Alain Tascan, the Vice President and General Manager of EA Montreal wanted to make sure was addressed. "What are the core elements that made people like it, and what where the core elements that made some experts not like it? We added a few things that were just a distraction to the game – for some people it was the taunts, for some people, it was the setting, for some people, it was the level of polish. We definitely said, 'Okay, we want to keep our fan base and not disappoint them and not go in a direction that is different,' but we also want to make sure that we're showing the sequel to critics that will appreciate it this time."
As a result, the team decided to focus on two key elements of gameplay as they started working on the development of The 40th Day. The first facet was to keep and even improve on the co-op aspects of gameplay, providing a new and organic method of approaching the gameplay at any time. Whereas the first game had a limited amount of tactics that you could employ as you moved through environments, Army of Two will provide players with a large number of cooperative tactics that can be used at any time as you battle through the game. These tactics will dynamically update and change as you move through each environment, further giving players a new way to approach the various situations they'll face in the game. To ensure that all of the player's orders would be followed, the team spent time also overhauling the AI, which fans and critics alike called as robotic and somewhat inattentive. Now, if you're playing a single player match, your partner will feel much more like it's being controlled by another human being instead of the computer.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/962/962332/army-of-two-the-40th-day-20090313031545762-000.jpg)
Salem and Rios, back again to wreak some havoc.
The other area the team wanted to expand upon was the sense of placing players into an all-encompassing disaster scenario. Regardless of the chaos that was caused during each mission in the first game, both characters were easily extracted and redeployed to a new area of the world. For the sequel, the designers wanted to place the player in situations where disasters are raging around you and yet you remain in control of your actions to see you through. Banking on the exaggerated nature of the Army of Two universe, which is a heightened form of realism, the team wanted to establish a level of danger on par with that of the largest Hollywood action movies. To accomplish this, they decided to focus the game solely within one location, that of Shanghai, and bring it down around your head with a large number of catastrophes that would force you to reexamine your surroundings to survive. "We could have done the same thing with the globetrotting and done the ice level, the volcano level, the cave level – but we thought, you know what, it'd be more interesting to try this and focus the team and make the setting the catastrophic scenarios, because catastrophes are everywhere," Tascan said.
While EA was keeping many of the details of the story tightly under wraps, there were some aspects of the plot that were freely provided. The 40th day will take place some time after the first title has ended, with Salem and Rios having established their own private military corporation, TransWorld Operations (or TWO). Following the success of their PMC and a number of missions that both men run for their company, they take a routine job in Shanghai and manage to complete it when all Hell breaks loose. A rival PMC proceeds to attack and destroy a large amount of the city, trapping Salem and Rios inside Shanghai and forcing them to try to fight their way out to survive. As they try to escape, the two soldiers also try to piece together why the other PMC is attacking. The game will take place over a short period of time spanning a couple of days in and around Shanghai, and will tie in the 40th day as a key aspect of the mystery surrounding the gameplay. The team likened the journey to that of the movie Cloverfield, where both men are forced to react to different disasters as they come up and attempt to survive each as they occur. "It's really more of a survival story, and about what happens to you when you're there. Salem and Rios are on a routine mission in Shanghai and all hell breaks loose. We want to tell a story about what happens while you're there," said Reid Schneider, Executive Producer at EA Montreal.
To demonstrate this, Schneider started up the demo which placed Salem and Rios on a city street that was littered with trash and debris. As they moved down the street, they picked up on two enemy soldiers that were ahead of them. As Schneider mentioned the location of the foe, he talked about a new feature that was included in the 40th day that was being called GPS 2.0. Not only did it perform a thermal map of the surroundings and distances to objectives, but it also listed a number of co-op commands that Salem could give to Rios, like silently shooting the nearest soldier, taking him hostage or performing a co-op snipe. To show off the flexibility of the mechanic, Schneider ordered the hostage option, and Rios slunk towards the first guy, creeping silently towards him before restraining and pressing a gun to the man's temple. This sudden ambush forced his partner to drop his gun, at which point Salem and Rios quickly incapacitated the two enemies and moved on.
As the two characters traveled down an alley, finer details were pointed out as to the attention to detail the team has taken, such as adding smoke and steam rising from grates, paper blowing around in the wind and destructible objects – all of which weren't present as ambient elements within the first game. Another small detail that was pointed out was the interaction with each character's face shields. During the heat of battle, the face shields are down and locked to protect Salem and Rios' faces from danger, but during downtimes or transitional periods, the characters will raise the face shields and look around. This was done to not only convey a degree of safety in an area, but also to convey a sense of emotion during cutscenes and dialogue.
The demo moved on to a rooftop, where Rios and Salem split up and moved to separate locations to get a view of the Shanghai skyline. While they tried to get in place, they had to eliminate soldiers that were on the roof, bouncing back and forth from cover to safely eliminate the guards. However, once this was done and they were able to get a vantage point, the view radically changed. A few seconds after they had a chance to view the destruction that had been caused to the city, many of the skyscrapers that made up the skyline came crashing down at the same time, causing a massive amount of devastation. Even worse, other parts of the city were getting bombed by jets as the duo watched. Although that was striking, it was nothing compared to the next few seconds. A jet in the middle of its bombing run was hit by anti-aircraft fire, and spun out of control, crashing into the building that Salem and Rios stood on.
This carved a large gash into the building and, as Schneider pointed out, gave the player a limited amount of time to get to his partner and save him before he'd get killed –either by environmental hazards, or by rival troops that attempted to show up and rush the two mercs. Obviously, this was a completely new twist to the co-op gameplay, because it was a set piece that highlighted the separation that players will frequently experience as their partner has to go off and accomplish different tasks. It also provides a level of tension because you're being timed to get over to your partner and get him away from that life threatening situation. What was cool about this section was that we got a sense of the new rag doll system that has been improved within this game, as well as the inclusion of blood spatter on walls if you that get shot close to walls.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/962/962332/army-of-two-the-40th-day-20090313031540949-000.jpg)
He never saw Salem coming.
From there, Salem and Rios moved to an elevator, where they wound up receiving a call over their personal radios. Alice, the duo's handler, connected them with a potential employer, who had a proposition for the duo. He wanted them to kill a civilian that was close to their present location, and was willing to pay a tidy sum for a successful mission. Salem was actually able to raise the bid with the guy by haggling for a higher price, pitching for a couple thousand extra than what was offered, and took the job to make some extra dough. Schneider pointed out that while this was designed to help cover load times between sections, it was a nice way of including a mini-game for players, which also provided additional perks for the mercenaries. It also brought up a new element within gameplay that players would have to take into account: civilians trapped in the middle of the now burgeoning warzone thanks to the chaos raging around them.
As the elevator door opened, I was able to see exactly how these two elements would play out in the game, as Salem and Rios entered a lobby and looked out of windows to see a group of civilians lined up, execution style, by a few soldiers. Schneider pointed out that there were a few different options available in this situation: the mercs could run out and either save the hostages or leave them to their fate in the middle of a gunfight, silently take out the enemies and free the hostages, or kick down the door and blow everyone away. Obviously, this left a large amount of flexibility open to the player, and also raised the question of what the two mercs would be thinking if they turned around and blasted innocent people. While Schneider and Tascan weren't willing to talk about any morality gameplay elements, it's probably safe to bet that there will be some kind of good and evil deed meter taken into account at some point.
After choosing to kick down the doors and watch as the hostages and PMC troops were both obliterated, Schneider reloaded and tried a stealthier approach, sending Salem to sneak behind one of the soldiers while Rios covered him from the lobby. Grabbing the enemy, Salem used him as a shield and took out another soldier while Rios eliminated a third. Using troops as shields weren't the only way that a player could interact with captured enemies. Salem could put him in a headlock, smack up on the head and even tie him up when a gunfight was done to incapacitate him. In many ways, the different things that you can do with an enemy soldier also relate to the new focus with enemy AI, which reacts to you based on the state they happen to perceive you in. This means that they can actually be surprised, become suspicious of noises or go fully alert, amongst other states. That can be used to your advantage if you time it just right, because you can even set up circumstances where you pretend to surrender to alerted troops, putting your hands up and walking towards an enemy. After a few steps, you can fire off a shot and your partner will open fire as well, giving you the upper hand in a small battle for a second or two.
The last section that was shown took place near a temple and started with a sudden separation of the two characters as a car crashed through a wall and knocked down enough debris to block the team. Fortunately, both characters could operate on their own, and needed to maneuver quickly to get around to their next objective, which was to find and save one civilian that was being held in a secure location that was nearby. Flipping on the GPS, both players were able tag hostiles in their immediate environment and detect where the threats were and where any innocents happened to be. After clearing out the temple grounds and surrounding alleys of enemies, both Salem and Rios set up to take a co-op snipe shot at a nearby building which held the imprisoned man. Thanks to the flimsy nature of the building, both mercs were able to shoot through the walls and immediately take out their targets.
Once all of the demo sections were completed, I had a chance to get some hands on time with the game to see just how easy they are to control in a generic demo area filled with spawning soldiers. One of the things that stood out to me as I ran around and blasted soldiers was that the developers spent a lot of time simplifying the controls, making it possible to do all of your moves with essentially one button press now. Characters immediately vault or slide into cover depending on when you release the cover button, and performing actions like co-op sniping is much faster to perform. Players won't have to over-adjust for their aim like you did in the first game either. Your aim at a target will frequently be enough to allow you to eliminate most enemies. While the game will still restrict Salem and Rios to three weapons, players will be able to collect a temporary fourth weapon by picking up the gun of a recently killed enemy and firing the remaining bullets in the gun.
While it was great to see all of the new elements for the game, one thing that seemed to be missing was the banter between the two characters. In the first game, Salem (the wisecracking member of the duo) would break out everything from Wu-Tang Clan references to offhand remarks in the middle of gunfights. This time around, there was a lot of silence. When asked about the subdued personalities of the characters, Schneider said, "I think they still have to be their characters, they still have to be Salem and Rios, but I think that the difference is that we want to make sure their humor or their sarcasm comes across so that it's funny and it has some bite to it, but it's also something that could be interesting for a worldwide audience. I think that one of the things that we were really focused on just thinking about North America, and really what we're trying to do is think about how we make these characters credible, believable and worldwide they could have resonance."
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/962/962332/army-of-two-the-40th-day-20090313031550293-000.jpg)
Even wounded, the Army of Two is stronger than most soldiers.
That being said, Army of Two: The 40th Day looks and sounds extremely good right now, and the levels that were being shown were months old, meaning that the team has had ample time to improve on and refine each area of gameplay. For instance, the sound designers spent time gathering gunfire sounds at Fort Irwin with an 80 microphone setup to record every single echo from fired rounds. The visual team has spent additional time getting specular lighting on body armor and reflectivity of sweat on each character's skin. "What's cool for us is now that we're working on the sequel, we can differentiate them a lot more than we could in the first one. Even just things like basic proportions -- in the first game, you're really the same size – but now, when you're playing as Rios, you're a much bigger character than Salem," Schneider said.
Finally, while there wasn't any discussion about the multiplayer elements to the game, I was told that it will play a much larger focus and role within The 40th Day, and will focus much more on co-op play and partnership than the first game did. However, the developers made sure that they highlighted the co-op aspects of play as the final word on the game, especially because their focus on making the first Army of Two centered around co-op play seemed to influence other developers to include more co-op modes in other games. Tascan summed up the hopes of the team when he said, "The best compliment we could have if we execute the second one well would be to have people say, 'you started this seriously, because it wasn't the first game to have coop, and now you're in the driver's seat of the genre,' or the subgenre or whatever it is, the niche. This is our hope. I would say that we will have done something right if people say, 'If you want the best co-op experience, pure co-op, Army of two is in the drivers seat, still not perfect, but still in the driver's seat.' If we achieve that, then we have done something right. If we can be compared to fantastic games that are coming in a positive, equal way, then I'd be thrilled."
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