Front Mission Evolved Interview

All that time ago at E3, I got the chance to sit down with Square-Enix and Double Helix and find out what we can expect from the forthcoming Front Mission Evolved. This takes the series, which has previously been almost exclusively a set of turn-based strategy games, into the realm of the third-person shooter. Intrigued, I endeavoured to find out the how and whys behind this change of direction.

Taking part in the interview were Shinji Hashimoto, the Square-Enix based producer of the game (speaking through an interpreter); Jeremy Lee, the development director of the game at Double Helix; and Michael Saxs Persson, the VP of the studios at Double Helix.

First things first, then! Can you give us a bit of background on the game?

LEE: Front Mission Evolved is a third-person shooter for 360, PS3, and PC. The franchise has been around for a long time and it's a revered franchise in Japan. The US markets and Europe aren't as familiar with it, so for some people it might seem like a really shocking progression to make a third-person shooter. From Square's perspective, it's something that they've always wanted to do with Front Mission, and they've taken Front Mission in different directions with previous games like Gun Hazard and Front Mission Online. What we want to do and what we're doing is we're really collaborating with Square on this title. Square's designed the characters and the storyline, and taken a really collaborative role in the design direction. I think fans will be excited because you get to do some things with your Wanzers that you haven't been able to do with them in the previous games, but it's still maintaining a strategic element to it, and the storyline, the political intrigue - it's just moving into an action realm.

How are you keeping the strategic elements intact? Front Mission let you outfit the Wanzers in different ways, it had different ways of disabling enemies...

LEE: It's really great. There are some big elements that we've kept that are pretty cool and customisation is a huge part of the game. You build your Wanzer in the way that you think is best for it. There are a lot of interchangeable parts, amd we've got every weapon from the previous Front Mission series and then some new ones that you can upgrade. There are also strategic ways in which you can disable your opponents. We have some cool effects that we can only do now on next-gen consoles where we can blow off arms, blow off legs, disable them electrically: we can do a lot of really cool effects.

Front Mission, as a turn-based strategy, was always about the team. Do you have other Wanzers in your squad in Evolved, or are you on your own?

LEE: You have a squad with you. Your squad has an important role in the storyline – they're not generic soldiers that just follow you around, they're key characters in the story. And they have their own personalities. They talk to you, they make decisions on what they want to do, they support you in different ways.

So how are the squad controls coming along? Can you order them around?

LEE: No. They do it all on their own. Because they're story characters they have a real reason to want to be independent. Rather than the other Front Missions where you played as a series of characters and customised a series of Wanzers, here you're playing as Dylan, with the Wanzer you upgrade throughout the entirety of the game, that you keep getting attached to. Your wingmates are part of the story, and they'll support you, but they're very much individual characters that you don't have any direct control over.