IGTV: Operation Flashpoint 2 Interview Page 2

26 Aug 2009 at 10:34:59 by

A lot of the people who are on the dev team are original Flashpoint fans, so that was one of the things that already helped us. At the same time, we knew that the other games were in development and we wanted to make the game more of a... obviously a sandbox game, but a tactical shooter. We also knew we were going to be bringing it to the console market, so that was something that we knew from the outset and something we had to do. We didn't want to dumb it down for the console market. There's this ridiculous opinion that PC gamers are better than console gamers, or console gamers are better than PC gamers. At the same time, gamers are gamers. Everyone's intelligence is the same. So we didn't want to dumb the game down for the console market, and we didn't want to worry the PC gamers when we said we're bringing it to the console. But the game you see now is three years hard work of really, really crafting it into the great little package that is Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

We have seen a lot more map editors and other kind of editors within the console range. Far Cry 2 is the thing that comes to my mind at the moment. Why didn't you opt to put an editor in the console version?

One of the things, it was going to be a push to get the editor to work on the console as well as the one on the PC. The one that the PC guys are going to get is almost the exact same one that the mission designers at Codemasters use.

So does that mean they can create as big or as small an area as they want?

Absolutely. They can make entire missions. They'll be able to do missions as good as the dev team from-

But is there a limit on the perimeter of how far they can create?

Not at all. They can do exactly what the mission designers can do at Codemasters. We can't wait to see what happens when the PC version comes out with the editor, because we're looking forward to seeing what the community comes up with, with all the cool things you can do with the editor, because at the end of the day we've only got ten mission designers, and when you open it up to thousands of people, it's going to be really, really fun to see all the new stuff that people come up with, especially as you can create entire missions based around being the PLA rather than the USMC, which will be cool.

Going back to the point about editor on console though, yes, it is a thing that we've been hearing from the community, and it's something that obviously we said we're not doing now, but who knows for the future, or possibly future projects? One thing that we are proud of is unlike the last Flashpoint, this game is coming out on console simultaneously with PC, which is something that's never been done before from Codemasters of the Flashpoint brand. We're very proud for that and we hope that the console guys stay with us. The game, when it comes out - we're not going “Right, here's your game that you've been waiting for for ages, that's it, we're off doing something else.” We have lots of plans for DLC and we are going to be supporting the community because the community has stuck by us and has supported us for a long time, and so we want to give something back to the community. So there is DLC planned, and I can't really go into more detail than that.

You can!

I know, I know.

You can. It's only me, Tim.

I know. But no, I can't. I'm sure you will hear stuff... I'm not exactly sure when, but likelihood is sometime shortly after release.

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