'With most games, you have this huge focus on visuals, which have no real payoff on gameplay except for immersion. And while the trailer, comprised wholly of in-game footage, looks fantastic, Wedgwood is quick to point out that it's not just eye candy, that there's an actual marriage of technology and gameplay going on under the hood, including the addition of what's being referred to as the 'megatexture.' 'At this stage of development, where the interface and communication aren't perfect yet, it's easier to have a test with a whole bunch of people if they really know Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and some of the competing games.'Īfter a few years of playing Enemy Territory in the aging Quake III engine, it's exciting to see the game getting upgraded to the latest technology used for DOOM 3 and QUAKE 4. 'You could never be really sure (if things are working) until you had a really good playtest with loads of people who are familiar with the game,' says Wedgwood. It's not enough to have people testing maps to make sure everything works right you have to have groups of experienced players banging away, making sure one team or class doesn't have an unfair advantage over the other. One of the main challenges with developing an objective and class-based game like Enemy Territory is in its depth. 'Now we can start banging across the net with everyone and get feedback in specific areas, rather than the game being one big bug.' 'We're able to start thinking about things like vehicle speeds, which is a really good state to be at,' Wedgwood continues. Having the game in a playable state was a big step for the team, allowing it to to start pinpointing which areas needed the most work. 'We've played the game across the 'net, but this was the first time we all got together and had a blast in the same room with loads of people on the server and played it properly and could react in real-time to stuff.' 'Kevin (Cloud) and Tim Willits and a bunch of people from Activision (the game's publisher) came out to visit Splash Damage and we had our first playable,' says Wedgwood.

To start things off, we asked what was new with the game since we last saw it at E3.

In addition to adding the cutting-edge visuals of the DOOM 3 / QUAKE 4 engine technology, Quake Wars will add freely-controllable vehicles to the mix, all brought to life in a jaw-dropping trailer that had gamers drooling at this year's E3.Īt this year's QuakeCon in Grapevine, Texas, we caught up with Splash Damage's Paul Wedgwood and id Software's Kevin Cloud to find out how things were progressing with the title, currently slated for a 2006 release. Dropping the WWII theme of the hit multiplayer game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, developer Splash Damage (working alongside id Software) is bringing its unique take on objective-based teamplay to the Quake universe, set about 50 years in the future.

ONE OF THE BEST SURPIRSES of this year's E3 was the announcement of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

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