"We want to immerse the player in epic battles"

Tom Clancy's EndWar is looking to revolutionise the way you play strategy games. Ubisoft's Michael de Plater, Creative Director of the game, reveals why voice command is the future of unit control.

Where did the original idea come from to use voice activation?

We knew we wanted to make the player a General so we watched lots of movies with sequences of Commanders controlling soldiers; for example the films Black Hawk Down, Aliens and We Were Soldiers were great inspirations. In all these cases what is that Commander doing? He's talking to the soldiers, so it was very natural to think of voice command.

What were the most important elements to take on board when considering voice activation controls?

Reliability. It has to work more than 90% of the time for players to trust it. Once you break this barrier it becomes totally natural.

How difficult was it to test the voice activated controls in terms of response time, getting the game to understand all the commands and so on?

Getting it to 80% was very easy; we just plugged in the software. Getting it to 90% was very hard and took a lot of iterations of testing, optimising the software and very carefully choosing the vocabulary we used in the game. For example we went through the words "cursor", "crosshair", "reticule" and "target" half a dozen times before finding the best term to use.

What challenges were there in terms of localisation, such as accents and dialect, and how did you overcome them?

Once the core system worked the localisation was very easy and efficient. Of course we had to repeat the testing and optimise and polish the vocabulary slightly but overall it was straightforward.

How do you think traditional real time strategy players will manage the change from conventional controls into voice activated ones?

The only hard thing is just getting people to try it for the first time. Once they've used it for five minutes they realise it's not a gimmick, it's just a very natural and effective way to play the game. What's great is that players simply forget they are using it because it becomes totally natural. My favourite forum post was a guy saying how the voice command had become so natural so quickly that he now finds himself shouting orders at other games when he plays them.

What other genres do you think voice-over could be used effectively for or would benefit from?

Any game which simulates something you would do in the real world using your voice, and that's a lot of stuff. Some obvious examples where voice would be the natural input method could be play calling for a sports game or spell casting in a role playing game. And of course conversation in role playing games, which you currently navigate as menu options. Why not speak them?

Can you tell us more about the function of weapons of mass destruction in the game?

The WMDs are there to make sure that matches are exciting and climatic right to the end. Often in real time strategy games the end of the match is the boring bit, someone actually won the game 60% of the way through and the last ten minutes are basically just mopping up. WMDs are a last chance for the player who is behind to turn the battle around.

How does EndWar take advantage of the PlayStation 3 system's capabilities?

I think that EndWar is a genuine next generation game. The gameplay itself would not have been possible on [previous generation systems], so it's not just a prettier version of something you played five years ago, it's really a new experience on console. You need hundreds and hundreds of characters rendered at a high level of detail to bring these epic battles to life.

What were the essential elements you wanted to capture in EndWar in terms of visuals, presentation and gameplay?

We wanted to immerse the player into the middle of epic battles. For 15 years RTS games have shown you computer generated movies of epic 3D battles and then you start a mission and you're looking top down at a 2D environment with little cartoon soldiers in it. We wanted to create an experience closer to the trailers. Also, we wanted it to feel like a real war game.

How does the novel tie in to the game?

The novel does a great job of introducing the themes of the game, the rivalry between the superpowers, the new arms race in space, the effects of the missile shield and how the end of nuclear war ironically makes the world a dangerous place. And it's got lots of great battle scenes with good attention to detail featuring the 21st century military tech that we use in EndWar.

How do you feel the RTS genre has evolved into the next generation and where do you think it can go next?

I think that the RTS genre has split in two. There are games which focus on resource management and building and there is a growing genre of RTT or Real Time Tactical Games which focus more on the tactics and action of the battlefield. For example EndWar, [is something I] would describe as RTT. I think that RTT will be a great direction for the genre to grow as it shares so much in common with the tactical and strategic features of shooters, but on a massive scale.