Liver&Onions

Montréal, Canada, May 2, 2006 – You’re not alone soldier, not anymore. Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) today unveiled details of the action title that has been kept top secret for the past year. Developed at EA’s boutique production house in Montréal, Canada, the new, original intellectual property will redefine strategic TWO man cooperative play when it launches on the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Xbox360™ videogame system from Microsoft in 2007. ARMY OF TWO™ will throw gamers into hot spots ripped from current day headlines where they will utilize unique TWO man strategies and tactics while seamlessly transitioning between playing with intelligent Partner AI (PAI) and a live player. When one man is not enough, it will take an army of two to fight through war, political turmoil and a conspiracy so vast it threatens the entire world.



Alain Tascan, VP and General Manager of EA Montréal has been serving as Executive Producer on the title. Tascan comments, “ARMY OF TWO is a first for EA in many ways. This is the first EA studio to be built entirely from the ground-up. This is EA’s first original title for the next-gen systems. ARMY OF TWO is the first game to put players inside tactical warfare involving Private Military Corporations.”



Reid Schneider, Senior Producer at EA Montréal noted, “This is the game we’ve always wanted to create. Until now, the hardware would not allow us to deliver truly intelligent AI characters. We’ve built this game with co-operative TWO man gameplay as the centerpiece of the experience. Whether you’re playing with PAI or a friend, it’s about the TWO man missions, TWO man strategies and the TWO man advantage that really sets this game apart.”

PixyJunket

Original as in not based on an existing property, yes. But a tactical, covert-ops FPS? I guess it doesn't state that it's an FPS, maybe it's a two-player Splinter Cell? Still, an entirely two-player co-op action or adventure game would be pretty cool so hopefully they pull off a unique experience based around that! I am confused about their next-gen statement, from my game development experience and knowledge, A.I. should be limited by the intuitiveness of the programmers, not the hardware.

The Bus

"Until now, the hardware would not allow us to deliver truly intelligent AI characters."

It's not AI, it's scripts. Since when is the hardware a limitation for that?

Liver&Onions

But without adequate hardware, writing the more intensive scripts and other programs wouldn't do much, except take a LONG TIME. We need the hardware power to run the scripts faster, to allow that much more decision making to go on before a choice is made.

PixyJunket

Except that A.I. routines don't be take up that much processing power. Next-gen hardware may make it easier for inexperienced developers to create decent A.I. scripts without accounting for everything else that's going on in the game.. but it's not opening any doors that weren't there before.

DVDChris

This game better have online coop.

Liver&Onions

But imagine a choice that the CPU has to make that takes up a few hundred (or thousand) cycles, and that choice dictates another choice...etc. You're limited by factors like depth pipeline, branching, looping, and even pure clock speed.

If the processor predicts one branch on a path, then actually has to revert to take another, the pipe has to be flushed and the new branch both loaded into the pipe and executed.

kakihara1

True on a console like the PS2 game developers were confined by the limited memory that system offered. I've heard of games that take upwards of 15% of the CPU time just for the AI and that still only allowed for a few On screen enemies to act independantly of one another. The more realistic you want your AI the more cycles it takes. The last generation of games simply didn't have the luxury of AI over Graphical content.

jeffdsmith

They say that every new generation. EVERY new generation.

Liver&Onions

And every new generation things get better, right?