Interviews | Call of Duty World At War
David Suarez Talks COD World At War And Why Dead Nazis Are Good For Sales
October 16, 2008
Ach du lieber! If it seems like you can’t point a virtual MG42 without sparking off an invasion of Poland or accidentally winging some poor Kraut in the wiener schnitzel these days, blame game designers. They still haven’t tired of defecating on Hitler’s grave. And who can blame them? Shooting at Hitler (and his minions) equals game sales. The last year alone has brought such gems as Turning Point, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway and Sudden Strike 3 just to name a few, not including My SAT Coach, which actually boasts the tagline, and we quote, “Train tomorrow’s master race!”*
Thankfully for holiday shoppers determined to hang a few Nazi ears from the family tree, Activision will offer an express ticket back to the front when Call of Duty: World at War (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) ships November 11. A chronological step back for the franchise, which made the jump from 1940s-era engagements to contemporary battles in its last iteration to the tune of countless awards and 10 million copies sold, kind of made me wonder “why mess with a good thing?” New additions like Pacific theater setting, four-man online co-op, vehicle-based multiplayer and flamethrower-fueled orgies of destruction aside, how many times can players re-take Iwo Jima before spewing their K-rations? Executive producer Daniel Suarez weighs in to plead the game’s case, and talk drugs, deviant sex, Kraftwerk and more…
* Disclaimer: Not true, but that’s probably what they were thinking.
Das Gamer: Call us daft, but, uh, after spending an assload of time, money and manpower to differentiate the last Call of Duty rehash by refocusing it on modern warfare, why take the L train straight back to 1942?
Daniel Suarez: Call of Duty 4 was a huge success, yes. But two key things came out of it. One, a great technology engine, and two, it was the first time a Call of Duty title had been rated Mature. Those two features allowed us to go back and say that we wanted to redefine World War II the way Modern Warfare did the modern military shooter.
What COD4 did was really blow out a few key areas. Multiplayer was huge, story quality was redefined and it really blew out the graphic presentation. The team at Treyarch actually got the game engine two years before that title came out and saw what they could do. So they chose to focus here on redefining World War II in terms of intensity, and providing a darker, grittier take versus what’s existed previously.
Maybe so, but apart from the producer possibly running short on Prozac the week it was conceptualized, what’s with all the doom and gloom? In concrete terms, what does going a bloodier route really add to the experience?
Daniel Suarez: Number one, we have a new location: The Pacific. With that comes a new palette – dark, lush jungles – with new places for opponents to hide. And with the shift comes new enemies too: The Japanese Imperial Army. They are a different adversary than anything we’ve seen in Call of Duty. They think differently than Nazi soldiers. They think differently than Middle Eastern enemies. Their tactical approach is completely unique – they’re not afraid to die, or be unpredictable. We’ve been focused on creating an enemy you can’t second-guess, which almost creates a sense of survival horror that you didn’t get before.
We have a military advisor, Hank Keirsey, who went and interviewed a bunch of veterans who’d fought at Peleliu, Okinawa and Iwo Jima and told us about their experiences, how it was the first taste of guerrilla warfare these guys and the U.S. military had experienced, or ever seen. They told us about things like Japanese tree snipers, guys who’d cover themselves in foliage, climb a tree and wait for days at a time for American soldiers to come by, and carefully pick their victim. And they’d pick someone they knew they could wound enough to keep alive, so that when that guy got shot a medic would come, and they could then kill the medic. Because they’d know that then, anyone else they’d hit would be dead for sure.
Another thing they’d do is if they were going down a road and saw the Marines coming, they wouldn’t surrender – ever. The U.S. military was actually rewarded for capturing Japanese soldiers, but rarely did. It’s because the Japanese would pull a grenade pin from their pocket and run at the Marines full bore, hoping to kill as many guys as possible. We’ve tried to recreate that fanaticism here: This is an enemy that wasn’t scared to do whatever it took.
And was, like, way into tentacle porn…
Daniel Suarez: [Laughs] Yes, that too. So what this allowed us to do was create a situation where you never really know what the hell is going on. We’ve meticulously recreated a bunch of authentic Japanese tactics to make these guys really stand out. We’ve got tree snipers, guys in spider holes, entrenched underground bunkers, areas where Kamikaze planes are crashing into U.S. ships, guys who’ll pull grenades and blow themselves up. It’s a different way of seeing things, and creates this more intense World War II game than anything seen before.
The flip side to that is, basically, how do you fight them? That’s where new weapons like the flamethrower come in. Anything you see in the environment – foliage, cover, even human flesh – will burn and char. It raises the stakes on the game’s brutality. You’ve got these guys screaming, writhing in pain, trying to put the fires out. It makes for a much more realistic and grittier depiction of World War II than players are used to. Other advances with fire include Molotov cocktails, and flame tanks.
