“WarPath” Takes You to a Shooter Sanctuary
By Louis Bedigian

“Based on the Unreal Engine with Havoc Physics, we've developed a title that focuses on three races battling for control of a virtual Eden.”

Bob was a lonely fellow. He used to spend his days and nights hogging the only Metal Slug game at his favorite arcade. Of course, he wasn't really hogging it. Though he told himself that no one else was allowed to play, the fact of the matter was that no one else wanted to play. They were too busy clamoring for the Tekken and Mortal Kombat machines, leaving Bob to continue by his lonesome self.

One day a guy came up and put a quarter on the machine. He was a short man with really long ears and a pointy nose. His hair was long and thick but partially hidden by a green baseball cap.

"No co-op," Bob told the man.

"But you've been playing all day," he replied. "Can't you grant me one brief game? If you do, I'll make it worth your while."

Bob raised an eyebrow. Not both – just the left one. He hadn't raised two eyebrows since the 80s, and that was during an Aerosmith concert. (Some girls were going "crazy" in the row in front of him.) He couldn't remember the last time he raised just one.

"What's your name?" Bob inquired.

"URL, but you can call me Link."

"Hey, wait a minute, are you—"

"No I'm not, but I get that a lot," URL chuckled. "Anyway, let's get down to business. Let me play one game and I'll tell you about your future."

"I don't buy it." Bob doesn't believe in crystal balls.

"No, it's true. You like action, right? Excitement? Explosions? Endless hours of lethal destruction?"

Bob's eyes widened. He was downright intrigued but not about to show it. "Uh....yeah."

"Then follow the path – the path to war. That's all I can say. I don't know the rest, but I swear, if you follow that path, one day you will find true happiness."

Bob scoffed at the thought, then quickly wrote down URL's advice on his I Heart Arcades notepad.

URL grabbed his quarter off the machine. "So how about my game?"

Bob put his hand on the joystick. "What game? Come back in 10 years. If you turn out to be right, the game's all yours."

Bob was unaware that URL, though not entirely coherent, was on the right track. In Bob's future, he would come across a new first-person shooter from Groove Games, WarPath. Built for gamers like Bob who just can't get enough action (and secretly hate gaming alone), WarPath is a multiplayer-infused shooter with tons of weapons, upgrades, and three unique races.

Groove Games held a conference call to tell us more about the studio, their game, and their goals, and we were there in full force to get all the exciting details.

Chris Astolfo, Director of Marketing and Communications, began the call with a brief overview of the company. “Some of you know who Groove Games are, some of you don’t,” he said. “We’re one of three publishers in the greater Toronto area. We started in 2001. We’ve had about 27 titles for multiple platforms. Right now we’re developing first-party titles in-house. We’re also publishing third-party titles. It’s a good mix of assets coming out of our company. I hope you guys hear from us in the coming months and coming years. We’re really looking at expanding in this space.”

He continued by telling us when WarPath came into the picture. “WarPath was a game that came to us middle of last year. We thought there was going to be a good market here for a title of this nature, a first-person shooter. We’ve developed it for the Xbox and PC. We’re distributing it nationally to the big retail chains, so you’ll see it in stores. It ships on the 18th of July.

“Based on the Unreal Engine with Havoc Physics, we’ve developed a title that focuses on three races battling for control of a virtual Eden. There are a few interesting features about this game that are different from others out there. (1) There’s a strategic component. (2) The addition of being able to play any of the three races. (3) An extremely compelling multiplayer mode on both the PC and the Xbox. We should note that the PC version has the ability to have a 32-player mode with a dedicated server. That’s different from the Xbox.”

WarPath = Pariah Sequel

Chris revealed that WarPath began as a sequel to the first-person shooter Pariah. “But after doing the focus testing and going out on the forums and message boards,” he says, “we found that gamer feedback shows that the multiplayer feature was the component of Pariah that stood out the most. We wanted to take the opportunity to focus on that.”

Zandro Chan, Director of Game Development and Senior Producer on WarPath, adds, “Some of the goals we had, and this was from getting feedback from Pariah, is that we wanted this to be a very multiplayer-centric game. We wanted to keep the gameplay true to what made FPS [games] fun to begin with, like with the old days of Quake and Unreal. We wanted the gameplay to be blatantly fast. We wanted the levels to be designed semi-vertically, where players can do vertical jumps, a lot of acrobats. You must attack and defend in that way.”

The Price Is Right

Chris pointed out that in addition to being a great game, WarPath is also a great value. “I wanted to note that the Xbox version retails for $29.99. It’s a decent value for your dollar, especially since the core audience is on Xbox. There are lot of installed Xbox users, and we wanted to make sure we addressed that user base.”

Delayed With a Purpose?

WarPath was originally scheduled for release sometime before E3. So why are we just now getting our hands on this surreal shooter? “We had two main factors here,” Chris informs us. “The release date was pushed to summer for a couple different reasons. The original release date was going to be slightly before the E3 trade show. We didn’t want to get buried in all the noise of that show in what we thought would be highly-anticipated press announcements and all the hoopla surrounding it. Surrounding Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, launch titles, and the Wii stuff. We pushed the game to summer to make sure we could launch it properly.

“The second reason for this was that Groove Games had recently switched our distribution companies. A lot of red tape with making sure we found the appropriate contract, get the production done and shipped to the right warehouses, and set up the right distribution so we can send it to retail. Those were the main two factors.”

Screening Room

Many Xbox shooters offer old-style gameplay via split-screen multiplayer. Though this feature can be a lot of fun, it can also be quite an undertaking for developers on a tight schedule. Zandro Chan explains why they had to drop it from WarPath. “The decision to drop split-screen was two-fold. One was essentially based on the timing we had with the game. The other was performance. We needed to get the game performing at standard level. We needed to decide our priorities. Because the PC does not have split-screen capability, we needed to focus on the things that work. A part of the core design again, which is the performance of the game.”

More Content

Like any game, Chris said that there were a lot of things the developers wanted to include but couldn’t. “We had flying eagles at one point. A lot of the levels, which are designed vertically, allowed you to attack at different vantage points. We [also] had a number of cool single- and multiplayer vehicles, [including] a hovercraft, dropships and things like that. They were very memory-intensive. We didn’t have the time to flesh out and optimize everything.”

But what we really want to know is if any of this stuff will make it into the game in the future via Xbox Live. “Additional content is definitely a possibility. We had so much fun developing the game. There is a lot of stuff that we’d want to add later. But that’s mostly dependent on how well the game is received.”

Why WarPath is on Xbox, Not 360

First of all, Chris wanted to assure us that, despite rumors and speculation, there were never any plans to scrap the original Xbox version. What about an Xbox 360 edition as well? “The installed base for [original] Xbox is still fairly large and fairly aggressively purchasing games. There’s a great demand at retail for Xbox titles. Not everyone has bought up to the next-gen platforms yet. We think that this is a market that needed to be addressed. We’re hoping that we give these guys a solid game for their aging platform.”

The Next Generation

Chris was not at liberty to reveal much about their future projects. He was, however, able to confirm that they are ready to get their groove on for the next generation. “We can’t say too much on this. We’re going to be very aggressive moving forward in this space, developing for next-generation consoles. We won’t abandon the existing consoles we’re developing for. But look for more on this in the next month to month-and-a-half timeframe.”

Q&A Time

Screenshots indicate that there will be multiple camera perspectives (third- and first-person views). Is that the case?

Chris: WarPath is a first-person shooter. The only time that you will see gameplay from the third-person perspective is when you enter a vehicle. Or when you’re dead. But that’s kind of a spectator mode. Other than that, the screenshots that you saw were created for marketing purposes to bring out the intensity of the action.

What is the "C.A.M." device? What does it do, how does it relate to the upgrade system, etc.?

Zandro: C.A.M. is an acronym for Combat Augmentation Module. It’s essentially a power-up in the game that you [acquire] after killing an opponent. When you pick up a power-up, depending on the weapon that you have and the level of upgrade you’re shooting for, you could attach these modules to the weapon and gain the next weapon abilities.

Multiplayer features? Maps? Game types? What can you tell us about all of these? (This could be broken down into three parts, depending on how much of this question actually pertains to WarPath.)

Zandro: There are quite a few multiplayer features in the game. It ranges from the tried-and-true deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture-the-flag, to the more skilled Frontline Assault, where team members and opponents are pushed on an assault point back and forth. One person is trying to kill the target while the other is defending.

Tell us about the engine you’re using. Is it the same as the one used in Pariah?

Zandro: It is the base engine from Pariah, but we’ve tweaked quite a bit of things in there. If you’ve seen the WarPath trailer or played the demo, you’ll notice that the game is quite a bit faster than Pariah.

Thanks to everyone at Groove Games and Kohnke Communications for having a wonderful conference call.