GameGossip: Who is the target market for Men of Valor: Vietnam?

John Whitmore: We�re making the game for players who love high action, dramatic, historical first person shooters. Accurate scripted events, period music, and fantastic voice acting combine with some very intense gameplay to create a top tier experience for anyone who loves the FPS genre. Our support of advanced Xbox features like 720pHDTV and Dolby 5.1 stereo will make MOVV especially appealing to gamers with good home theater setups.

JW: The focus on natural environments is much different from most other games in the genre. We had to develop a number of new approaches to enable us to display the dense vegetation needed for the Vietnam setting. The challenges involved in bringing a jungle to life on screen are much different than those faced creating rice paddies, which are in turn far different from what is needed to craft the indoor or urban environments that are the usual setting for first person games. Building these levels for Xbox, with its 64 MB memory limit, has been particularly challenging.

JW: One mission has the player and his unit moving out across country in M113 APCs to investigate and clear a hamlet that is suspected of being a headquarters for local Viet Cong guerrillas. As they cross a series of rice paddies, the player�s APC gets bogged down in the mud and they are forced to disembark and slog through the paddies on foot. VC who have been tracking the unit�s progress use this opportunity to begin an ambush, and the player and his squad use the APC for cover as VC units try to overrun them or pick them off. After the player successfully repels a few VC attacks, the guerrillas set up a mortar to begin shelling the stationary APC. As the rounds strike closer, the player must retreat under covering fire and try to link up with the rest of his unit, whose APC has been hit further up the rice paddy. This mission really captures the vulnerable feeling of having to cross open areas under fire, and the bullets whizzing over head and slamming into the mud as mortar explosions draw ever closer really make you sweat. And that�s just the opening of the mission!

We are supporting a co-op mode that allows two players to play through the entire single player campaign together. We also have deathmatch and team deathmatch games where the player can choose from a variety of character classes, from an ARVN Ranger to an NVA Sapper, each with its own characteristics and abilities. There other specialized game types, including an objective based mode where two teams can fight in battles based on historical encounters of the war.

JW: We did a ton of research for the game, poring over collections of combat photography and looking at a lot of war footage to help create environments to represent the war torn areas of South Vietnam as closely as possible. Our encounters dialog, and scripted evens are drawn largely from personal accounts of the soldiers and Marines who fought in Vietnam. We recorded the sounds for period weapons and vehicles directly from firing ranges and military bases especially for the game. Overall, I think you�ll find the player experience in Men of Valor: Vietnam to feel quite authentic.