Homefront: "I promise you it competes"

THQ core games boss Danny Bilson has staked his reputation on new shooter Homefront. He reckons it can go toe-to-toe with even the biggest out there - including Call of Duty.

"There's no room for average games any more in the world," declared Bilson at a press conference this afternoon.

"I promise you [Homefront] competes with everybody else in the genre; in the shooter genre, in the action genre, or what I like to call the 'you're in the movie' genre.

"This is an incredible experience."

But one six-to-10 hours long, he went on to say.

"Homefront has a heavy emphasis on the multiplayer, but the single-player is extraordinary. It really is.

"I'm going to be really honest," he added. "To get ... 20 hours of single-player, you'd have to sacrifice perhaps the depth of the multiplayer. Or have a five-year schedule and unlimited budget.

"Like the other single-player games, you're going to find our single-player to be in the six-to-10-hour range, and the multiplayer possible in the 100-hour range."

Homefront is being made by Kaos Studios for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. The premise is that in 2027, North Korea will invade and occupy the US. It's "speculative fiction", Bilson said - it's not meant to ruffle any political feathers.

"When you play it I don't think you're going to be asking yourself, 'Well this could never happen.' You'll enjoy the emotion and the terror of being in an occupied country," Bilson claimed.

"To a point, this is a global game, because it's not that important that it's America. It's that important that it's an invaded, occupied homeland. There are countries in this world that have suffered occupation, and everything we do in this game is based on history, not exactly fantasy - it's just transmitted through a future fantasy.

"So the things you're going to see in the first five minutes of Homefront are things people saw in Poland in World War II, for instance," he added, "or in Cambodia, or in other parts of the world today. I don't want to get too political, but you'll see there is a reality to it."

Bilson revealed there would be a novel published by Random House available "right after the first of the year" that takes you into the world as a journalist travelling across a decimated US landscape.

The whole idea came from the "paranoid fiction" of Cold War America that Bilson grew up in. "What do I do if my homeland is invaded and my family is under siege?" he asked.

Eurogamer sent Christian Donlan along to play Homefront earlier this month. His appraisal awaits.

Danny Bilson was speaking on the day THQ unveiled its new super-studio in Montreal, Canada. The office hopes to house up to 400 developers and pump out the world's biggest and best core games. Patrice Désilets, the maker of Assassin's Creed, will begin leading a THQ project next summer there.

Homefront will be released in March 2011.