Conflict developer looking for 'people to shoot'

The developer behind the No.1 Conflict series dropped the first hints on the direction of its next title in the series, following the chart topping success of the recently released Conflict: Vietnam.

Speaking with CVG this week, Pivotal boss Jim Bambara refused to detail which war the Bath-based team would be focusing on for its next Conflict game, but admitted it wouldn't be going over old ground again: "We don't want to just churn out endless games in Vietnam and Iraq," he assured.

"The beauty of the Conflict series is that we can take anything from World War II onwards and do great games based on those backgrounds, but I don't want to say any more at this stage. We're always looking for new places to go, new, interesting people to shoot," Bambara warned. Make sure you look pretty normal the next time you head down to the West Country. You never know when that bullet might head your way.

That the team is even considering World War II is a clue, but may well feel the genre is saturated enough as it is, although Bambara insists "we want to make games that people can see as interesting and real... conflicts that people have seen on TV or in the movies, and can relate to." Your guess is as good as ours, but another WWII game always seems to be the fallback, and would admittedly lend itself very well to the squad-based premise; think of a more mass market Hidden & Dangerous.

The Pivotal chief was predictably evasive when quizzed about its next gen plans other than it was "exciting" and "we're looking at what we can do", but later in the interview talked through a wish list of improvements he wanted to make to future Conflict games, including moving to "a larger world [with] more things going on," and that "the gameplay can only get better... because we'll be able to do much more with the combat model, how the characters act, the way the enemies work, and generally the way the world looks".

On the subject of narrative, Bambara is equally determined to up the ante: "We want to build more on our storytelling," he asserted, adding "we're concentrating more on who the characters are, what they feel and what they do, which gives you more identification. It's more movie-style stuff. More storyboarding. It's all stuff we're working on."