WOLVERINES!

Homefront First Look

The thing about games (or movies for that matter) that depict dystopian future realities, is that they can be so depressing and frightening but plausible deniability can help you sleep at night. The machines are never really going to going to rise up and destroy humanity. No super plague is going to turn the world’s population, save one guy with a shotgun and a chainsaw, into a horde of brain-eating zombies. Well, probably not. Fingers crossed.

But some futuristic visions of the downfall of civilization seem entirely plausible, and are therefore completely terrifying. Homefront from THQ and developer Kaos – they brought us Frontlines: Fuel of War last year – presents us with a dystopian future that seems completely possible, even to those who aren’t died in the wool conspiracy theorists. At least you’ll have some awesome real-world military equipment to keep you warm at night.

The story, written by famed screenwriter John Milius (Apocalypse Now, Red Dawn), is set in 2027, when the world is suffering through a severe energy crisis. American civilization has collapsed, and people have moved back to a more agrarian lifestyle where they grow their own food and generate their own clean wind energy. Sounds cool, right? It would be if the North Koreans weren’t the new superpower in the world, who have taken back their neighbors to the south and are now invading the U.S. This is bad. It’s sort of like Red Dawn, with the DPRK replacing the USSR.

Just like in Red Dawn, the American spirit won’t die, and you are a part of the resistance fighting back against this aggressor. The demo we saw at THQ’s E3 2009 booth began with your character Conner being shown around a suburban cul-de-sac that has been converted into a resistance outpost. Everywhere you look people are working to sustain themselves by growing food and building windmills for electricity. But this is also a military outpost. Guns are everywhere. The struggle to survive goes beyond defending themselves against military threats and includes basic human needs.

The weaponry on display is all based on things that exist now in the real world, either as equipment currently in use by our military, or things that exist only now in 2009 as prototypes. This is not a sci-fi game: there are no lasers or teleporters or any other crazy stuff. This is a genuine and realistic vision of the near future, based on some of the more depressing yet plausible ideas put forth by futurists.

After the introduction to this little suburban dead end, our hero quickly came under attack from a North Korean hit squad. Armored vehicles stream into the neighborhood spraying machine gun fire and unloading soldiers. He quickly grabbed a rocket launcher and destroyed a jeep that was speeding at him. While watching, I remarked to myself that the fact that the burning vehicle came dramatically flying right at the camera seemed pretty lucky for a live demo. Turns out that the game features something called the “drama engine” that makes things like this happen in real time. So prepare to have exploding things look intentionally happen through some dynamic scripting action.

Once the battle starts turning against your favor, it was time to call in the Goliath, a remote-controlled armored vehicle that’s based on real-life equipment that our military-industrial complex is currently developing. You can choose targets for the vehicle and tell it where to go without actually getting in and driving it. The rocket launcher on its roof made quick work of the remaining invaders.

This short little demo was all we got to see of the game live, but there are some further details that came to light in the subsequent question and answer session with the developers. There will be multiplayer, supporting up to 32 players over Xbox Live. You will also be able to commandeer vehicles, including flying ones. The story will take you from the ruined suburbs of Colorado and will move west through the U.S., climaxing at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. That sounds like one hell of an adventure to save the future of our good old U.S. of A.

Homefront looks like a great idea for a story backed up with a really great-looking and obviously action-packed first-person shooter. Though the game won’t be out until sometime in 2010, we’re really looking forward to seeing more from THQ about this title over the coming months.

Rivera said:
hey Paul, look, the brits remade it.

heh.

motorfirebox said:

GOOD SIR WOLVERINES I SAY

Rivera said:
australians, brits... all those limey bastards look alike