As Brenna described it, Brink is "the shooter you should be talking about". With eye candy that makes Killzone 2 look 8-bit, co-op mechanics to shame Halo and an acrobatic system that'll make Mirror's Edge jealous, this is shaping up to be one of the must-have titles of 2010. Especially considering it has dedicated server support! Armed with your questions, we caught up with Richard Ham, Creative Director at Splash Damage, for a chat.

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Richard Ham, Creative Director, Splash Damage

a3gis: There's a lot of talk about the S.M.A.R.T system letting you get around obstacles in the terrain, but what happens if the obstacle is another player/NPC? Will the system allow you to vault off their shoulders to get through a choke point, pants them to make them crouch so you can jump over, or will it be the standard fps stuck-on-your-buddy effort?
Richard: One of the most important things for us in the development of Brink is ensuring that all the standard “griefing” maneuvers that jerks can do online are taken care of, because we want as many people as possible to have fun when they’re in multiplayer. One bad egg can ruin it for everyone.

So to solve the common problem of the guy who stands in front of the doorway, blocking his entire team, we don’t have collision between players at all. So everyone can walk through everyone. However, to ensure players can’t take advantage of this (by having a small body-type player “hide” inside a big body type) players will get gently “pushed” away from each other if they stop moving.

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The Brink ecosystem in action
Otto-matic: If it is P2P, will you implement a strong localisation mechanism that makes it very unlikely for Australian gamers to suffer lag connecting to a US host?
Richard: On PC, we’re fully supporting a traditional dedicated server system so connections should be fine and dandy. For consoles, we’re peer-to-peer and are definitely focusing on quality of service for all our matchmaking. We’re also keying our matchmaking on friends, so that should help give console players control over the quality of the connections.

Mr Cyberpunk: Will Bethesda be putting any form of DRM or Windows Live requirement into the game? (respond YES and prepare for flamage!)
Richard: We are not planning to be a Games for Windows Live title, so that won’t be a requirement. No decision has been made yet on anything related to DRM.

Cirok: For the PC version, is there going to a developer console, or a way you can adjust various settings such as FOV/Weapon View etc, like in TF2?
Richard: If you look at our previous games (Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory), you can get an idea of the kind of range of control you get through our in-game developer console via manipulating cvars and the like.

Mr Cyberpunk: What Anti-Cheat measures are you taking and what is your feeling towards cheating and anti-cheat systems?
Richard: As we’re a Steam game, we will be using VAC. On top of that, we’re big proponents of giving players the tools to police themselves and weed out the bad apples.

War: Are they going to be geared towards the modding community at all? Their publisher Bethesda have always been quite supportive of the modders to ensure a games longevity and appeal, is splash damage going to follow suit?
Richard: We don’t have any announced plans at this point, but as you mentioned, both Bethesda and Splash Damage have a strong reputation for supporting the modding community.



Shrew: How have Splash Damage addressed what now seems to be the almost mandatory need to have “persistent unlocks” in a FPS game? By what means do you reward a skilled player that enjoys your game but cannot access new skins or weapons due to Real Life commitments / constraints. Why should a less skilled player, simply because they have more time on their hands to play game X, be rewarded by unlocking weapon Y?
Richard: We don’t want Brink to be a game where you have to put hundreds of hours in just to unlock everything in the game. We’re not big fans of the “grind,” and in fact we don’t include any systems like “score 100 headshot kills to unlock the scope for just this one gun.” In general, we’re pretty generous with our unlockables - for example, when you unlock a weapon modification such as a new scope or a silencer, you unlock it for all of the guns at once. For us, we first and foremost want to ensure that players are having fun all of the time. But we also want to create a situation where the more you put into the game, the more the game will give in return!

With a spring 2010 release, Brink can't come soon enough. We'll have a detailed preview of the game in just a few short weeks.