E3 2015 - Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 Dev Demo
CI Games is not a name most people will know, they make good
games, but they mostly fly under the radar, which I think works for them, but
with the upcoming Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, they wanted to do something different
from past Sniper games and so far it's heading down the right track.
I was lucky enough to sit down with the developers and see a
live demo of the game at E3 and I came away way more impressed than I thought.
The game at no point holds your hand and it will test you, but that is where
the fun lies. A civil war has erupted in Georgia between nationalists and Russian
speaking ethnic forces and as such is has become a war between the USA and
Russia, though neither side is admitting to it. You were retired but have been
reactivated for the sole purpose of going in and doing what you can to sought
it out.
It was at this point our demo started, we were making our
way from our starting location back towards our safehouse, which was not really
a safehouse as much as it was a cave, but never mind that. On the way, we had
to maintain cover when near the edge of a cliff as there were jets doing
fly-bys and if we were spotted they could call it in and we would have to deal
with soldiers. As we approached a camp up a ways, using the scope from the
rifle we were carrying, we were able to spot some soldiers and a sniper, who
were on guard duty, noting where they were gave us the chance to slip around
them and as we did, some foot prints were found.
A sniper goes through some serious training and using that
in the game, we were able to track back the footprints and along the way found
where they had deployed some landmines, which we were able to avoid by
following the soldiers foot prints who left them on the ground. After making
our way around those traps we were headed straight for our safehouse, which
lead to us getting a mission. Now it was at this point that the devs running
the demo session advised that at no point is anything set in stone, we could have
taken that mission and gone ahead with it, or we could have taken it and then
moved onto something else, the world runs all the time.
They had already unlocked a second safehouse closer to
objective for the mission we collected, so we fast travelled there, the devs
pointed out this was not teleportation, it was the sniper making his way from
point a to point b, all the while the world keeps moving. Once we were in our
other safehouse, we could equip the gear we wanted to take on the mission and
we then set out, but now the world was not bright and sunny the clouds had
rolled in and the weather had turned against us. After making our way to a
point near the base, we were able to determine a good vantage point for looking
at everything, the devs got our guy up there, pausing for a few moments to let
a pair of soldiers pass on by.
It was at this point the dev guys noted that soldiers are
not just going to go for a little walk, stand still and light a smoke and say ‘I
am here, please kill me’ because that is not how real soldiers do things. Once
we were able to move forward again, we set off and soon found ourselves
overlooking the camp where the enemy had set up. Again using the scope of the
rifle, we were able to take a look around, note where soldiers were setup and
where everything else was. An enemy sniper was perched on the roof, who was
scanning all the time for anything out of the ordinary, like us for example. We
saw a data server which we could use to access the camera feed around the
place, but we could not wander in there ourselves, so it would be up to the
drone we carry, of course that sniper was still in the way.
This is where the refined sniper mechanics came into play,
we were able to determine how far away the sniper was, the wind speed and temp,
which would all indicate how the bullet would travel. It was here that the dev
team advised that every bullet counts in the game, meaning you can’t just run
in there all one man army and try to take them all out. After making sure everything
was good, the shot was taken and the enemy sniper was removed, making it clear
for our drone to take off. Once in the air, we took control of the drone and
went about making our way into the room where the data server was stored, while
the sniper was gone, we still had to be careful as the drone could have been
spotted.
After a few close calls, which included bouncing the drone
of some walls, we made it into the room and were able to determine where our
target was, the general who was brought in to get the facility back on
schedule. Once we had determined the location of our target, we were given a
multitude of choices in terms of location to make our move, one of them had us
at 3 meters behind the general, which would have meant a knife kill, but there
were others where our sniping skills were better applied. The big thing to note
here is that we were told whatever way you make your way in to kill, you need
to be able to locate your own way out, there is no magic ending, you need to
get yourself out of any danger you put yourself in.
We were able, with a few hiccups along the way, to make it
to our chosen location, there were already soldiers there, one sniper and one
spotter. After taking out the spotter, we were able to take out the sniper and
then settle in for our moment. Through the scope we were able to see the
general deal very harshly with some of the workers who decided to take things
outside and as he dealt with that, we dealt with him. A single shot and down he
went and up went the alarm bells, though we were not really close, soldiers
were coming from us, guns going off around us and more, it was time for us to
get out of there. It was at this point in the demo that a helicopter came in to
get us out, something that won’t happen in the game, only for the E3 demo and
what a demo it was. Everything was on point, the visuals looked amazing, even
though it was only marked as alpha, If the gameplay can keep as fun and
engaging the whole way through, this might just be something special.
Luke Henderson