BFA: Interview mit FireScore.com

The design team rounded a big corner last night as we put the finishing touches on all the kits for our first two factions. It has taken us a while to get to this point, and it feels awfully good to get this under our belts.

It may not sound like a big deal at first. ?How hard can it be?? you ask. ?Just pick out some guns and grenades and stuff, bada bing, bada boom, you?re done!? Not so fast, my friend! In the world of the Apocalypse, there?s much more to it than that.

As I?ve pointed out before, we are working from scratch here. The post-apocalyptic world of BF:A is a gloriously blank slate, which gives us all kinds of room to come up with some really creative weapons. That?s exactly what we tried to do. You will see a few familiar weapons, like a 9mm pistol, but they?ll all get the apocalizing they deserve. But part of the reason we took a while in building these kits is that we really wanted them to be unique and to represent the factions wielding them.

We started off by laying out our factions, defining who they are, what their ideologies are, what makes them tick. Out of those four groups, we decided to focus first on the Reavers and the Remnant, since we knew they would be facing off in our first map, Ground Zero.

The Reavers are highly mobile, vicious, and not terribly bright. We wanted their kits to reflect this. They use what they know. So their melee weapons will be basic but effective: things like an axe made out of a sharpened hubcap, a broken beer bottle, lead pipes. You won?t see any regular machine guns or pistols here. Most of their primary weapons are things they have built out of car and engine parts. Their projectiles will be things like nuts and bolts, nails, and ball bearings. You?ll find guns made from such things as muffler pipes and lawnmower engines. With each one of these weapons, we tried to think about what best represented the faction, as well as the class using it.

The Remnant was originally formed by survivors who had been in various civil services: police, firemen, paramedics, etc. Now their descendents have taken on those roles, but in some cases they have misunderstood what the original roles were. For example, their support class is a fireman, now known as a Kindler. Instead of putting out fires, this guy starts them?in a big way! The Remnant is where you will find a few familiar weapons, like the aforementioned 9mm and an M4A1, which they have been able to salvage. But you will also find that the majority of their weapons are homemade, just like the other factions. And once again, we?ve tried to tailor them to the appropriate classes. For example, the medic is called a Sawbones, and we tried to stick with medically related weapons, things like a bone saw and a syringe. One of my personal favorites is the Remnant?s spec ops class, the Postman, which will truly give you the chance to go postal! We?ve got some nice surprises in store with him!