14 DAY TRIAL // PopCap has talked about its upcoming Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare multiplayer shooter, confirming that the new title is heavily inspired by various action shooters, including Team Fortress 2.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is definitely one of the most outlandish titles to come from PopCap and Electronic Arts, putting a shooter spin on the classic PvZ strategy recipe.
After getting a release date yesterday, alongside a new gameplay video, PopCap has now talked with Polygon about the online title and confirmed that the team drew inspiration from many different games, including Team Fortress 2.
"One of the things we kept asking ourselves internally was, 'What if we turned Team Fortress 2 into Plants vs. Zombies?'" Producer Brian Lindley said. "That was our starting point. As we got going, we started thinking about other action games that we liked to play and our favorite abilities and intermixing them into the design as much as we could."
PopCap always wanted to branch the PvZ universe into new directions, but the shooter idea gained the most traction inside the studio, according to Lindley.
"There were a bunch of other ideas that were being explored, but we took the shooter idea and really iterated in the concept and starting prototyping around. What we found was that is just immediately made sense; it was fun. Obviously we've iterated a ton on the core idea itself, but the idea of running around as plants defending and killing zombies, and vice versa on the zombie side, was just fun."
Even if the game looks cartoonish, PopCap wants players of all skill ranges to have fun and find a great experience in Garden Warfare.
"At its core, we need the game to be a legitimate action-shooter," he added. "That's what we started with — we want players that want to play with skill and know there's depth to the experience. We wanted to create an experience that's obviously a little more lighthearted but that still offers that quality, balanced gameplay."
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare launches next year in February for the Xbox One and 360, and later in the year for the PC.