14 DAY TRIAL // One of the developers working on the upcoming Splash Damage made shooter Brink has said that one of the aims of the game is to impress upon the player the confusion that any participant in a conflict would feel on both an information and on a moral level.
Ed Stern, who is the lead writer working on Brink, has stated that, “Deus Ex was … the first game I played where I genuinely didn’t know what course to take. Because I wasn’t sure in my own mind about the dilemma my character was facing”, and added, “I’d love it if players felt similarly conflicted about the choices in Brink.”
He says that the video game needs to become more accustomed to narratives that do not have a clear point of view and where gamers are free to fill in the blanks and define their own truth.
Stern says, “Your faction commander will brief you while we load the map, but that doesn’t mean what he says is necessarily true, or that he’s deliberately misleading you, or even that the characters in that faction’s cinematics agree with him or each other.”
Some gamers might not appreciate being this close to the real life situation of imperfect knowledge in the virtual reality of a video game.
Brink offers a squad-based shooter experience, where each of the missions has a clear narrative, pitting two factions against one another.
The game is built using the id Tech 4 game engine and is the first time the team has tried to create an original intellectual property, with previous titles including the multiplayer side of DOOM 3 and the Enemy Territory spin-offs.
Brink is set to launch on May 17 in the United States and three days later in Europe, with players able to enjoy the shooter on the PC, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.