Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine: Mercenaries

Set for release in January, Mercenaries could prove to be very significant for a number of reasons: It will be one of the first truly spectacular and epic games of 2005; it’s being developed by Pandemic, the white-hot team that previously wowed us with Star Wars Battlefront; and it’s a brand-new franchise from a publisher not known for busting out the new IP very often. Having dabbled in a few new ideas with only moderate success these past few years, it seemed that LucasArts was going to keep its head down and just bang out the occasional Star Wars game under new boss Jim Ward. Mercenaries is a bold move in a new direction for the company, and it is something that certainly would have been lost in the commotion of this holiday season had it launched in November.

Set in the near future, the game tackles everyone’s least favorite axis of evil, North Korea, and the consequences of a military coup that occurs on the eve of the reunification of North and South Korea. A ruthless general has seized control, and the international community must move quickly to avert a growing nuclear threat. Diplomatic efforts, predictably, fall apart quickly and a military solution is sought. A $100 million bounty is put on the general’s head, and other top targets are subsequently identified on a most-wanted list in the form of a deck of cards. Playing as one of three operatives for a private military corporation called Executive Operations, your job is to head to the DMZ, work your way through the region, and take out the bad guys.

“When we started preproduction, the U.S. armed forces were hunting through the caves of Pakistan for Osama bin Laden,” explains Matthew Paul, Mercenaries’ producer at Pandemic Studios. “There had been massive destruction in the war zone, and yet the coalition forces hadn’t found the elusive figurehead. At the time, we thought, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be interesting if the fantasy was that you were hunting down these high-value targets that had escaped military forces from different countries?’ That fantasy thrilled us all—get to play with the toys of the real military while hunting down a deck of 52 villains. Just from reading the news every day and watching TV, we saw our gameplay unfold before our very eyes.”

Mercenaries is about much more than just a lone operative hunting down a sequence of evildoers, though. In a break from the predictable, the game takes run-and-gun third-person gameplay and mixes it with a “digital sandbox” approach that rivals Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the degree of freedom it offers players. Every objective in the game can be approached in different ways, whether it’s as simple as choosing between sneaking into a location or running in with guns blazing, or making more elaborate choices concerning how you dispose of targets. Do you blow them up with explosives? Or do you launch an air strike against them? Do you go in on foot? Or do you jack a jeep, or a tank, or even a helicopter to do the job? The game offers more than 70 different vehicles (both civilian and military) that can be commandeered, as well as more weapons than you could possibly imagine, including pistols and machine guns, recoilless rifles, and SAM launchers and other fixed-emplacement fun.

“Our next big question was, ‘So who’s this hero you’re playing?’” Paul explains. “Upon further research, we came across PMCs—private military corporations. Working for a PMC, in essence being a part of a mercenary group, gave us the hero and the motivation we wanted. This hero could legitimately be able to use all the modern-day weaponry of the different armies, but he had to report only to the PMC. As a mercenary, the hero gets to do whatever he wants. And the mercenary does what he does for one thing—money. We created this dynamic in the game by introducing the four different factions, all of which have different contracts for the hero to pursue. The hero can work with the Allied forces, the South Koreans, the Russian Mafia, or the Chinese, each with its own motivations, some of which are clear only after you play into the game for a while. The mercenary can provide support to one faction, only to turn around and accept a contract from another faction that crosses the first. The mercenary lifestyle became an integral part of the story and the game mechanics.”

The game begins with your chosen hero (see sidebar) dropping into the region and heading to the Allied HQ in the DMZ. You are immediately given a taste of the game’s mechanics as you drive your Humvee toward a North Korean roadblock. As the bad guys pepper your vehicle with lead, you’re treated to the first of many huge explosions in the game. As you return fire, the assorted junk that fills the beautifully rendered environment is thrown around in a truly believable display of clever physics calculations. Anything in the game world that isn’t bolted down (and a lot of stuff that is) can be destroyed, moved, toppled over, or blown up. Aim an RPG at a jeep next to a pile of boxes and chuckle as the ensuing fireball kicks the boxes up into the air before they crash back to the ground.

A recent visit to LucasArts’ impressive Big Rock Ranch facility in Marin County, CA, gave us the opportunity to sample some of the more spectacular examples of giant explosions the game presents. As the hero trotted up to a huge gated complex, he used a satellite camera to target the compound’s guard towers and called in a carpet-bombing strike. As the jets screeched overhead, a wall of flame hit the ground before pushing forward, destroying everything in its path. Watching the guard towers and surrounding buildings drop was like watching a video of a Vegas casino being demolished. Huge plumes of smoke kicked up as the buildings crumbled and dropped into the ground as though a giant hole was swallowing them up.

The plumes of smoke are actually a big part of what makes Mercenaries tick, too. Since the PS2 was first announced, much has been made of its ability to manipulate particles to create gorgeous effects; however, very few games have fully exploited this aspect of the system. Mercenaries, we’re told, does everything that Kutaragi and his pals in Japan had in mind when they first dreamed up the PS2’s Graphics Synthesizer. There’s no better example of this than when your mercenary calls for backup in the middle of the DMZ while torrential weather beats down on him. The environment fogs up, the rain streaks down, and after he drops a flare, thick red smoke billows up into the sky for his comrades to home in on. As the chopper flies in to drop whatever piece of glorious hardware is queued up, the wash from its rotors dissipates the red smoke and then kicks up the water that has settled on the ground. The effect is remarkably realistic, and it’s just one of many spectacular moments in the game.

From what we’ve seen so far, Mercenaries stands to be one of the first surprise hits of 2005. When we played the game, the team at Pandemic was still balancing the gameplay, but assuming it succeeds in attaining the right mix of driving, shooting, and destruction, LucasArts could have a new franchise on its hands—one that will hopefully last through the end of this hardware generation and into the next one.

Pub. LucasArts Dev. Pandemic Studios Release January

The Team

A merc for every occasion.

The American

Chris Jacobs is an ex-Delta Force operative who speaks Korean, so he can communicate with the locals. For the player, he is notable for his strength and endurance, which means he essentially has more hit points than the other guys.

The Swede

Matthias Nilsson is an ex-Swedish Coastal Ranger who speaks Russian, making him particularly useful when dealing with the Mafia presence in the region. The team at Pandemic describes Nilsson as the “hardcore gamer’s choice” because of his speed and agility.

The Brit

Jennifer Mui is a British-trained ex-MI6 agent who speaks Chinese. Her skills make her the ideal choice for ingratiating the player with the Chinese military presence in the region (they’d like North Korea for themselves), but she’s also the stealthy choice. Mui can sneak up on guards more effectively than the two men can.

Jack It

Stealing cars isn’t exactly new, but helicopters? Time things just right, and you can leap up and grab onto the landing skids before hauling yourself up and punching the pilot in the junk. Once you’ve thrown him out, the bird is yours to wreak mayhem with.

Political Who’s Who

Keep friends close and enemies closer

There are five main factions in Mercenaries. First, there are the Allied forces, which are pretty much a representation of the United Nations and are headed up by the Americans. They’re looking to calm things down in the region and stop the North Koreans from selling nukes to terrorists or pointing them at America.

The North Koreans are the bad guys of the story. They staged the coup, and the deck of 52 is comprised of different types of threats. You start the game by chasing after the clubs, who are white-collar business bad guys; you then move on to the hearts, who are scientists and chemical weapons guys; the diamonds are the thugs of the game, while the spades are the elite soldiers and commanders of the North Korean military, with the ace of spades being the big bad general himself.

The South Koreans are the local good guys, but they have a bad relationship with the Chinese, who have a controlling interest in the area due to their funding of military activity and their desire to absorb all of Korea into the Chinese union.

Finally, the Russian Mafia is composed of the guys that everyone hates. All they’re interested in is exploiting the situation for cold, hard cash, and because of that, they can be quite useful as a resource for the mercenaries—particularly if you’re interested in getting your hands on a certain piece of hardware.

Mercenaries in 20 Seconds

• You’re a merc chasing 52 North Korean bad guys while playing other countries against each other.

• It’s like GTA, only with a military theme and better graphics.

• If you can see it, you can use it, steal it, drive it, fly it, or blow it up.