A Different Kind of Cover
Cover has become pretty hot these days. Between Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas, every shooter from here to Timbuktu is going to have to let you hide behind stuff to avoid getting shot. And don’t worry, Stranglehold has you covered in this regard... but with one important distinction: our cover is dynamic.
You see, everything in Stranglehold can be destroyed. Well, that’s not quite true. Saying everything can break would be a bit overzealous of me. So let’s say almost everything can be destroyed in the levels. The small stuff, absolutely. The medium stuff, almost always. And as for the big stuff, well I’ll let you figure out which big stuff can be blown up. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. But it’s the medium-sized stuff that I want to talk about today. The stuff that’s not only destructible, but also about the right size for Tequila to hide behind.
So picture this. You walk into a room and are assaulted by heavy gunfire. You immediately grab some cover, from which you can peak out, assess the situation, and make a plan of attack. There’s only one problem: the bad guys are still shooting at you! And that concrete column you’re backed up against is slowly disappearing. Each enemy bullet is chipping away another piece of it. As your cover shrinks Tequila will automatically crouch down to use whatever cover’s left, but in Stranglehold no cover lasts forever.
Our lead designer, Neill Glancy, has a fantastic analogy for our destructible cover. It’s a lot like the little bases in Space Invaders. At the beginning of a game you have so many bases, which you can hide behind to protect yourself from incoming badguy bullets. But eventually the baddies will wear the base down, making it less and less effective cover, which forces you to move around in the world, either to another base, or out into the open in a firefight.
The same goes for Stranglehold. You hide for too long, the cover is gone. But luckily you can flip it around on the enemies. If an enemy is on the other side of some cover, then you can destroy it! In other games shooting like crazy at a concrete column is just going to waste ammo. But in Stranglehold it’s going to smash down the column to bits. And once you’ve worn away enough of the cover, it’s a perfect time to use Precision Aim and peg an enemy. All it takes is one little hole after all!
So while cover isn’t necessarily our number-one focus in Stranglehold, we’re certainly shaking up the dynamics of it. No more hiding in one place for ten minutes picking enemies off. Oh no! You’ll have to dive, slide, and spin your way to victory in Stranglehold. But it’s still really rewarding to grab some cover for a second or two, pop-out, engage Tequila-Time, and peg and enemy who thinks he’s hiding. :-)
Patrick Curry
Senior Game Designer
Read more developer Blogs here:
http://blogs.ign.com/Strangleholdgame
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