Dev: Future Soldier more realistic than Call of Duty

UbiSoft creative director Jean-Marc Geoffrey is bragging that Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is far more realistic and grounded in reality than the “arcade-y” Call of Duty titles, despite the former featuring active camouflage and the ability to see enemies through walls.

Geoffrey pointed out in an interview with Eurogamer, “If you have a team of four guys who kill 40 enemies simply by running and shooting, it’s not realistic.” Success in Future Soldier, Geoffrey claims, will be due to good tactics, and not just being good at first person shooters, adding ”We don’t want one guy running and shooting all the enemies and showing off to his team-mates. We tried to make people think before they start shooting.”

Creative director Tommy Jacob compares Future Soldier to Battlefield 3, just with futuristic upgrades.

However, realism wasn’t always the case. The original iteration of Future Soldier had combatants walking around in tank-like battle armor. “We wanted to reign that in a little bit into something that was less sci-fi and more like what real special forces soldiers go through in terms of training and what he has available to him in terms of equipment,” he explained.

The developers also discussed Kinect functionality, stating that while “it’s hard not to see it as any more than a briefly diverting novelty,” it has the most important value add to the game: ”It’s fun!”

According to Jacob, “We wanted the player to feel like they had the gun in their hands. For us, that was the best method of integrating Kinect into the game. As far as convincing people, I’d just have to say - try it.” He then admitted, ”I don’t think Kinect is ready yet for full gameplay combat, but to examine a weapon - it’s like Minority Report.”

The devs also touched on other features and upcoming events. Future Soldier will include an easy mode that will make it more palatable to arcade-style shooter gamers, thought rushing in blindly will still result in disaster. A mutliplayer beta will be launched in a month for preorders, owners of Splinter Cell: Conviction and US PSN users. Finally, the devs touched on DLC.

According to Jacob, ”There will be more game types coming. These will be paid-for DLC,” which will include the usual “maps, new guns, new modes.” Geoffrey then teased, ”And maybe more stuff to come… we’ll see.”

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is due to be released in early June for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.