Gearbox Software's community manager asked President Randy Pitchford a few post-production questions. Read on for Randy's take on authenticity, squad combat, and more.

Zaskoda:
Brothers in Arms just went gold for the Xbox. In retrospect, how did this project compare to past projects you've worked on?

Randy Pitchford:
I think Brothers in Arms is the best title I've ever worked on. It's certainly the most important. Everything I've worked on prior to Brothers in Arms was just a video game.

Zaskoda:
Brothers in Arms is well known for its focus on being the most authentic WWII game ever. Why was authenticity such a strong focus for Gearbox Software?

Randy Pitchford:
When Brian Martel and I first started talking about doing this game, the thing we kept coming back to was the idea of being one of the guys in the squad. We wanted to live the life of a soldier - the squad leader. The thing that other games lacked was that they were themed versions of other shooters. They were just classic Doom or Quake with war themed textures and sound effects. The scripted games played out like riding Disneyland's "It's a Small World" where you have what is basically a rail ride through a series of scripted automatons running their pre-planned actions. It's entertaining, but it didn't really satisfy the dream. In order to truly satisfy the dream, we had to build something that was based on a true story. We didn't want to just rip off whatever war movie had come out recently. We wanted to walk the ground, read the official reports, get some training like the real soldiers trained and understand what it was they did and how they interacted with one another.

If I would have known how much time and money we were going to spend on the research, I'm not sure I would've made the decision up front to do it. But, having gone through it, I'm really glad we did. I'm really proud of the result and the degree of authenticity that is there will establish Brothers in Arms as more than a piece of high quality interactive entertainment, but as a reference piece preserving a part of history forever.

Here's what I mean: A year or two ago, some of our guys went over to Normandy to survey the battlefields. They took photos of everything and walked where the real men walked and fought. There was a warehouse in the industrial section of Carentan which had been abandoned, but was the site of an important fight that was in the game. The guys sort of let themselves into this warehouse and just went over every square inch so that we could rebuild it exactly as it was. Here's the crazy part... Today, three of our team just got back from another trip out to Normandy where they were scouting around for some stuff we're doing in the future. They stopped by the warehouse just to check it out again and feel the impact of what had happened there. Well, they discovered that sometime in the past six months, the warehouse had been leveled - it's been demolished to make way for some new building. It's gone forever. That's what happens with progress, right.

But, in the virtual reality of Brothers in Arms, we had this opportunity to recreate history. We could build this time machine where everything is as it was and it's preserved digitally forever.

It's really something to think about it. It's strange to think of video games this way, having grown up with Pac Man and such...

Zaskoda:
Squad combat is a genre bending feature in Brothers in Arms that some have considered to be a blend between FPS and RTS. What impact do you think squad combat will have on the gaming industry and our perception of gaming genres?

Randy Pitchford:
We can see several folks out there trying to fulfill this promise. We really want this team based game play that squad combat promises, just like everyone else. We played a lot of the squad game and it always felt like something was missing. The other games felt like a game designer had worked out some kind of abstract and incorrect system for doing squad command. We knew we were going to repeat the mistakes if we didn't try something a little different. We tried lots of different things and we threw away several expensive prototypes before we found the right answer. Colonel John Antal helped us arrive at the answer because he taught us in the classroom and in the field what real soldiering was like. He taught us that the men under a squad leader's command are real people with training. There's no micromanagement with a real squad leader. What you have are tactical decisions about fire and move and we created the simplest interface possible to give real fire and move commands to a team that acts like a real team of trained soldiers as best as we can replicate with current technology.

The result is really good. It's actually really fun just to give commands and play the game without shooting. I've done it. I've played the game and won tricky combat situations without firing a single shot from my own gun - just by using my team well. Of course, I also like getting into the action, so I tend to get a lot of kills myself when I want to. But the point is that it really works. Some of the guys on the team are worried that other developers are going to steal the system. They say plagiarism is the biggest form of flattery. I think there's some truth to that, but I'm not sure our lawyers will agree.

Zaskoda:
Finally, with fan sites built by people from countries all around the world, Brothers in Arms has quite the multicultural following. What is your impression of this global buzz?

Randy Pitchford:
D-Day is one of those things that affected every culture on the planet, so it's pretty good to see so many people from so many different places interested in this story. But, as a gamer, it's very strange to get the "buzz reports" from our publisher that tell us that Brothers in Arms is the most anticipated thing coming out. Obviously I love it, but it's really stunning to have so much support. I'm too close to the thing to be objective about it, but I think that the support won't be wasted. The more successful Brothers in Arms is, the better will be able to push boundaries and innovate in technology, game play and story and interaction in our future games. I am very much looking forward to the game launching and I am extremely excited about the future.