Devblog #161
Hello everyone! After the Autumn sale, we are very happy to welcome a lot of new players to the wonderful world of Call to Arms - Gates of Hell. Today we will be having a look at the development for the upcoming “Finest Hour” DLC.
[h2]Factions[/h2]
For the “Finest Hour” DLC, we’ve taken another deep dive into the history of several years of war.
As you probably know, we distinguish 3 distinct war eras in our game; early-, mid- and late war.
The Commonwealth faction will be available in all three. Because of that, it opens up new possibilities for German missions in early war too!
So far, all of the German SP missions in Call to Arms - Gates of Hell have been about battles in 1941 or later; but in Finest Hour, you get some "Blitzkrieg" excitement as well.
All in all, like we have announced in Devblog #158, the Finest Hour single player campaign will consist of 16 single player missions, which will feature missions for the British Commonwealth and for Germany.
[h2]Representations[/h2]
The British Commonwealth consisted of many nations. Early on we decided that we wanted a limited selection of different English accents to acknowledge that fact.
As announced earlier, the representation of Commonwealth nations is limited to England, Canada and Scotland. On top of that, we will have Polish troops represented in the game as well. Although Poland was not a part of the union, its forces fought together with other Commonwealth armies. We will make sure we do the England, Canadian, Polish and Scottish nations honor.
[h2]Research[/h2]
Once again we have devoted a lot of time and effort to match our research with reality. Our field trip in the Netherlands in May of this year has enabled us to photograph a lot of the actual British and German equipment, vehicles and weapons that were used in several of the battles we intend to portray. This was possible through several museum visits and the event we attended while we were there.
Part of the BWS team at Hotel Hartenstein (nowadays the Airborne Museum) in Oosterbeek, NL[h2]Landscapes[/h2]
Obviously it also helped our level designers to have been driving around when we were on our field trip, because it put us directly on top of some of the actual landscapes we were going to recreate.
Just like we have done in Normandy in past years, we wanted to make sure we had a good look at the landscapes we’re recreating - and we did.
This will once again enable us to design the missions and maps in such a way that they will be instantly recognizable, such as Dutch landscapes. Even if we omit the stereotypical tulip fields, wooden shoes and other tourist staples, they will be very authentic.
Other landscapes in the Finest Hour DLC will be French, Belgian and German; of course, these will each have a different atmosphere to them.
[h2]Campaign features[/h2]
The Commonwealth campaign in Finest Hour will offer a number of features that are meant to maximize immersion.
Cutscenes:
- New level of in-game cutscenes
- 20+ minutes of in-game and pre-rendered cinematics
- 40+ new MOCAP animations for characters used during cutscenes
- Smooth transitions between cinematics and gameplay
- +/- 570 voice lines in the 7 Commonwealth(historical) storyline missions. Comparison: Ostfront German and Soviet campaigns, totalling 12 missions, have around 450 combined
- Gameplay or story events happen frequently to keep high dynamic
- Average mission playtime is 45-60 minutes
- 10+ unique secret objectives
- All narrators now have their own names and some of them are historical characters
As an added bonus for modders, we have put in some easter eggs that only appear in the editor.
[h2]Multiplayer[/h2]
Of course we are working on the multiplayer content in parallel. Several weapons, vehicles and tanks that will be included in the DLC will be available for multiplayer only!
Since Finest Hour only covers the Western front, a number of tanks and other vehicles are not present at all in the singleplayer scripted campaign.
As an example; from the entire ‘cruiser’ class of tanks, the Crusader series was not yet in service during the 1940 campaign and had already been phased out by the time of the D-Day invasion, having been replaced by then. Since multiplayer and conquest require mid- war to provide you with appropriate weaponry, the Crusader series will be present there.
[h2]Progress and Planning[/h2]
We still intend to release Finest Hour before this year is out.
Closed Beta Testing has started earlier in October, which is where we want to be on our timeline.
We will reveal the release date after we have published the store page, at which time we’ll also reveal the Finest Hour trailer. Of course we will keep you posted on this.
That’s it for today. Which part of the DLC are you looking forward to the most? Let us know in the comments!
See you on the battlefield!
