When it was first unveiled, Homefront sounded like quite the compelling game – though the final product left a lot to be desired. Now that development of Homefront 2 is well underway, developer Crytek believes they will make quite a splash when the game launches.
After Kaos Studios was shuttered last year, THQ handed over development duties of Homefront 2 to Crytek, best known for the Crysis series. Crytek’s game has always had an air of quality and visual flair to them, making many hope that the Homefront sequel would be quite stronger than its predecessor.
Homefront didn’t do too well critically, but commercially it was a success. Crytek ‘s co-founder Anvi Yerli believes they will be able to make a stronger impact this time around, perhaps meeting THQ’s lofty aspirations of competing with Call of Duty?
“It has a huge mind share, everybody knows the IP. The first game has indeed a low Metacritic, but due to really great positioning and great marketing it has reached a good mind share. And I think with Crytek quality attached to it and similar marketing attached to it, it can make a big splash at the time it comes out.”
Homefront may not have been one of this console generation’s most beloved IPs, but some gamers probably fear that the switch in development teams could mean the original vision would be lost. However, coming from Crytek’s Nick Button-Brown, it sounds like the team at Crytek have access to what Kaos planned for the sequel, meaning not everything will be lost in the transition.
“When you look at the world they created in the first game and the world that they were talking about for the second game, the setting they were talking about… obviously we can’t talk about it yet, but it’s really cool.”
Details on Homefront 2 are scarce at this point. The game is still a good year or two off, so chances are it’s still going to be a while until we see it action. That being said, with Crytek at the helm, it’s safe to say the game will look beautiful. Let’s just hope they learn from Kaos’ mistakes and craft a better (and more fleshed out) story for the sequel.
Homefront 2 is currently in development, presumambly for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
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Source: GameIndustry International
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Crytek is a bit bi-polar when it comes to their philosophy of modeling real-world weapons. If you look at their Far Cry games, Far Cry 1 had the weapons correct, Far Cry 2 they spent the time to move the ejection ports to the left sides of all of the weapons so the bullet casings stupidly spit out into your face, because apparently that’s cool or something… Then in Far Cry 3, they are back to having the weapons correct. Then their new IP Warface that they previewed has them flipped again so the casings spit stupidly to the left and into your face…
First, I hope Homefront 2 doesn’t completely suck like the first Homefront, and second, if it doesn’t suck, I hope they don’t do that stupid casings spitting left thing. But if it’s just as bad or worse than the first Homefront, then I don’t care because I wouldn’t be playing it, lol.
I think they need to put a much stronger narrative into the game, put in characters that you see often so you get an attachment to them. And they need to show the “non-combat” parts of living as the resistance a whole lot more, not just the one time you go to their hide-out before it is destroyed… Honestly, for this game to be good, it really should focus a whole lot more on the people and how this situation is affecting them. Get the player to feel some sympathy for these people. That way, the combat would be met with more enthusiasm as you feel you’re doing something to help the greater good. They also need to make the combat feel more open and dynamic and not so linear and scripted. Heck, if they really want to make a great game, they should put in optional objectives that might not be necessary to complete each mission but will probably have some kind of benefit either directly in the next mission or somewhere further down the road. Perhaps if they do something where the amount of people and vehicles you kill or destroy per mission, whether per the primary objectives or secondary objectives, can actually somehow affect how strong the enemy force will be in the final battle, that would be pretty awesome…
For example, maybe in one mission your objective is to stealthily steal intel from an enemy strong-hold that would help you find other enemy bases. But while you’re in the mission, you get word that there is a cargo train that passes right by the base where your mission is that is supposed to be transporting a large number of enemy troops and supplies on their way to another enemy base. And you could choose to either complete your objectives and leave or try to make your way across the base to the train tracks and sabotage it with some explosives to derail the train. But if you pick option B to derail the train, getting out will be much harder since now the enemy in the base will be alerted of your presence while if you just ignore that getting in and getting out will be fairly simple. But if you destroy the train, maybe either the next mission or the final mission, you’ll find that the enemy force is smaller by a noticeable amount.
I’ve always thought that kind of thing where your actions have a persistant effect on the world would be very cool in a game in terms of immersion. Because in real life, what you do will affect everything, but in games, it seems like no matter if you complete a mission by running through it or complete it by making sure you kill each and every person, the outcome is exactly the same… Which kind of kills the immersion the game could offer which would make the story a lot more compelling in my opinion…
the only reason the 1st one sucked is b/c no one plays, in terms of balance, all the guns where equally good, server limit on console was great, maps where balanced and everything was solid. the only thing they needed to do was improve the visuals and make the servers international. the game sold around 400k copies within the 1st week, so idk why people are calling it a fail.
like i said before, all the have to do is add a couple of CoD features whilst generally keeping the game the same as the 1st one, improvements include but are not limited to:
being able to vault over/through windows/furniture
better visuals
variety of maps (close quarters, long range
keep the dedicated servers (that was one of the strong point for people that could play the game
keep the player limit (increase if possible to give it a bf3 feeling).
more guns (the 1st one only had one shotgun, but is was really deadly i wanna see more of that).
@jwalka
I honestly don’t give a rat’s butt about the multiplayer of Homefront, lol. I’m a PC gamer, so I have BF3 for my multiplayer shooter fix. I honestly can’t even play any kind of multiplayer shooter that doesn’t have vehicles or some other kind of variety in it. Adding “CoD features” to a game is never a good thing. I played that for a while the other day because my friend rented it, and it sucks, it’s just terrible… We ended up playing Lego Indiana Jones and had a ton more fun playing that… I don’t know anything about what a good console server limit is, I play in servers of BF3 with 64 players in it, I think if I tried to play Homefront and it’s significantly less than that, and there’s no vehicles or anything else, or destructable environments, I think I’ll get bored to death, lol.
I was mainly talking about single-player campaign because that had a whole lot of potential especially given that John Milius was supposed to have helped them with the story, I was hoping for a Red Dawn: The Game with Homefront… But we didn’t exactly get that…
Oops, destructible, not able, lol.
well the mp for hoemfront had vehicles, but you didnt just get them anywhere, you had to ear point via kills to be able to ‘buy’ them, which is pretty cool b/c in most cases players would be able to afford tanks and choopers in the final round of ctf so it had for some real;ly hardcore strategic moments. the vehicles weren’t OP like they are in bf3, shooting a tank in the back 2-3 times would destroy it, but being able ot last that long against one would be a challenge itself. the server limit for homefront on console is around 32 i think and for pc it goes up top 64 (not 100% sure though), but the issue isn’t limit it’s availability, people outside US cant play the game (on console) due to server connectivity
i didn’t play the story mode, but my brother said it was pretty heavy, he didn’t like it due to the annoying enemy AI being able to shoot through everything, not to mention the bug that deemed the game unplayable for around 2 weeks until they finally fixed it (that def costed them sales).
@jwalka
Actually, in BF3, if you hit a tank in the back 3 times, you’ll destroy it also, unless they have someone repairing it… The armor is less in the back, and it’s not OP. Actually in real life you can probably hit a M1 Abrams 10 times with a RPG and it’ll never penetrate its armor, lol. I actually feel the tanks in BF3 are a bit under-powered…
FYI, Crytek didn’t make Far Cry 2. Ubisoft did.
Or even some optional objectives that don’t have an important impact on your combat or missions would add to the immersion, like if there is an optional objective somewhere to intercept a shipment of food, where if you choose to do it, it wouldn’t help your combat or any of the missions in the future, but just that when you go back to the resistance hide-out, everyone has more food and people are happy where before maybe everyone was starving because they have shortages. I mean, if they do a good enough job creating the characters to where even though it’s a game you are so immersed into the game that you feel real sympathy for them to the point that you’re motivated to work harder in a mission to do an optional objective to help these imaginary people, then I say that’s a success in terms of game design…
@ ken j, in response to my response
the tanks are ok in bf3, my main hate is the choppers being able to spam flares without ever being hit, everytime i would get a stringer ready they would just shoot flares, and by the time i reload and lock on they’ve got their flares ready again, meaning it is almost impossible to take out an aircraft with rockets. not just that but players love to vehicle whore every game type with them in it, ruining the fun for those of us that like to gun on gun in situations.
like i mentioned before, almost every game i’ve played has been full of scrubs, the ones we’ve won have greatly relied on myself and 1 or 2 other smart players. you know a game has stupid players when retards use objective game types for tdm, akin to the joke of a shooter CoD.
@jwalka
But there is your problem. In BF3, yes it is hard to take down aircraft ALONE, but the point of the game is teamwork. If someone on your team paints the helicopter with the SOFLAM, you can lock on with the javelin and it’s one hit kill with those. Same with tanks, by yourself, yes it’s hard to hit it 3 times or more before they kill you, but with teamwork, you can destroy tanks left and right… So if you have a good team, BF3 is probably the most fun you can have in gaming. But with a crappy team, or people that just don’t work with you, it can get pretty frustrating…
which leads to my main peeve with the game – players are complete idiots and don’t know what team work in objective based modes is. all the do is use the high ticket limit on objective game types to increase their k/d to show off to their boyfriends >:(
LOL, yah, that would suck.
You know, that picture of that Korean soldier holding the burning flag is already more compelling than the game actually was… Pretty disappointing…
I personally liked the first game. It had a Red Dawn feel(the scene with the kids parents being shot in front of him was a nice touch), The Conner character really helped getting you into it during the fight @ the Mass Grave site. Graphics could of been better, but I didn’t expect much from Kaos as it was the first game I heard of them(there could of been more I just don’t really remember if there was).
MP was great in the game. I never play Team Deathmatch I always go for the Objective style games(More fun IMHO). The vehicles were cool, the weapons were cool, the perk system in the game is awesome(where you have to buy the perks). I just want more bodies on the field, UP THE PLAYER COUNT!!!!
I loved the 1st Homefront’s story a lot. Eventhough I like Medal of Honor, and Battlefield better. I still think Homefront had the best health system, second-best melee attack, and the best storyline out of all the military shooters. I’ve played Crysis 2, and I loved the gameplay so much that I consider Crysis 2 the best first-person shooter of all time. So I know Crytek will do an awsome job on Homefront 2.