HAWX 2 New Trailer – Fox one out!
©2010 Grant Smythe
This Fall we’ll see the HAWX team fly onto our consoles with yet another iteration of the series. One I’m personally really looking forward to.
Especially now I have my new flight controller set up . . .
It seems there will be a half decent storyline to this iteration, thank god.
While I’m a lover of air flight fighters with some resembles of reality. Yes, I know, it’s not a real sim, but it’s a half decent semi-sim. But they do need some level of decent storyline to tie the episodes together, otherwise it’s really just a mish-mash of events happening on screen.
Many complained about the first iteration, but most of those simply wanted some basic arcade flight game. But that’s not what they got, as H.A.W.X did deliver something that many were not expecting, great detail and excellent handling mechanics.
• HAWX 2 Trailer
Although, there were flaws of course, and some of those did hamper the flight experience a lot in some situations. One would hope that the developers working under Ubisoft have learnt some lessons, and rectified those niggling annoyances.
But, as time always tells, we’ll only know when the game is in our hands and we can put it through its paces, properly. Ideally we’ll doa controller test and a flight-stick test when the game releases, and ideally, when we get some early code to play with??
Until then, we will keep you posted with the information as it drops from above. You can keep up with Ubisoft’s news on the game at their Official H.A.W.X2 Website.
You’ll find som eof the niggling questions and concerns answered in the recently released Q&A that was formed by asking HAWX fans to supply a list of questions they had concerning the franchise. The answers seem reassuring – at least at this time.
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Here’s Ubisoft’s Official Q&A
they also released this week.
Q: What are the new gameplay elements in HAWX 2?
A: The key idea driving the development was the idea of offering the true feel of modern air conflict, with all of its various experiences, like watching a wall of anti-air guns through night vision, using a precision bomb on a target, refueling your plane in mid-air, take off and landing, using carriers and so on. I
t was important for us not just to include these new features, but to integrate them into a convincing world and to improve the look and feel of it, to render more authentically what aerial warfare in the modern era is like.
So we have built a complete experience that includes the iconic moments present in the collective memory and also the trends in the military development.
Q: Have you done any improvements concerning the graphics?
A: We are using the top solution available, GeoEye hi-res satellite imagery. Our environments are huge – 130km x 130km – which is what you need when you give players the freedom to sprint around at Mach 2.
They offer some spectacular and diverse vistas, including mountains, deserts, mountainous coastal regions and some well known cities, like Cape Town.
We also manage to add a great deal of detail where it matters – for instance you will be able to see people going about their jobs in the bases where you take off.
Q: Are there any connections between HAWX 2 and other Tom Clancy titles? Maybe Ghost Recon: Future Warrior?
A: You can expect to fight along a very familiar team at some points in the game supporting and protecting them as the accomplish the different missions.
Q: Are you planning to release DLC after release?
A: We can’t confirm this info at this point. For sure we’d like to offer interesting content after release
Q: Will HAWX 2 support Playstation Move or Microsoft Kinect?
It will not support these features.
Q: HAWX 2 is coming for PC too. Will this game also use the Ubi Launcher for copy protection?
Is to early too confirm this information but the general policy is to use copy protection at this point.
Q: So HAWX 2 is going to be an action game. Have ever thought about developing a simulation?
However HAWX 2 is not a simulation, since it was important for us that the game can be played by people that aren’t experts at flight games, but it can also be enjoyed by flight enthusiasts.
We focused on the feeling of authenticity and plausibility both in the gameplay and in the story, without turning the experience into a juggernaut of detail.
HAWX 2 is driven by the latest military evolutions and forecasts in terms of hardware, tactics and technology. We made sure that we incorporated key moments that the public will recognize from real world conflicts, such as precision bombing using smart ammunition.
We took into consideration for example the ascent of the UAV as an effective reconnaissance and attack platform.
Q: The first HAWX took place between the events of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and EndWar. Does HAWX 2 have plot connections with other Tom Clancy’s games too?
The storyline in HAWX 2 starts in the Middle East, in the near future. The HAWX squadron is deployed in the Middle East, where insurgent activity is showing a rise both in the level of activity and in the violence of it.
With new insurgent leaders rising in several hotspots of the world and a number of nuclear weapons belonging to Russia being mysteriously stolen, a storm is brewing and the HAWX are sent to the center of it.
There are connections with other events in the Tom Clancy universe, but revealing them now would spoil our surprises
Q; What is the involvement of Tom Clancy in the storylines of the HAWX series?
Tom Clancy is not directly involved at this point in the HAWX series. However, we are creating an experience that is very much Clancy, because we have access to all that past experiences and his long-term vision.
This means first and foremost a realistic and thought provoking scenario involving elite military teams and operations to solve a near future conflict
Q: With the first game you guys seemed to stand out from Ace Combat and your own Blazing Angels. Now your franchise is well established, what do you guys want to achieve with this sequel?
Well, like everyone, we want to evolve. It is not our intention to remain comfortable, ‘established’ as you put it, – we will always move forward and will always make sure that each new game that we make is better than the previous one.
Q: The first game was known for giving the players the chance to adjust the kind of controls between difficulty levels. How realistic will the control of the planes be in the sequel?
This wasn’t really the case – HAWX offered some choices related to how certain gameplay elements controlled, but overall it was an unified experience and this is what we have here too.
We did increase the level of realism in certain ways, though. We tuned the physics in lots of small ways and you will, for instance, see gravity and airflow have a more natural impact on the plane.
Q: The main addition in HAWX 2 arsenal is the precision weapons. Can you give us some details about it?
The main new addition to the player’s arsenal is the inclusion of precision weapons, which allow him to aim and designate the location of the strike with perfect accuracy. There are several such weapons, including a missile that the player can control while in flight.
Precision bombs are a very important part of a jet pilot’s life in the modern war and this is why we wanted to have them represented in the game. They work like you’d expect – you activate this mode and switch from piloting the plane (which continues to fly on auto-pilot) to aiming the precision bomb or missile.
You aim the weapon and mark the spot on the ground that you want to hit. The bomb will hit exactly that spot. The trick is that you are quite vulnerable when you do this and in some mission you have to fire quickly and then get back to pilot in time to dodge attacks.
Q: Landing and taking off seems to be important facts in the gameplay side of HAWX 2. Can you tell us how they work?
Everything is an organic part of the game and fits naturally with the other elements of the system. To take off, you taxi to the take off position, line up, accelerate and pitch up when you reach the right speed.
To land you open the landing gear, line up with the runway, slow down and slowly bring the plane down. All of this is done with the same controls as the normal flight and is connected seamlessly with the rest of the game.
You can even land during a mission to get more ammo, then get back in the air and continue the fight.
Q: Why do you think the dog fighting genre is so unpopular these days?
‘Unpopular’ is quite a strong term. Games in the genre have sold a few millions of copies in the past few years. Sure, it is not as popular as the first person shooter genre, for instance, but it still is a healthy niche.
You can see there is still interest in the world of aerial warfare from the fact that related elements have started to crop up in more and more military shooters these days.
I think a problem with flight combat games recently has been exactly the over-emphasis on dogfighting – sure, this is the bread and butter of air combat, but there are also many other interesting things going on in air combat and too few flight combat games have touched upon them.
This is why we wanted to incorporate a large number of experiences that we know are attractive and are all related to the modern mythology of aerial warfare, rather than have the player simply navigate from dogfight to dogfight.
Q: Can you guys tell us something about the new projects of Ubisoft Romania?
All we can say at this point is that we want to deliver the best possible experience with HAWX 2. We got some fresh projects for sure, but nothing that we can comment about right now.
©2010 Grant Smythe
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