Vinh-Dieu Lam, a programmer on the console RTS Tom Clancy’s EndWar has said “the convergence between the franchises is only going to get more seamless, with what happens in one game perhaps affecting what happens in another”.
“In the next versions [of these franchises] you’ll find, say, missions generated in the next Ghost Recon (presumably GRAW 3) affecting the world map in the next EndWar (presumably EndWar 2),” said Lam in an interview with Gameplayer (via Shacknews). “So maybe in the next EndWar you will need to attack Paris but before you can it may generate some sort of Splinter Cell recon mission or a Ghost Recon mission or things like that. But that is the direction we are looking at.”
Lam was then asked whether in the future, you would have to play all five different Tom Clancy franchises and complete one mission in one game to open a mission in another. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replied. “So with EndWar, the meta-campaign side of it is a standalone server so you can feed things into this system so it can basically generate any sort of mission. So its missions generate for EndWar at the moment, but there is no reason why we cannot generate missions from the other franchises. This is where we are looking at tying together the different franchises.”
With Lam providing no more specific details, it leaves the implications of what he’s describing wide open… in ways that could develop down potentially scary paths. The thought of having to buy and play five different games in order to open up all the content in any one of them sounds kind of cool on the one hand, but like a potential annoyance on the other. As Gameplayer theorizes, though, Lam could also have been referring to just bonus content in future games that would require all five games to open up.
The later sounds way more on point, and the idea that buying other Clancy games will unlock more content in the games you own is a big win. And honestly it’s a feature all games should have these days.
Last Updated: October 20, 2008
Flameboy
October 20, 2008 at 15:19
I think it sounds cool. I like all Tom Clancy games so either way it doesn’t bother me.
Chevron
October 20, 2008 at 15:37
How about just having the content unlocked from the get go, without extra purchases required.