Alliance: The Silent War

Once of the things which draws me to the story of the game is the fact that you get to influence the course of history by sparking revolutions and toppling various republics. Looking at the website, I can see that the developers put alot of though into mentioning famous historical characters (ever watchful uncle Joe on the top right ).

If the possibility came up in the game where you could meet famous people, who would you want your character to encounter?

here are my picks:

-Famous generals like Patton or Rommel: Would be awesome to see those guys. Maybe have a mission where you disguise yourself as an officer and try to infiltrate an army base (like something from Death To Spies)

-Che Guevara: Since we saw his landmark in the trailer, it would be interesting to have a mission where you try to help or capture him.

-Lenin or Stalin: Since the game starts in 1917 Russia, it wouldn't be too unrealistic to see the two guys who had a huge impact on the 20th and 21st century

-Hitler: Austria's happy man could make an nice appearance in the game. I read from one of the previews that there will be sections in the game which will take place in 1920's Germany so it wouldn't be too far fetched to encounter him. Although I don't know how German retailers will deal with that.

What would your pics be?

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When the going gets weird, the weird turns pro. -Hunter S. Thompson
Встань, Страх Преодолей

Yeah, imagine a mission where you actually have to help an evil figure from history, because of a secret in the storyline, it must be done. Talk about a moral dilemma. All the players will want to just shoot the guy.

Jack Churchill
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/churchill.html

"After being sent to a concentration camp, he got bored and left. Just walked out. They caught him again, and sent him to a new camp. So he left again. After walking 150 miles with only a rusty can of onions for food, he was picked up by the Americans and sent back to Britain, where he demanded to be sent back into the field, only to find out (with great disappointment) the war had ended while he was on his way there. As he later said to his friends, "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!"

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Go pioneers!

Jack Churchill will just break the game with his badassness!

How about Leo Majors if you want a human killing machine then?

During the Normandy beach landings, he gunned down an entire Nazi squad and managed to GTA their half-track. Later during the war, the Allies tasked him with infiltrating a Nazi held town (Zwolle, Netherlands) and notifying the rebels that their village will be air bombed the next day in order to push out the occupiers. Upon arriving at the location, Leo started Wolfenstein-ing his way through the village with whatever weapon he could find. Through his one night rampage, he proceeded to clearing enemy bunkers and blowing up Gestapo headquarters. By the time he was done, the entire enemy garrison had left the place because they though that they where up against an entire army. To this day, Leo Majors is known as the sole liberator of that town.

Even more awesome? He used to live about half an hour from where I live now

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When the going gets weird, the weird turns pro. -Hunter S. Thompson
Встань, Страх Преодолей

This is honestly one of the greatest (and funniest) articles I have ever read in my life. Thank you Rumbler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Major

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http://www.alliancethegame.com/update.php

Hoe-Lee-Shit! AllianceEric tips his cap at Rumbler.

Phenomenal reading and proof positive that we should leave our friendly neighbors to the North alone, and let them watch their hockey and curling in peace. If they had turned his story into a movie I would have thought they were full of shit.

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Alliance Developer, Sox34's not-so-secret identity, & NZG Central Command
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur." — Unknown Philosopher

A second vote for Jack Churchill. It would definitely be amazing conducting raids on German positions and acting as a rearguard for the retreating BEF during the battle for France in 1940, ultimately culminating in evacuation from Dunkerque. Or maybe as a commando later in the war.

Also, Charles Upham - one of a few (literally less than 10) men to receive not one, but TWO Victoria Crosses and LIVE to tell about it. Mostly served in North Africa and the Mediterranean. The guy from SPR disgraced his name.

_________________

Head of Zombie Suit Manufacturing, Supplying Guns to the Mentally Stable, Lead Researcher for Weapons, Grand Requisitioner, and Master Keeper of the NZG Armoury.
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

The best part is the image of him casually strolling out of a concentration camp, whistling with cane in hand.

_________________
Go pioneers!

Also, for those of you who have seen the epic film A Bridge too Far, depicting the various facets of Operation Market Garden.

Anthony Hopkins' character, Colonel John Frost of the British paras who were tasked with holding Arnhem, was based on a real man. In fact, he was on the set as a consultant and all that. The real Col. Frost expressed his displeasure with Hopkins' portrayal of his actions during the Battle and Hopkins recalls that Col. Frost told him that a British officer would never have run but would have shown disdain for enemy fire by walking from place to place. Hopkins claims he tried but as soon as the firing started, instincts took over and he ran as fast as he could.

_________________

Head of Zombie Suit Manufacturing, Supplying Guns to the Mentally Stable, Lead Researcher for Weapons, Grand Requisitioner, and Master Keeper of the NZG Armoury.
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

Being able to play as these people (aka using their likeness) in multiplayer would be amazing.. Especially if they came with their famous lines.

_________________
Go pioneers!

Dude, playing as a cigar-smoking Churchill while wielding a Tommy gun would kick ass. That is all I have to say.

_________________
When the going gets weird, the weird turns pro. -Hunter S. Thompson
Встань, Страх Преодолей

I can confirm right here and now that you will not be playing as Churchill, while fending off hoards of the undead.

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Alliance Developer, Sox34's not-so-secret identity, & NZG Central Command
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur." — Unknown Philosopher

I'm not sure why you specifically chose to mention not playing as a zombie slaying Churchill - either this is planned but maybe not with Churchill in particular :\

_________________

Head of Zombie Suit Manufacturing, Supplying Guns to the Mentally Stable, Lead Researcher for Weapons, Grand Requisitioner, and Master Keeper of the NZG Armoury.
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

Was actually a jab at the proliferation of zombie game types in the last couple of years. There are no plans for a "me too" zombie mode in Alliance. We suspect a mod will add one long before we'd consider doing so.

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Alliance Developer, Sox34's not-so-secret identity, & NZG Central Command
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur." — Unknown Philosopher

But what about hunting vampires as Leo Major? Maybe ghosts?


But on a serious note, I think alliance would be a great candidate for a zombie mode. It's hard to argue for it, given how that it's probably the most common card games these days use. But alliance would be first game that gives you the huge selection of realistic weaponry at your disposal. It would do a much better job of recreating that classic romero movie feel that we all love. Just my 2 cents.

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Go pioneers!

This doesn't happen often, but I agree with neostyles. Alliance would be a superb platform for a zombie type game similar to that of CoD: WaW or Black Ops where you have to defend some sort of building.

Even after CoD:MW2 and Black Ops came out I still constantly played the WaW Nazi zombies with mods. Probably the best mod I played replaced all the WaW firearms with the firearms from the first MW. Then if I felt like I needed a handicap, there was a fullauto mod that made all the weapons fully automatic (including bolt action rifles), at least doubles magazine capacity and rate of fire. For the longest time I'd try and use the machine guns (M1919 and MG42), but once I got past level 30 or so it would take nearly an entire 500 round magazine to kill one zombie. The double barrel shotgun is basically a flak gun - no reload time and kills like 3-5 zombies in one shot. Using the double barrel and pump action shotguns I got to level 45 and quit because I got tired of murdering - think I killed over 10,000 zombies by then.

I'm not sure why I spent so much time rambling that out, but I'm going to post it anyway.

As long as there are mod tools I imagine it won't be long before an unofficial zombie mod will pop up. Just look at CS:S and DoD:S where people have created a slew of mods that are simple but quite engaging - e.g. zombie mod, gun game, surfing.

Lastly, just going to express my attitude towards zombie type games. In my opinion scenarios where you have to mangle your way through a map whilst fending off gangs of zombies in order to get to arbitrary objectives. On the other hand, the CoD style zombie game type where you focus on murdering hoards of zombies and managing your weapons in lieu of trying to navigate a (poorly made) map to get to some objective.

okay i need to stop rambling.

_________________

Head of Zombie Suit Manufacturing, Supplying Guns to the Mentally Stable, Lead Researcher for Weapons, Grand Requisitioner, and Master Keeper of the NZG Armoury.
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

I would prefer a scenerio with some sort of objective, rather than just a "see how long you can survive" mode. To be honest, I haven't really been very impressed with today's zombie themed games. Even the left 4 dead series, while fun, seemed a little too mindless. None of these games captured the things that I love about zombie movies. You're always forced to go where the game tells you to and you usually have relatively limited number of options for how to fight the undead. I want to be able to scavenge what ever I want from stores (be it firearms or everyday items) and use them to fight off the undead.

EDIT : Now that dermann mentions it, I think i do vaguely remember playing the cs zombie mod. To be honest, I found it to be only marginally amusing.

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Go pioneers!

neostyles, I don't like objective based zombie games solely because of Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. The maps were always very poorly made, being extremely linear (you rarely had option in which path to take to the objective) and I found in the second one that the maps were not very intuitive, as you'd spend quite some finding the correct path the map designer meant for you to take to the objective - not to mention how extremely scripted everything is.

To be fair, I would play an objective based zombie game as long as it was well thought out and polished. I think the zombie game in Black Ops tried expanding the stationary type game by implementing maps in which you have to expand to different parts of the map to gain access to different guns and sometimes powerups (arcadey but fun). In order to do so you have to access power stations. It's nowhere near as mobile as Left 4 Dead, but it gives you the option to move about (you don't have to go to all or any of the other parts of the map, but it's an option to change up the way you play.

The CS:S zombie mod isn't fun when you have the stock guns and limited ammo. The servers I played on usually had a mod in which the magazine capacity and rate of fire were increased, and you had unlimited ammo (still had to reload though). It was still fair, though, as the zombies had thousands of HP so you could dump magazine after magazine into them without killing them. The best tactic was to get to a spot with only one (narrow) entrance, put your back to the wall, and just repel any zombies that came across. When you shoot the zombies, they cannot move forward, so as long as they're being drenched in lead, you're safe. You'd usually want to be with at least one other person, as reloading during combat could be very disastrous (zombies also had their movement speed increased) - all it takes is one slash and an entire 'bunker' would fall. It was all very arcadey, but quite entertaining.

The CS:S zombie mod used both normal CS:S maps slightly modified for the mod and custom maps. In my opinion, when a zombie mod is developed for Alliance, it will be similar to the CS:S map, if but a bit more realistic.
In my opinion

_________________

Head of Zombie Suit Manufacturing, Supplying Guns to the Mentally Stable, Lead Researcher for Weapons, Grand Requisitioner, and Master Keeper of the NZG Armoury.
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

DerMann, what I had in mind was a nonlinear objective mode set in a city or something. Aside from being able to navigate the streets in any way you want, there would also be hidden shortcuts (for example fences that were cut by someone previously), encouraging you to explore. Ultimately, you would have to escape the city, and you could choose any route you wanted (as the survivors can do in a zombie movie.) You could do things like climb up buildings to see asses any threat, obstacles in the vicinity of your team and possibly remove said threats depending on how far your weapon can reach out to.

I found the cs source zombie mod to be very underwhelming, for the simple reason that the mod had seemingly nothing to do with zombies. I've always had a thing for the supernatural and it didn't capture any of that. It was just a bunch of people chasing me around with knives. Kind of like little kids pointing their fingers at each other and going "bang." I have never played on those kind of servers but it doesn't really sound like my kind of deal. When I play a game, I need to be able to believe what is on my screen, atleast in some capacity. Infinite ammo and zombies that take lots of time to kill would ruin things for me. Granted, zombies are usually more resilient to gun fire, but putting an entire magazine into one should put it down. Zombies (in my view) should be relatively harmless alone. The danger should come from their numbers.

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Go pioneers!

Well said. I now wouldn't be surprised if the first thing the community adds via a mod is a zombie survival mode. I'm personally a fan of the original Dawn of the Dead, The Zombie Survival Guide, & The Walking Dead. Give me hordes of slow, weak, and dumb zombies with no supernatural powers any day of the week.

That said, our thoughts on development priorities are that we'd want to add awesome Alliance features and modes (in theme) before we'd expand to non-Alliance related gametypes, levels, or objects. It would be a while before that would happen on our end and plenty of time for anyone else to create such a mod.

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Alliance Developer, Sox34's not-so-secret identity, & NZG Central Command
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur." — Unknown Philosopher