Prisoner of War

by Robert "Bilko" Shaw

Article Type: Interview
Article Date: January 30, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Prisoner of War
Category: First Person Adventure
Developer: Wide Games
Publisher: Codemasters
Release Date: Released
Min. Spec: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here





Prisoner of War is a new concept in gaming. It’s another WWII game, but with a difference. You don’t go round shooting everything that moves. You have to avoid everything that moves. Set in 1941 across four German prisoner of war (POW) camps (Salonika, Stalag Luft I, Stalag Luft III and Colditz Castle). You independently control four allied officers who are crack escapees. Methods of escape can range from impersonating a guard to engineering mass escapes before calling in Allied air strikes using the Germans’ own radio.

I got to ask Carl Jones, Executive Producer of Wide Games some questions about the game. Here’s what he said:

Pilfering from the German's quarters

R.S. How’s the game coming along and what’s the latest release date? The Codemasters Prisoner of War page has winter 2001/2.

C.J. The game is coming on in leaps and bounds at the moment. We're at that stage where everything is coming together, and the team are adding the extra features that'll make the game superb. We'll be releasing on PS2 and Xbox in June, with a PC version to follow shortly afterwards.

Snow at night

R.S. Where did the idea come from and how did you even begin to think how to put this idea into a game?

C.J. Well, at Wide we wanted to produce original titles, which meant that we were thinking about novel ways of playing games, novel opponents and settings. We figured early on that a game where the protagonist took on opponents that were impossible to fight and needed outwitting to defeat, was finally possible with the state of the art AI we could build on the new platforms. We originally thought about prison games generically, but we were looking for a plot led reason to keep putting the player back into incarceration. One weekend I was watching a documentary on Colditz Castle (the "escape proof POW camp in WWII) and it was a lightbulb moment—here were true life heroes, who used stealth and cunnning to escape from armed guards, but who were inevitably recaptured and thrown into the camp again. A couple of WWII movies later and we were on to a winner!

Trying to gain trust?

R.S. What research did you do on making 'Prisoner of War'?

C.J. Regarding research for PoW, there is a host of information out there—from journals of actual PoWs and how they escaped, to listening to the guys who were actually there. We also sent our team out to some PoW camps that still stand as museums to the exploits of the escapers.

Hmmm, gate is open. Off for a quick jog.

R.S. How many missions/campaigns are there?

C.J. There are 5 main opportunities to escape from 3 camps and players will be involved in around 16 missions, depending on their route through the game.

A view across the camp

R.S. Is this single player only?

C.J. PoW is single player only.

Attempting a quick exit

R.S. Will there be an option to edit any missions/campaigns

C.J. This isn't really suitable for PoW—there is so much involved in the AI for the game that creating editing tools to build the levels would be too much to include at this stage.

The yard

R.S. What happens if you’re caught or even caught too many times? Does one run the risk of being shot?!

C.J. The player will be thrown in the cooler if they are caught by a guard; the duration of incarceration depends on the seriousness of the players "crime" when they are caught. However, if a player pushes their luck they could end up being shot—most of the time this will result in a stay in the sickbay.

Going for a walk

R.S. What's this about having to act normal around the guards?

C.J. Well, the player will be expected to act normally any time they are in-view of a guard. It is up to the player to spot or create opportunities to break free of the constant observation to sneak into new and interesting areas of the camp. Any time a guard sees you up to no good, you have failed.

Climbing the fence

R.S. How far does the game go once a prisoner has escaped?

C.J. The game stops as soon as the player has got out of the camp. A full simulation of a journey across occupied Europe was simply too large a scope for this game.

Dodging the spotlights

R.S. Do you plan to have any expansions for the game?

C.J. We'd love to expand the game—into multiplayer, outside of the camp adventures, more camps to escape from. We're talking to Codemasters about this at the moment, but we have no confirmed plans for expansion to date.



COMBATSIM would like to thank Carl Jones for his time. This should be an interesting game.

Could this be the first FPNS - First Person No-Shooter? Who knows? As for escaping from Colditz, I can’t wait. Prisoner of War is due out this summer.

Resources

Articles:

• 2002/01/30: Interview with Wide Game's Carl Jones
• 2002/19/11: Prisoner of War (Review)

Official Sites:

• Wide Games
• Codemasters
• Official POW Web Site

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