The Great War: Western Front Gamescom Interview: The "First RTS Game Based On Trench Warfare"

thegamer.com:

The Great War: Western Front was the very first game I saw at Gamescom, and in many ways it set the tone for what this year's showcase was going to be like. While a lot of the big blockbuster studios sat this one out, I found myself most drawn to titles I hadn't given much thought to before. I'm not hugely enamoured by RTS games, and as such I was expecting to be writing about The Great War in a purely professional sense. Here's what the game does, here's its gimmick, here's a picture from the game, the end. But seeing the preview, and especially talking to developers Frank Klepacki and Chris Becker, I found myself being drawn into the world much more.

The most compelling thing about The Great War is that you cannot win, you can only lose by a lesser degree than your opponent loses. Much like the First World War, the game is an arduous affair about winning by inches, knowing when to stop and conserve your resources, and about maintaining morale in the most difficult and dreary of conditions. In the gameplay demo, Becker had claimed an enemy base, but decided not to push on and claim the other two in what would have been a complete and undeniable victory - because in doing so he would have lost far more men and destroyed his own tanks, meaning future battles would have been all the more difficult. It's an interesting approach, and one that asks for a lot of patience - especially as the first RTS game to embrace trench battles. Still, RTS fans are used to meticulous pacing.

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"There's a handful of RTS that have touched on World War One, but they really haven't gone into the heart of World War One," Becker says. "They just kind of gloss over it.