End State
Right after the presentation on Kingdom Come was finished, I went to see the Finns behind the turn based squad tactics game "End State". Bubbles was still busy squeezing some more answers out of Sven Vincke, so I sneaked inside without him and secured myself a position on the developers' laptop, where they just threw me into a combat scenario and let me play, explaining features while I did so. Once Bubbles arrived, he switched on his recorder and asked the devs some questions while I tried to kill the enemies with my guys while trying not to be killed myself. The devs also kept commenting on the gameplay with their adorable Finnish accents while I played.
The gameplay basics are simple and will seem instantly familiar if you have ever played a squad tactics game before - especially Jagged Alliance 2 and Silent Storm, End State's most obvious influences. Your soldiers can walk, run, crouch, shoot - and, what I really liked, they can turn around for no AP cost which lets you face the direction you suspect enemies to come from even when you're out of AP. The optimal way to move about in this game is to go from cover to cover and turn to face the enemy once you're in position. You do have to beware interrupts, though: running across an open field overlooked by enemy troops is always a bad idea that will most certainly end up with you being riddled with bullets (and, as a consequence of that, dead). The cover mechanics of End State are quite interesting as they're a little more involved than just crouching behind an object that blocks bullets. Some objects, such as bushes, will only block the enemy's line of sight but won't block a bullet. If you run towards a bush and an enemy sees you, and then you crouch down to hide behind it, chances are the enemy will just fire into the bush because he saw you and expects you to still be there. The likely result of that is a wounded (or dead if you're unlucky) soldier.
As for the cover that actually protects you from bullets, there is low cover and high cover. Low cover can be looked over and only fully protects you when you're crouched; high cover also protects you when you're standing upright. The interesting feature in End State that I haven't seen in other games of this genre is that you can peek out from cover without revealing yourself to the enemy. You might compare that to how leaning works in Dishonored: peek out, get a line of sight to where you're looking at without risking detection, then make your plans based on what you've just seen. The interface is also very nice and helps you with your tactical planning: when you select your attack, it shows you the to-hit chance on all visible enemies, and you can see on the grid how far you can move while still having enough action points left for shooting.
The weapon mechanics of this game are really nice, too. They follow the principle of physics simulation rather than pure dice rolls, and every bullet will behave realistically once it leaves the rifle's muzzle. You can aim at different body parts (arms, legs, torso, head), each with a different chance to hit, and the damage done is, of course, dependent on the hit location. A headshot does more damage than a shot to the arm. Sometimes, though, a shot to the arm might penetrate and hit the torso of the man behind, then penetrate that guy's torse, hit a wooden fence behind him, penetrate the wooden fence and finally hit the leg of an enemy behind that fence. It entirely depends on your weapon's penetration stat. A low calibre pistol might not even be able to go through a wooden fence, but a high calibre sniper bullet can go through multiple enemies and take them all out in one go.
"Your chance to hit is not random," I am told. "It's always calculated based on the direction and elevation, it's really a simulated raycast. There is a lot of mathematics under the hood there, it's not just a simple percentile chance or dice roll. Technically, it's quite different from other games in this genre."
"It's a two-part calculation of the to-hit chance," the other developer says. "First is the shooter's ability to point his weapon at the target, and then there's the weapon's ability to propel the bullet to the point it's aimed at. So you will find that a good shooter won't be able to hit with a bad weapon. And another thing that is really important is the reaction mechanic which is also tied to this system. So if you have a fast reaction weapon, for example an SMG, you can stand at a corner and if you know the enemy's there you can look in that direction. When the enemy passes your line of sight, there is an interruption, and the reaction times are dependant on view direction. So if you look directly at an enemy and there's an interruption, you have a better reaction time than if you viewed him at an angle and had to turn a little bit to face him. With a better reaction time, you can kill him before he kills you."
The interruption mechanic of End State is really interesting and reminded me of the real-time squad tactics game 7.62 High Calibre. When you know an enemy is around the corner, and the enemy knows you are around the corner, in Jagged Alliance 2 you would try to camp behind the corner and hope to get an interrupt so you can shoot him without any danger to yourself. Here, it is a little different. An enemy who knows you're camping there can strafe around the corner facing you, and when he passes your line of sight the interrupt starts. Rather than pausing his turn and giving you a free shot at him, though, the game compares your reaction times and has you both fire your weapons. With a fast-firing SMG you would easily kill an enemy with a semi-automatic rifle, but if you're the one with the slower weapon, chances are your interrupt isn't going to turn out in your favor. And if you're facing him at a 45° angle rather than straight up, you're probably going to die regardless of your weapon because in a situation like that, every second counts - and those milliseconds spent moving your weapon might already be too many.
Small obstacles, like a waist-high fence, can be climbed so if you are certain that an enemy is watching the fence's gate and will shoot at you once you go through... well, you can just climb over it and shoot him in the back. Of course, the AI is also able to do that so you should always be aware of your environment. Soldiers should always move out in pairs, so one can watch the other's back. Having one of your guys go Rambo will very likely end up with him being dead.
This stresses the importance of facing in this game. The direction you're facing in not only determines your line of sight, it also determines your reaction time in an interrupt, and lets you go around corners more safely. Whenever you're moving past a window or door or open space where you suspect enemies to be positioned, it's a good idea to strafe rather than run past. It allows you to see any dangers awaiting you from that direction and you can defend yourself against any possible ambushes that might be set up against you. If you just run walk past a window rather than strafing past it with your weapon raised, an interrupting enemy will just shoot at you and you're basically screwed. This system lets you effectively set up ambushes by scouting out enemy patrol routes, then setting up your soldiers at the appropriate positions and putting their stance on opportunity fire. But you have to play it smart: interrupts never give you a free shot; it's always a fight between those who have set up their opportunity fire and those who try to flush them out. If the enemy knows you're there and strafes in with his weapon raised, there's a chance that your guys end up as the dead ones.
Apart from sight, there is also sound, which works in a similar way to Silent Storm. When your guys hear footsteps, you will see where the footsteps came from and you can shoot at the enemy's position, for example when you hear footsteps behind a group of bushes and don't see anyone since they block your line of sight. Since the AI operates by the same rules as the player (the devs assured me that it doesn't cheat: it plays with the same line of sight, simulated bullet trajectories, and noise propagation rules as the player), the enemy will also be able to hear you if you run everywhere rather than slowly sneaking about, so you always have to be mindful of that. Speaking of the AI, each enemy soldier will have his own personality: one might be cautious and try to camp behind cover, setting up ambushes and trying to get interrupts; another might be more daring and charge forward with his SMG; some might even be stupid and just run into your position to be gunned down. There is a lot of variety in AI behaviors, which makes the game less predictable and requires the player to adjust his tactics. You can never be certain how the AI will react to your actions, since every single solidier has his own AI profile with slight behavioral variations.
Of course, since this is the RPG Codex and we're covering this game, there are also RPG elements. Your soldiers get XP for each kill and you can level them up with additional skills in the different weapon categories. The game is not class-based: any soldier can choose to level up in any weapon category. Skills give you special attack abilities, such as aimed shots or quick shots. While the game aims for realism and simulation in all of its gameplay aspects, these special skills follow a convention that is very common in the turn based games of recent years: cooldowns. You could use an ability that increases your to-hit chance for this turn, and then you're have to wait 2 turns to use it again. It's a simple system and it prevents the abilities from becoming overpowered, but by now we've reached a point where I'd just be happy to see a turn based tactics game which doesn't use cooldowns.
The wound system of this game does things a little bit different than most others in the genre. There is no total hitpoint pool that is depleted with each shot, instead every body part has its own HP and damaging it will have different effects. If you want to kill someone, shooting him in the foot 100 times isn't the best solution. If your hand gets wounded heavily, you won't be able to use it anymore, but it's not going to kill you. If you want to go for the kill, torso and head are the locations you want to go for. Against an enemy with good body armor, hitting the arms would be a good idea though, as that will severely reduce his to-hit chance.
At the time I played this (August 2016 - Codex reporters are truly the speediest in the world!) there were a couple of things I thought were missing, and the devs said they were still undecided on whether to implement them or not, so this might have changed by now. There are only two positions for your soldiers: standing and crouching; you cannot go prone, but, quoting one of the devs: "We might implement that but currently it's not in." To be honest, I just expected a prone position to be there because JA2 and Silent Storm have it. When you play the game for a while you won't even notice the lack of a prone position anymore; End State offers you enough tactical options with its cover and facing mechanics that this is only a minor nitpick. Reloading of weapons always reloads the entire magazine, and when I asked if weapons such as pump-action shotguns can be/need to be reloaded one bullet at a time, the devs said that it would be a nice feature to have and might be implemented in the future, but it's not a top priority. So right now, if your shotgun has 6 shots left and you reload it, it takes the same amount of action points as when you have no shots left at all. Again, just a minor nitpick, but I would've liked to see something like this as it would make shotguns more unique and interesting to use.
Also, when I asked what happens to half-empty magazines when I reload, the devs said: "The plan is that you put them back in your pouch and when you're out of full magazines, you can fall back to your half-empty ones instead of just having an empty gun. But currently it is not implemented at all, right now you have a limited amount of clips you can reload. At this point the inventory is not yet implemented, but later on you should have an inventory similar to Jagged Alliance, with different carrying devices so the amount of stuff you can carry depends on your equipment."
I have mentioned that the biggest inspirations for End State are JA2 (when I mentioned that I played the 1.13 mod, one of the devs called it "the gold standard of turn based tactics") and Silent Storm, so one feature the game absolutely needs to have if it wants to compete with these is destructible environments. And oh boy, does this game have destructible environments! Are the enemies set up inside a house, ready to shoot at anyone passing by the windows? Is there a sniper on the roof, ready to go all Simo Häyhä on everyone who tries to approach the building? No problem, just move close enough to throw a grenade and blow a hole into the wall. There are no walls that cannot be destroyed. As long as you have the appropriate explosives, you can blow a hole into any wall, or ceiling, or floor, or even just destroy an object that offers cover to the enemy. Someone's hiding behind a crate? Blow it up. Someone's hiding behind a wall? Blow it up. You know someone's on the floor above you? Blow a hole into the roof, see him fall down. In this hands-on preview, I only used a grenade once, but the effect it had was amazing. It blew a huge hole into the wall of the house I threw it at, and it took out a large chunk of the first floor's floor too.
But the tactical battles aren't everything: the game also has a campaign set in a fictional Eastern European country threatened by a terrorist network. The player is tasked to hunt them down, and in each combat scenario you're fighting the terrorists and try to find more clues to the whereabouts of their leaders. The campaign is dynamic: while the combat maps are all hand-crafted, their actual contents vary from game to game. In one playthrough, there might be a mansion where there's a mafia boss you have to kill, but in the next playthrough that very same mafia boss has his base of operations in an office building somewhere in the city. So, in multiple playthroughs you will likely see the same environments, but you will face different enemies and have different objectives each time.
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Overall, my impressions of this game have been thoroughly positive. While there were some minor details that hadn't been implemented yet, such as the inventory, the gameplay basics were very solid and provide many tactical opportunities for the player. Different types of weapons that all have their situations where they're useful (SMGs, pistols and shotguns are great for short range encounters, assault rifles are great at medium range, and sniper rifles are only useful for long range shots), every wall and object on the map can be used for cover but can also be blown apart with explosives, the strafing mechanic makes both attacking and defending more interesting since interrupts don't give you free shots and camping isn't as effective, each enemy soldier has his own AI patterns so the behavior won't be predictable. The half hour of hands-on gameplay went by really quickly; this is one of those "just one more turn" games that make you want to play a scenario to its end once you start it.
I'm really looking forward to this game, especially to using explosives more often. Hey, what can I say, I just have a fetish for well-made destructible environments.
End State looks like it will be a worthy successor to JA2 and Silent Storm, bringing more advanced physics and a few interesting new features to the table while keeping the basic gameplay of these classics intact. If you ever played JA2, you'll know what to expect here. The game is made by fans of the genre, and you really notice it: they aren't wasting any time on unnecessary features such as a complex story or large amounts of C&C. The story is as simple as it gets: you're leading a bunch of mercenaries. You have to kill the terrorists. Now go and have fun with the tactical combat.
