What The Heck Is Homefront’s ‘Drama Engine’?
There is a mix of different features in Homefront that THQ and Kaos Studios are calling the “Drama Engine.” The…drama engine? At first, it sounds like something silly, ala the Emotion Engine that was hyped for the PlayStation 2, but it’s actually a little cooler than that, as Homefront general manager David Votypka explained during E3.
“We have a mix of these really intense action moments combined with in-game storytelling,” said Votypka. “You’re not going to see any cutscenes in the game. One of the things that the drama engine done is it’s a lot of dynamic triggers and tracking of bringing events in your face, at the player, all the time. For example, in our demo…there’s this one sequence where this enemy jeep comes hurtling at you and you fire a rocket launcher and it flips over and careens towards you. Now, if I’m standing 30 or 40 feet to the left or the right, it’s actually still gonna track to the player, so there’s a lot of systems that’s checking dynamically [in] real-time about really bringing you those action moments right into your face.”
Essentially, Homefront still engages in a large amount of scripted events to convey drama, but rather than potentially missing out on part of the event because you’re looking the wrong way (or having the camera ripped from your control to force your vision there), it tailors the direction of the on-screen action, based on where you’re located in the environment. Cool!
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