Brute Force (video Game) - Development

Development

Brute Force was developed by Digital Anvil, one of Microsoft's internal developers. The team had previously worked on games such as Wing Commander, Strike Commander, and Starlancer. Brute Force was designed to be a first-party game for the Xbox and begun in March 2000, before the console had launched. However development had begun before the takeover of Digital Anvil by Microsoft, and the title was originally meant for PC. Microsoft promptly turned it into an Xbox exclusive title. The core team of developers was composed of 30 people, but counting testers and other outside contributors more than 100 people had worked on the game. Only three months were spent on the concept stage of development, but would spend the next two years on the prototype cycle of development. Numerous influences on the game were cited. During the beginning of the project the developers looked toward Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Counter-Strike, stating that they wished to reach a level of intensity that fell somewhere between these two games. They also wished to implement a strategic element to the game, which was influenced by X-Com, where a team-based system was used to overcome obstacles. Halo also had an impact on the game, but according to the developers only to a minimal extent, mostly in terms of interface design and combat balancing. Some aspects were admitted to being similar to Halo for the sake of making the game accessible to those who had played Halo before. (The controls are, for example, almost identical.)

Digital Anvil was known as a developer of space combat games, and with Brute Force they set out to try something new, specifically a ground-based game. They also wanted to attempt a team-oriented game that would put the player in control of a squad of characters set amidst numerous environments. The game was conceived from these few core ideas. Development should also be looked at in the context of a first-party Xbox game following the enormous success of Halo. For one the game was meant to attract gamers who were fans of Halo, but also sufficiently different enough. Secondly the developers wanted the game to be a showcase of what the Xbox hardware was graphically capable of. However the team did admit that they had no idea what the system was capable of when they first started developing for it.

The game was first officially unveiled in October 2001 at Microsoft's X01, and shown in more detail later at E3 2002 and X02, where according to the developer much of the speculation was that the released media was not actually in-game. Although it was also said that the technology was one of the biggest challenges of development, and had not received final development kits until mid-2001.

Brute Force has the distinction of being the last game developed by Digital Anvil, as the studio was closed down officially on January 31, 2006. The staff was integrated in to Microsoft Games Studio in Redmond.