BRINK Game Director Paul Wedgewood from Splash Damage took some time out of his busy schedule to put on a developer session every day of Eurogamer Expo this year. I caught the final session on Saturday. What was on display was pretty awesome.

BRINK is about the last known bastion of civilization in 2045 known as the Ark. Originally built as an experimental habitat shit has happened that has made it a permanent habitat for the past 20 years. In that time the original citizens survived and reproduced and taken on refugees, growing the population beyond the intent of the Ark. Refugees have taken up homes in Container City, a place previously reserved only for storage. The imbalances of society have caused some to rise up, placing the Ark on the BRINK of civil war. There are two sides to this war (as is normally the case), refugees and the police. The refugees see themselves as rebels, fighting for equality. The security force are just doing their jobs, viewing the troublesome refugees as borderline terrorists.

Paul kicked off the demo bringing us around the airport to show the basic functions of your standard first person shooter, and SMART. SMART stands for Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain. The design is to help you get where you want to go quickly. By holding the sprint button your character will navigate the obstacles between you and your destination.  You aren’t surrendering complete control of your character, just allowing the computer to time your jump over that wall for you. It looks like it will help players navigate the environment in a much smoother manner than today’s lining up and jumping on boxes fiasco, helping focus on the “Shooter” bit of FPS instead of the “where are my feet?” bit.

Launching into Container City to track down a suitcase nuke Paul took on the role of the security force. He created his character from a full character customization screen. Items are of course unlockable and can be bought with XP or earned from completing certain missions. The character customization screen reminded me a bit of Realtime Worlds APB with how robust it seems to be. Once play kicked off it was the standard FPS affair but using SMART to dive for cover or perform a series of jumps to gain the high ground, making movements for the player a hell of a lot smoother.

As a soldier the job just wasn’t getting done right so Paul went to one of the many command centers across the level and changed his loadout to an operative. Once an operative the game changes slightly for you as orders will change depending upon what role/loadout you have selected. The player can bring up an orders menu and select which mission they wish to take on.  Do you want to steal intelligence from the enemy? Perhaps conduct a little interrogation? Each mission is assigned a different amount of XP which you can use to customize or advance your character.

In the middle of the demo Paul had 2 other BRINK team members join in, changing the single player game to cooperative game. BRINK allows for drop in/out on the fly and each player brings the full character plus customizations with them. Once new players join the AI Commander changes what missions are offered to accommodate the group and the present situation. This just sings “replay value” to me. The Commander will keep all the teammates informed of everyone’s missions so the team can work together and compliment each other. BRINK will also have a versus multiplayer but not on the storyline mode.

The build shown was only a pre-alpha and it was sharp. Sound, visuals, cutscenes, everything was delivering and looking damn good for pre-alpha. As far as shooters go this one looks like it is damn fun. SMART will help you maneuver those difficult ladder climbing sections (that normally get me killed) so you can focus on blowing the hell out of each other. Paul kept chuckling to himself as he tortured, blew up, and shotgunned baddies to death which makes this game look very entertaining. BRINK will be published by Bethesda Softworks in Spring 2010 and I cannot wait to watch it blur the lines of single and co-op play and encourage co-op gameplay in todays world of online savages.

Thanks to Paul Wedgewood, Splash Damage, and Bethesda Softworks for the presentation.