Square Enix’s Front Mission Evolved is the latest installment in the popular ongoing Front Mission video game series, a long-running saga depicting political tensions and outright war between rival nations, much of which is resolved through the use of “Wanzers,” giant humanoid robots armed with the latest weaponry. Front Mission Evolved players take control of these Wanzers in a thrilling third-person combat experience, battling enemy Wanzers, plus tanks, ground personnel and more.
While the Wanzer represents the ultimate in warfare in the Front Mission universe, how close are we to developing Wanzers for use in our own real-world conflicts? To answer that question, I spoke with David Hambling, author of Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World, and David Verfaillie, Design Director, Double Helix Games.
Front Mission Evolved envisions a future where anthropomorphic war machines will prove to dominate the battlefield, yet I’m curious what advantages a human-patterned robot combatant would offer as opposed to, say, hypothetically, a spider or octopus or anything else up to and including the traditional tank.
DAVID HAMBLING: There are two big factors at work here which favor a humanoid design: one is about mobility, the other is human interface.
Wheels work well enough on flat surfaces, but for anything more rugged you need tracks. This is how the traditional tank came about, as it’s much better at crossing trenches and vertical obstacles than a wheeled vehicle. But even the best tracked vehicles can’t match the mobility of the foot soldier (or the pack mule) over the roughest terrain. Tracked vehicles get stuck in mud, lose traction on steep slopes and get into trouble in tight spaces.
That’s why there is a growing interest in legged platforms like Boston Dynamics Legged Squad Support System, a robot which can keep up with the infantry across any terrain while carrying a load.
Legged systems have a couple of other major advantages. One is that they can eliminate the dependence on roads and bridges which makes forces so vulnerable at present – if the enemy knows you have to cross at a bridge, that’s where they’ll be waiting. The other is agility. A machine with a zero turning radius, able to change direction instantly and duck down behind cover has massive advantages in urban terrain and other difficult environments.
Why humanoid rather than another configuration? Well, nature has not evolved any large terrestrial spiders or octopus (…or snakes, or millipedes…). The quadruped design works well enough up to dinosaur-size, and we know that a twenty-foot-tall biped works well too: the T Rex is nature’s version of the walking tanks in Front Mission Evolved. The T-Rex had superior cross-country mobility to the latest M1 Abrams tank, and a robot version should be able to exceed that.
(You might be interested to know that there is military interest in robot spiders and octopus too, but for much smaller applications).
The second factor is the human interface. A humanoid machine can be piloted easily and intuitively, and developers have been taking advantage of this ever since the 1962 Pedipulator, an experimental military walking machine controlled directly by the operators own arms and legs. Current programs like Raytheon’s XOS are basically exoskeletons which amplify the wearer’s strength, requiring minimal training. Another exoskeleton, HULC, was on display at the US Army’s annual show last week. Scrambling up a slope in a bipedal suit is simple and intuitive, whereas the pilot interface for a multi-limbed machine would be a lot more complex.
It’s a small step from the current designs to armored and armed exoskeletons for combat. From then on it’s just a question of how far it can be usefully scaled up. Why stop at carrying an extra five hundred pounds of firepower and protection when you could have five thousand? The natural limit to this will probably be something around the size of modern armored vehicles – or the Front Mission Evolved humanoid tanks.
The game reminds me a lot of an old tabletop wargame called Battletech, which also featured a world dominated by humanoid war machines. This spawned a series of computer games, and I was wondering how much any of these might have influenced the look of Front Mission Evolved.
DAVID VERFAILLIE: No one on the team played the tabletop game BattleTech, however quite a few of us, including myself, played the MechWarrior games, both on PC and PS2. The more military oriented and tactical nature of these games influenced my view of the Front Mission universe. One of the guiding principles that I set for Front Mission Evolved was that we retain the feel of wanzers as war machines that are a part of a military effort. Political tension and how it escalates to war are central themes for Front Mission Evolved.
I am continually intrigued by the symbiotic relationship between the defense industry and video game industry in the sense that it seems both often inspire each other. Could we live to see a future of real-life Wanzers?
DAVID HAMBLING: The two-way flow between the defense industry and the video game industry is really starting to gain momentum. Now that everyone involved has grown up playing these things. An executive for a major military robot manufacturer recently told me that their common interface – a control box used for air, ground and waterborne robots – was based on a games controller because “that’s what everyone knows how to use.”
In the past it was very difficult getting the military to accept new technology. Back in the First World War, Lord Kitchener, Britain’s Minister for War, called the first tank a ‘pretty mechanical toy’ and failed to appreciate that it would be a war-winning weapon. Flying machines were considered to be flimsy newfangled inventions that could never be as useful as cavalry. Science fiction was a minority interest and few thought that war would be any different in the future.
The situation now is very different. Having spent years playing science-fiction themed games and becoming familiar ‘first hand’ with Wanzers, jet packs and EMP weapons, the reaction from the military is likely to be different when faced with innovations. When you appreciate how tactically useful a walking tank could be, you’re not likely to dismiss the idea. It’s more a matter of “When can you build us something like that?” – or “Dude, where’s my Wanzer?”
The defense industry plays up to this, and some of their marketing gets very imaginative and forward-looking. They openly compare their technology to the sort of things seen in Transformers or Iron Man – or video games like Front Mission Evolved. They create presentations filled with vivid imagery, and their expanded ideas feed into the games industry, paving the way for the next round of developments.
The ancestors of the Wanzers are already walking. They are a bit clumsy and experimental, like the first tanks and early aircraft. But, with the support of people who have a vision of what Wanzers could do, they’re picking up pace rapidly. Of course there are plenty of other technologies out there too….but the the age of anthropomorphic war machines is already within sight.
I enjoyed that the game offered tactical options for customizing and controlling your Wanzer, yet also managed to hold an “arcade shoot em’ up” thrill that continued throughout the game. Was there much discussion involved in how to balance these two aspects during the game’s design?
DAVID VERFAILLIE: Absolutely, the balance between maintaining the tactical feel of Front Mission and creating a fast paced action shooter was an important element of the design. In this iteration of Front Mission we gravitated more towards the action shoot’em up experience. We wanted a 3rd person perspective to highlight the customization of wanzers. So we felt keeping the action high, with quick engagements, fit the style of game we were trying to create.
However, we did try to retain the tactical feel of combat as much as possible. Customization is clearly at the heart of this effort, with a variety of wanzer parts, weapons, backpacks and battle skills giving players lots of options. But even in-game, the variety of enemy types and their different behaviors, combined with location based damage and part destruction add some great tactical depth to the game.
The character design was evocative of Japanese anime to me, as were some of the game’s themes. Were there any specific films or maybe manga that inspired Front Mission Evolved?
DAVID VERFAILLIE: The character design in Front Mission Evolved was spearheaded by Square Enix. However, Double Helix worked with them to ensure the characters would also appeal to a western audience. We also designed most of new wanzers for Front Mission Evolved, including the Anakuma, Caballus, and Apollo’s Chariot.
The art team and cinematic team at Double Helix are huge fans of mecha anime and magna. Some of our favorites include: Mobile Suit Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Macross, and Full Metal Panic! The narrative and characters in these media really pushed us to ensure the storytelling in Front Mission Evolved had style.
