Five Things You Didn’t Know about Homefront: The Revolution

On May 17th, Homefront: The Revolution will be released from publisher Deep Silver and developer Dambuster Studios—bringing to a close a long and sometimes chaotic five-year development period. Even though this return to the idea of North Korean forces invading and taking over the United States has been a long time coming, there’s a number of elements to the game that potential players still aren’t aware of at this point. So, I bring you my top five choices for things you didn’t know about Homefront: The Revolution.

The situation may change, but the team stays the same

One of the biggest points of confusion around Homefront: The Revolution has been who exactly is developing the game. When THQ first decided they wanted a sequel to 2011’s Homefront, they knew they needed to find a new team to help out—as the original game’s creator, Kaos Studios, had been shuttered. They looked to Free Radical Design, the Nottingham, England-based studio responsible for the cult classic TimeSplitters series.

Unfortunately, THQ ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2012, and in early the following year, Crytek picked up the rights to the Homefront brand. At that point, Revolution’s development was in the hands of Crytek UK (a fitting choice, as the project was built using the company’s CryEngine 3), and the overall game design was reworked to some degree. Things were going great on the development end until summer 2014, when Crytek started to run into some financial troubles of its own. At that point, Homefront: The Revolution’s co-publisher Deep Silver stepped in, purchasing the IP from Crytek and dropping the still-in-progress game into the lap of their new team, Dambuster Studios.

Except, here’s the thing so many seem to now know: Free Radical Design, Crytek UK, and Dambuster Studios are all the same team. Yes, since 2011, development of Homefront: The Revolutionhas been in the hands of the same people, worked on the same computers, and built on the same codebase. Over those five years, the turbulence going on around the studio’s parent companies, ownership, and the chaos of the game’s road to completion caused some to leave the developer, but a large number of the people who will be there to see Revolution’s completion were also there when it first began.

This isn’t the game it used to be

At this point, Homefront: The Revolution is well known as an open-world game that encourages players to make their own decisions in terms of what to do next or how best to accomplish various goal. When the game first started development, however, it was set to go down a very different path.

The reason for that is simple: the original Homefrontwas a linear, narrative- and set piece-driven experience. Think more Call of Duty, and less Far Cry. From the beginning of plans for a Homefront sequel in late 2011 through one of THQ’s last internal reviews of the game in late 2012 (shortly before the publisher’s collapse), the intention for Revolution was to do something that followed in the footsteps of its predecessor, while addressing complaints players had about the first game.

Under Crytek’s wing, Homefront: The Revolution continued on as a game that did offer some smaller moments of freedom, but which was still far more linear than how it’d end up. Then, something happened to help trigger a change of thinking among the team: Crysis 3 hit in the summer of 2013 to less success than expected.

When that happened, Crytek decided it wanted to return to innovation instead of iteration, and that provided an opening for the team at then Crytek UK who weren’t completely happy with how Revolution was shaping up. The studio heads sat down with their bosses at Crytek, and explained how they wanted to do something a bit more daring and open world-focused in Homefront 2. In response, one of Crytek’s founders, Cevat Yerli, asked ask a simple question: why aren’t you guys doing that now?

So, upon returning back to the Crytek UK studio, it was announced that the game would be making a major shift in design and concept. At first, the team was overjoyed—until they realized how much work would need to go into that change. In moving from a heavily scripted game to one where players were more in control of the outcome, some of what had been built simply was unusable. Concepts that would now be too big in scope to be workable, or sections of the game that could accommodate an in-and-out style of linear gameplay, but which wouldn’t hold up when a player could come and go as much as they’d like.

One especially interesting note in the evolution of Revolutionis that, originally, the player was going to start in Philadelphia and end up in Atlantic City; with the change, now the game is fully focused on a far more fleshed-out and developed Philly.

Not wanting time to repeat

Not wanting your latest game project to be too similar to your beloved, previous series may seem like a crazy goal, but for the team at Dambuster Studios, distancing Homefront: The Revolution from the TimeSplitters franchise was an important part of the process.

That’s not to say that TimeSplitters and its two sequels were bad games—far from it. However, studio head Hasit Zala admitted that the games were “self-indulgent,” filled to the brim with crazy ideas and influences that were born from what the dev team wanted to see—not necessarily what would make the best gaming experience. While the style and structure of the TimeSplitters chapters allowed for that, the games didn’t become the hit the developer had hoped they would be, and struggled to find a market in some countries.

So, for Homefront: The Revolution, the men and women of Dambuster Studios looked to approach things from a different angle. Here, they wanted to craft a game that has a stronger narrative and a more developed overall approach to the events that would unfold. Inspiration came from other releases such as Half-Life, games that engrossed players in their worlds and made them feel like they were a part of something far bigger.

However, for any longtime TimeSplitters fans out there, don’t feel too forgotten: there may just be a little surprise waiting for you somewhere in Revolution’s rendition of the City of Brotherly Love.

Cooperation, not competition

Even among EGM’s own staff, there’s been some confusion on what exactly “multiplayer” will mean in Homefront: The Revolution. So, let’s set the record straight.

There will be no competitive multiplayer in the game, online or otherwise. Yes, that mode was far and away the thing players tended to like most from the original poorly-received Homefront—I know that, and Dambuster Studios knows that. Heck, nearly everyone I talked to on the team agreed that the first game’s online multiplayer was either their favorite part of Homefront, or the one (and only) gameplay element that was actually worth salvaging.

Even so, it won’t be here. There was a competitive multiplayer mode being worked on early in the game’s development, but Zala admitted that, when faced against competitors such as Call of Duty and Battlefront, they worried that any work they put into such a mode would just get lost among all of the other online offerings out there. Instead, Revolution will have a team-focused co-op mode, where squads of four players can work together to take down the KPA forces. By going that route, the studio can help build on the ideas presented in the single-player portion of the game, expanding on that feeling of fighting for the resistance instead of finding an explanation for why you’re taking part in a competition that almost feels like a sport. For some games, those narrative connections may not matter—for Homefront: The Revolution, they’re important to the game’s overall goal.

Of course, when you make the decision to focus on co-op multiplayer over competitive, you do run into the problem of needing more content over time to insure that players don’t get bored. The folks at Dambuster Studios have stressed their commitment to the mode, however, and are looking at a lot of free expansions for those team-based missions over the course of the next year. By working closely with the community of players, they hope to really build up that portion of the game and turn it into something special.

Oh, and one other thing you should know (but probably don’t) on this front: the previous beta for Homefront: The Revolution was based on really old code that Zala explained should have been called a “stress test.” There’s hope that another beta may run before the game’s release on May 17th, but even if not, know that the game has progressed quite a bit since that previous test.

Expect the unexpected

For our final entry on this list, I think one of the biggest surprises players are going to have is just how different the gameplay is going to be in Homefront: The Revolution as you progress through it. Even though it’s been mentioned and shown off (to, admittedly, a somewhat smaller level), I suspect that a lot of people are still expecting the game to mostly be hit-and-run battles in war-torn parts of the city with a handful of quieter moments sprinkled in here and there.

Instead, Revolution’s three separate Zones are going to provide for a wide variety of situations that look like they could keep the game feeling fresh all of the way through. The most expected will be the Red Zones, those bombed-out areas of Philadelphia where the fighting will be heavy as the Korean People’s Army battles with the resistance over territory control. In the Yellow Zones, however, things change quite a bit. Here, in the ghettos that have been set up for the remains of America’s once-proud populace, you’ll need to hide your gun (and yourself) as you travel the relatively controlled streets. In these Zones, it’s more about remaining unnoticed by enemy soldiers, and taking out KPA targets via more controlled and skillful means. Finally, the game’s Green Zones will offer a look into the residential and governmental locations for North Korea’s officials. Though what’ll be playing out in these Zones is still something of a mystery, we know that we’ll get to see some of Philly’s iconic buildings and landmarks—except, now, with the taint of the invading army all over them.

From the start, the theme for Homefront: The Revolution has been to put players in the shoes of a guerrilla fighter struggling to help liberate their country (or, at least, their city). Ideas to build upon that concept have been sprinkled all throughout those Zones, and building depth into all of that is the fact that fighting for liberation doesn’t just mean “fighting” here. It can me rescuing civilians, tuning radios to pro-resistance broadcasts, or accomplishing a variety of other missions. Especially after the original Homefront’s more typical first-person shooter leanings, emptying weapon clips into enemy squads isn’t the only thing you’ll be doing here—or even necessarily the best course of action when running into one.