HUXLEY

PUBLISHER:Webzen DEVELOPER:Webzen GENRE: MMOFPS/RPG RELEASE DATE: 2007
games game review game info
Stalk ‘em by fours, smoke ‘em in hundreds


Gamener PREVIEW
AGORAPHOBIC? GET OVER IT—
South Korean dev Webzen’s punchedup hybrid role-playing shooter Huxley literally swarms you with opponents. In treeless cities where Orient meets Occident, up to 5,000 twitchy gunslingers per server strut and scramble through neon-baked boroughs crammed with clubs, pubs, arms barkers, and Soviet-style slabs of ruddy concrete playerpurchasable housing.

The skinny? Near-future climate change blisters the earth while a mysterious substance
splits humans into two species: Sapiens and Alternatives, each fighting for an energy source created by their wouldbe savior, the inscrutable writer-Aldousinspired scientist named Huxley. Haggling and mission mobilizing occur in each side’s city (a third houses a hostile NPC race of
monstrous Hybrids and integrates Xbox 360 players, who can fight for their liberation), while battles shake out in external “zones” supporting up to 200 simultaneous combatants.
With street dates still a full year away, we caught up with Huxley producer Kijong
Kang for a fill-in.
CGW: Two-hundred players in Battlefield 2–style brawls sounds pretty insane. How do
you manage the chatter?
Kijong Kang: If everyone communicated in open channels, chaos would erupt, so squads are the
basic unit for small-scale communications, and squad leaders serve as hubs for other communications units. We use units and hubs to keep it simple. Think four-player squads fighting in 200- player-maximum battle zones—though, of course, individual, nonsquad play will also be possible.

CGW: What about audiovisual communications? How do you plan to mitigate “overtalk”
or “cross-babble”?
KK: We’re supporting VOIP cross-platform for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions, but VOIP
support without care can result in audio mashups, as you say, especially in tactical communities.
So voice comms will be free and open in squads, but only squad leaders will be able to communicate with other squads. In other words, the squad leader becomes the communication
hub.

CGW: Does Huxley’s campaign story have a terminal point?
KK: Huxley’s base story does have a finishing point, but it simply leads to the start of another
mystery. Not a repetitive chain, but, rather, one story’s end will be connected to another’s beginning.
At the start, you’ll be developing your character and learning about the history of the world. Along the way, you’re establishing your identity and rep, making money and such, but once that process is complete, you’ll experience a radical shift. In the first story campaign, for instance, you join a group that you’ve been fighting as an enemy, then have to develop a reputation in that group, and so on.

CGW: With Xbox 360 and PC players fragging in tandem, won’t keyboard-and-mouse jockeys have
an unfair advantage?
KK: The disparity between a keyboard/mouse interface and a control pad is inherent, and we
can’t overcome it, but the control pad has its own merits. We guarantee that each interface
will be enjoyable without obstacles. [And] it’s actually not a full-fledged war between PC
players and Xbox 360 players. Instead, their relationship will be mutually cooperative. For
example, if an Xbox 360 player must get by some enemy, he might drive a vehicle taking
advantage of the control pad’s analog stick while the PC player hops on back and frags enemies by utilizing the keyboard/mouse. In other situations, we might offset an Xbox 360 player’s control issues by putting him behind an exceptionally powerful turret to guard against
PC player incursions. It’s intuitively cooperative.

ORDER OF OPERATIONS: PVP
No one’s going to accuse Webzen of thinking small, but Huxley still
sounds remarkably focused. This won’t be World of WarCraft with contiguous, borderless regions and a dozen races—the idea in Huxley is to get you running and gunning as fast as possible.1 Whether fishing for battles, scoping missions, or just plain loitering, everything pivots around Huxley’s persistent cities. Sapien players start here in the expansive megalopolis Nostalonia. If you think it looks a little empty, just imagine up to 5,000 players snarling its streets and structures. In cities, you’ll form clans, trade weapons and armor, buy goods at market, and prep for your next quest or tussle.

2 When you’re ready to frag, just locate a transport and hop a ride to the Battle Map of your choice: from straight-up deathmatch and capture-the-flag layouts to finger-sizzling 100-on-100 PVP battles.

"Even in (relatively) small 32-player online FPS brawls, battles can take forever, and you needn’t look far to find players feeling lost in the fray. How to handle shootouts that are six times as crowded? “Four-player squads are really central to gameplay,” says Kang, explaining that squads must remain within a certain range of each other. “Squads are all about perks. Squad leaders can help up fallen members and speed their shield or HP recovery, or increase their attack and defense points depending on the squad type.” But what’s really interesting is how Webzen’s planning to integrate all those squads into broader groups without suffering “playground bully” problems. “Say squads with improved attributes come together to wield more power,” proposes Kang. “As more and more squads aggregate, their perks start to weaken or suffer penalties, so even if a small number of squads form an alliance to achieve great destroying power, the numbers for the destroying power of one squad are actually higher. Thus, players keep away from squad gathering, and they naturally come to fight on a squad-to-squad level.”

"THE DISPARITY BETWEEN A KEYBOARD/ MOUSE INTERFACE AND A CONTROL PAD IS INHERENT, AND WE CAN’T OVERCOME IT, BUT THE CONTROL PAD HAS ITS OWN MERITS.”

3 Once you’re in a Battle Map, you’ll greet your teammates, strategize, then scramble. In this control point map, teamwork and tactical finesse are essential to secure key locations and
hold them against individual squads or entire platoons of opponents.

4 Once your side nabs a control point, you can either dig in or leave the area and risk losing it to the opposition. Deciding what to do in situations like this will often hinge on squad commanders,
who can communicate with each other to execute broader tactical flourishes like platoon links-ups or battle-line leapfrogging.

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