Revised Environments
As well as general style and technology upgrades the game also features a wealth of new content. Environments from BW1 were revised to match the new story line. Only Corral Atolls (Below) and Xylvania survived form the first game and underwent heavy revision. New environments included the Western Frontier and the Anglo Islands which are the home lands of the original U.S. style western frontier and the new UK styled Anglo Army.
Above: Corral Atolls was previously more island based and had a desert island look with open spaces and sandy beaches with clusters of palm trees. It lacked colour and was a fairly bland environment. The polynesian architectural style was fine for small scale fortifications seen in the first game but now we wanted to go inland to the Solar Palace and so needed to incorporate an architectural style that would work for grand structures.
The story line for BW2 took us right into the Solar Empire and this was a great opportunity to take the Corral Atolls in a different direction. Moving inland meant jungles surrounded by ancient volcanic hills. The architecture moved from a more tribal fortified hut design to grand oriental style, fortified ruins. This helped give the environment depth and a sense of history which wasn't there in the first game. Its also meant that we could lavish the buildings with rich colours.
Influences included the Great Wall of China, Pagodas and Vietnamese temples.
Above: Xylvania was previously represented as a "Mordor" style, hellish place with a fortified Gothic building style mixed with fire pits and pools of acid. It was more transylvania than the WW1 "no mans land" trench based battle field we originally wanted.
For BW2 I wanted to focus on the War element more and really use the WW1 apect as a key art style influence with less influence from the fire and brimstone fire pits and acid pools.
The Gothic building style remained but the materials of the buildings moved from just stone to include metallic structures also in a gothic style just to add a twist to the artwork and to reinforce the military power of the inhabiting army.
Above: The Anglo Islands was completely new and great fun to work on. It took a while for the style to emerge as the Anglo Islands army was very much based on the British army of WW1 with tin hats and "desert rat" style uniform.
Like all the locations in BW2 it needed to have a distinct military presence but also not to be too modern and to seem inviting and homely.
In the end we arrived at what can only be described as 1950's Kent with fortified cottages! sounds bizarre but I think it worked well.
Above: Western Frontier was an inevitable choice of location as the WF army featured in BW1 and for BW2 we wanted to take the fight right up to their homeland. We knew that big US style cities wouldn't be good for the game play in Battalion Wars and the console power would be a limitation.
So rather than use cities we based the location on the countryside of North America and Canada. Huge Redwood Pine trees and fortifications built from high tech materials and local wood from the forests. Fortifications looking like log cabins.
A key influence here was the mobile bases build by the US army in real life. Unsophisticated canvas and wood structures fitted with high tech equipment.
Revised Vehicles
New armies need new weaponry and we more than doubled the number of vehicles available to the player in BW2. With the introduction of Naval vessels and Aircraft we had a huge task to design such a vast range.
Several artists worked on concepts under my supervision and as the range was so vast I have included just a few below.
Above: Anglo army units needed to be classically British and introducing a new army to the game was a real challenge as we had used so many of the good stylistic influences already. However I had a great time working with our concept artists on these.
The core stylistic influence is the Victorian mechanical details reminiscent of the industrial revolution mixed with traditional UK WWII vehicles. Stevenson's "Rocket" was a big influence on the Frigate unit you can see above (bottom of image).
Above: The Iron Legion unit roster was expanded to include air units. The key feature of the iron legion is that they are supposed to be from thousands of years ago and so their vehicles are powered by furnaces burning a coal like mineral. Like a ancestor to Steam Punk!
Above: Solar Empire received new high tech units including a light attack tank and air units. The air unit above took reference from the "drop ship" in aliens, also Halo maybe a subconscious influence.
Above: Western Frontier already had the largest selection of units in the game, however we still found room to add naval units and the above image is of the Dreadnought class battle ship. It is a towering hulk of gun turrets and heavy cannons. Influence came from the heavily stacked Spanish Armada sail boats that had multiple levels of cannon.
