Silent Hunter V Dev Team Interview: Deeper, Kapitän, deeper. (1/19/10)

[Onkel Neal]

Silent Hunter V Dev Team Interview
After months of silent running, Ubisoft cracks the hatch on the latest U-boat sim.

Silent Hunter 5 is about U-boats again but of course it's not the same story line. It's a different portrayal than Silent Hunter 3, I'd say and definitely Silent Hunter 2, which was a string of missions that the player wasn't able to keep or adapt to according to his actions. So ,Silent Hunter 5 is a dynamic campaign, it's the story line presented in a way that may be a little different than Silent Hunter 3, mainly because it's more dynamic, the events in history are portrayed better this time, and the player's actions mean a lot more.

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[TDK1044]

Finally....some good Q qnd A!

[mookiemookie]

You build your career through these phases, but the game ends in 1943.

Subsim: So, this is a new kind of FPS, a first person submarine; which submarines will the player be able to take command of? Type VII , Type IX, Type II?

Dan: It's a Type VII submarine.

[Kapitanleutnant]

You build your career through these phases, but the game ends in 1943.

Ubisoft just lost a customer. Great job on ending the game just as things get challenging.

[Carotio]

Subsim: So, this is a new kind of FPS, a first person submarine; which submarines will the player be able to take command of? Type VII , Type IX, Type II?

Dan: It's a Type VII submarine. We think that we have modeled all the significant versions, meaning Type VIIA, which we didn't have before, Type VIIB, C, and C41. We think this time we went much deeper with the Type VII than we did before. For example, the Type VIIA didn't have reloadable torpedoes in the back, so with just one shot and you'd have to come back home to reload, and this is now done in the game and we corrected other little defects with the class.

Subsim: So, this is going to be more narrow in scope for the player but the submarine itself will have more access and accuracy in how it's modeled?

Dan: Yes.

Okay, if this is the real deal, then I really think it's a half dead fish. It seriously dissapoint me. Just one type with different versions....
Come on, several members have asked for having all the same types as in SH3 and then this????
I don't care if the game will be delayed then, but they should definitely add the other types.

I definitely didn't expect: Silent Hunter 5: Type VII U-boat simulator, The Early Years

Yeah, ending the game in 1943 is just lame.

Dan, how could you?

[BulSoldier]

I really feel broken hearted.I would have gladly waited a year if it is nacesary to see the other boats and the whole war.I guess moders are now are best hope.
Sadly i feel that the campaning will be something like il-2. There will be some kind of missions and we will be able to accomplish some amount of goals but not all and esentially have a difrent missions later on.If I am right thats gonna be sad.
And these rpg elements sound well lets admit it - dumb.After i play it once the stories of the crew wont change.So it doesnt really have any replay value of this part.
May be i am pesimistic but it seems its going to be more eye candy and arcade than a sim. (or may be sub sims .... )
I guess i will keep playing moded sh3 until i feel i am ready to face this manace.

[codmander]

1943???what no snorkel modders get ready

[SteamWake]

and you wonder why they stay quiet.

[Mikhayl]

Thanks Neal, very good interview, covering pretty much all the important stuff IMO.
I for one am glad that the devs took the courageous way to limit the scope of the game to do their best to make that narrow scope as rich as possible. It's going to be awkward to end in mid '43 but given Dan & Alex answers I trust it will be well done.

And I never went that far in all my SH3 careers anyway, so it might happen that I won't see Black May in SH5 either

Also glad that they seem to have taken immersion (as in "you're the captain, you're here) seriously, this is the kind of thing that made old sims so great, the feeling of continuity in the story, between missions.

And **** man, there's ****ing wolfpacks, for real

A bit anxious to see the actual thing but it already sounds like a win to me.

[Hitman]

I was about to make a SERIOUS RANT for the first time. Not for the game being limited to Type VIIs, or for having a debatable system of "semi-wolfpacks", but ending in 1943?

Fortunately, "there is nothing stopping the modders from keep adding more content, which comes afterwards. There's no hardcore limit for how far you can play in the world, it's just how far OUR campaign goes."

OMG ... thanks God we can add that later .... The Type VII fought in the Mediterranean until 1944, in the Arctic and around the british isles until the very end. Modders, sharpen your ... mouses

[AVGWarhawk]

Alex: You build your career through these phases, but the game ends in 1943.

Dan: The game actually ends after Black May, which we feel is the real climax of the U-boat war. We tried to portray more carefully, in more detail, the golden years of the U-boar war and what has led up to the real Black May. Neal, If you remember a few months before May 1943, they had the highest scoring month in the war, and then just a month later, they lost the most submarines because the Allies introduced some real effective countermeasures against U-boats. And then Doenitz was forced to retreat his U-boats from the Atlantic because they never actually challenged the Allied sea powers the same way as before. So for now, we felt we wanted to concentrate on the early years and maybe later to give the same attention to the the late war years we think should come with some professional approach. For example, if you remember Silent
Hunter 3 we had the late war game with the Type XXI U-boat and everything, but we never actually did portray the Allied side of the anti-submarine warfare, as we should have. You know there are really advanced weapons that were used, like aircraft dropped torpedoes and magnetic anomaly detectors that if you wanted to do a real simulation of the late war years against U-boats, you gotta have those in. So, we don't want to just put on the box of the game 'oh, it's the whole war', it's the first part of the war really where we are concentrating.

Interesting idea.

[Arclight]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

and you wonder why they stay quiet.

Fine with me, sounds like even I could manage to get the campaign to go on after '43.

A richly detailed subsim that focuses on the time-period when being a Kaleun isn't suicide, and focuses on 1 boat to cram as much in there as possible.

Yep, pure evil...

* Ah, and thank you, Neal, Dan and Alex!

[HundertzehnGustav]

More systems more depth, more intensity until 1943.
I have not survived 1943 in GWX so, thats ok

VII/A/B/C41...
nono... damn!

New campaign...
well we will have to see and learn.

Wish list for future upgrades of any kind.
SHV Death in the Atlantic 2011
IX/B/C types
Full war till 1945
more units and improved AI


Me ---> Buyer

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Fortunately, "there is nothing stopping the modders from keep adding more content, which comes afterwards. There's no hardcore limit for how far you can play in the world, it's just how far OUR campaign goes."

That's the one saving grace. I don't play stock campaigns anyways, so I guess it won't be all bad. I would imagine that scripting campaign layers through 1945 is not the hurdle....it's adding in the new U-boat and Allied technologies from 1943 to 1945 that's going to be the time consuming thing.

[Hitman]

Actually there also weren't any commanders who went from 1939 to 1945 in command of an Uboat, but this seems to be going to cause a problem for careers started in 1943. Unless you can only start in 1939, that is...

But for those who love to play in late war like me, this is very dissapointing. Oh, well, playing till 1943 will keep me busy until someone mods the rest of the war in.

Another thing I'm now wondering about is: What about ships/convoy frequency? I hope we can mod that to our liking, as going out of Brest and having spent all torpedoes for 1 million tons sunk before passing Land's End is not exactly my idea of realistic search for targets