It's a flight sim Christmas miracle: 1C, the folks behind IL-2 1946 (and all the other expansions included therein) and the very crappy IL-2 Cliffs of Dover, have partnered with 777 Studios, the creators of the superlative Rise of Flight, for a next-generation Eastern Front IL-2 game due in 2014. This makes me deliriously happy. 777 has lots of experience with graphically beautiful, technically competent, and highly accurate flight sims, and IL-2 1946 is getting too long in the tooth for me. Seriously. It's amazing news for fans of propeller flight sims.
There's an FAQ on the forums at the link in the post. High points: 1. Business model similar but not identical to RoF. 2. Using the RoF engine, with probable further development. 3. 777's and 1C's development teams have merged. 777's managers are in charge. RoF content will continue to be produced (though I suspect the schedule will slow down quite a bit). I could practically dance. Is this how Brian Rubin felt when Star Citizen was announced?
More importantly, they have experience making excellent flight sim campaigns, which is something the 1C guys have always sucked at. iL-2 Sturmovik was always a great simulation engine but a lousy game. The idea of a Sturmovik game with a RoF-style campaign engine is pretty exciting, though.
Why would 777 bother merging with 1C? What do 1C bring to the table, and in particular the 1C development team? They have a long track-record of over-promising and woefully under-delivering, especially with Ilya Shevchenko (Luthier) at the helm. Is it just the brand and IP that 777 are interested in?
Art assets and flight model research, maybe? They're calling it a 'partnership', but 777 has at least an equal say in business decisions and full control over project management, which doesn't sound particularly equal to me. I'm hoping it's just that 1C's developers were woefully managed (i.e. stuck building a new engine instead of a game) rather than incompetent, but I guess we'll see.
Hooray! From a overall design perspective Cliffs of Dover was a disaster. It did pretty much everything wrong it could have and then layered game-breaking bugs and technical issues on top of that. The menus alone defy description. But I exaggerate not at all in saying it provided some sublime experiences. A bit of magic was there. The multiplayer, when it functioned at all, provided for the odd dogfight every bit as thrilling as you could hope for. I distinctly remember flying in loose formation with other spitfires as we headed for the French coast and the subsequent frantic tussle with a handful of 109s that met us over the Channel. This had all all the requisite elements: desperate searching of the sky for enemy fighters, nerve-wracking turns at just under stalling speed, calling out over TeamSpeak to warn other pilots that they have an enemy on their tail, the rare thrill of getting a burst into an enemy plane, the awesome sight of a friend or foe catch fire and plunge towards the sea, seeing a white puff as a parachute opens, frustration as your engine protests against your incessant demand for more and more power. Another time I was flying over the Channel and saw a bomber very high up, much too high for me to catch, with a fighter creeping up on its tail. The pursuer fired, for a moment the planes were connected by a glittering line of tracers, and then black smoke streamed out from one of the bomber's engines. It banked, turned over, and made an arc towards the sea. It was one of those rare gaming moments which seemed so utterly real as to be breathtaking. Now I stress that I wouldn't recommend this game to my enemy. Practically everything else about it was terrible. I give these anecdotes as a way of suggesting that to the extent 1C lacks game design skills - and if CoD is any judge it's a very great extent - they have considerable ability in creating aircraft and a flight model from which wonderful gameplay can emerge. This can't save a game lacking in everything else, of course, but when the less technical aspects are left in more capable hands I would say they can definitely bring something important to the table.
This is the best flight sim news in forever. If 777 can bring to WWII what they brought to WWI I'll be in sim heaven. Other than feeling the need to buy EVERY SINGLE PLANE.
In the interests of fairness I should point out that I've tried CoD again recently and whatever patches it's been given seem to have cleared up most issues. I don't think I've run into any technical difficulties, aside from a minor issue with some menus, which is the opposite of my last (largely unplayable) experience. It runs nicely too. I only play multiplayer, I should add, which is quite engaging with 40 players on a realism server on the large English Channel map.
