Am I RTS? Yes I am.

By Michael Black
Sunday, 18 October 2009

Tags: tim shaefer , RTS , Brutal Legend , Brutal Legend

The grand source of knowledge that is Wikipedia describes a real-time strategy game as so,

In an RTS, as in other wargames, the participants position and maneuver units and structures under their control to secure areas of the map and/or destroy their opponents' assets.

Tim Shaefer says the following,

First, one thing to understand right off the bat—Brütal Legend: Brütal Legend is not an RTS game.

Yet, if one was to take the core story progression gameplay of Brütal Legend and examine it you can clearly see RTS elements.

Fans are your resource
You build your army
The enemy does the same
You command units across a landscape with commands such as defend, follow, attack
There is a unit count
The objective of these levels is to destroy the enemy's rock stage (base)

If you were to examine the elements of Dune II, WarCraft, StarCraft, Company of Heroes or Command & Conquer you would find these exact same qualities. To call Brütal Legend a RTS is not a four letter word, having grown up playing the genre since the days of WarCraft 2: Tides of Darkness and C&C: Red Alert, it is a genre I enjoy very much. I take Double Fine's Brütal Legend as a perfected style to the RTS genre that Overlord is apart of, in the sense that you physically are within the gameworld as an avatar, and you issue commands to followers, you are not some finger pointing down from the sky, clicking and dragging boxes over units and attack-moving them from one point to another, but it is still a real-time strategy game. The genre itself has had a makeover in recent years since the release of titles such as Company of Heroes which virtually eliminate the base-building element, or WarCraft 3 which brought forth the concept of RPG-attributes to units as a vital gameplay mechanic.

The RTS style of Brütal Legend is, in my opinion, very well structured and simple. At a higher level you can issue rally points, organising a smaller group of roadies to take down enemy Merch Booths while you move forward creating a distraction with disposable units only to take flight and capture the enemy's recently destroyed resource points. It all comes together in a beautifully designed RTS game that is far beyond anything else offered in the RTS genre on a console. Personally I hope developers creating RTS games on the console take a long look at Brütal Legend and refine this take on the genre, I hope this is the start of something so many developers have tried to do but so far, with Halo Wars or Universe at War, failed to achieve; the RTS Console Game.

Comments (3)

Honestly I enjoyed Halo Wars greatly when I played on the 360. Now playing Brutal Legend on the PS3 it just makes me wonder why he used this in his game.

Toby Davis , October 18, 2009

I had no idea of the RTS elements in Brutal Legend until I saw a video of it. And from what you wrote it seems it is good! But Toby, did you not like it?

Lance Darnell , October 18, 2009

It is most certainly a polarizing game Lance, the games I mentioned; Pikmin and Overlord, learning more towards Overlord 2 specifically, if you enjoyed it or the concept of it then you will enjoy the gameplay of Brutal Legend, if you have any interest at all in bands such as Iron Maiden, Dio, Black Sabbath then you will enjoy this game for the visual appeal. These are basically guarantees, but if you are not this... then perhaps it is more a pot luck, the same pot luck in someone who enjoys Flower on PS3, or Viva Pinata on Xbox 360.
There is no doubt however that this is a game universe unique, you will not find another game universe like Brutal Legends, which is one of the greatest charms of Brutal Legend, Double Fine and Tim Shaefer in general. They have one bullet in the barrel, they let fire and create a game, then re-create the gun for a new game.

Michael Black , October 20, 2009