Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Destructible Environments Q&A

It seems as though destructible environments are the hot new trend in first-person warfare games. Earlier this year, Crytek’s resource-hungry PC game Crysis wowed everybody with its destructible foliage and structures. Then EA announced that their new Battlefield: Bad Company would allow players to destroy “virtually everything” they see. Now, Randy Pichford of Gearbox has revealed that his company’s upcoming Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway will also feature a large amount of destructible cover.

“The enemy can run, but they can't hide. Wood can be shredded splinter by splinter and hard cover emplacements, like sand bags, can be blown away with high explosives (grenade and bazookas). It's amazing to watch and great fun to play with. I can't believe we're actually doing what we're doing because no game I've ever played feels this cool with destructible environments.”

The ability to destroy everything a player comes across in a game has been somewhat of a holy grail for programmers. Until recently, however, most gaming hardware lacked the sophistication necessary to compute the large number of operations necessary to realistically simulate the destruction of objects. With the new crop of powerful home consoles and the ever-increasing speed of PCs, fully destructible environments are now finally within reach.

Fans of utter destruction should check out Hells Highway when it ships for the Xbox 360 and PS3 this August.