Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood A.I.

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 was a game that centered on teamwork. Your own gun was practically useless while the enemy was behind cover, so you had to properly manipulate your squads to keep the Nazis suppressed while simultaneously executing a flanking maneuver. As hard as this was to do at times in the previous title, Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood really ups the ante. Now, your enemies will dynamically react to where you and your squads are positioned, in addition to being reinforced by other units during a battle.

Instead of just telling you that EiB's troops move around frequently, we decided to show it to you. Below you'll find a write up of sections of two different levels along with videos and screens in an attempt to detail how smart and aware your German foes in EiB really are. Just in case you aren't aware, Brothers in Arms allows players to direct their teams with a useful tool called Situational Awareness View. At any point during play you're able to switch to this view which gives you an unobstructed overhead angle on the battlefield. While using this view you're able to pinpoint enemy locations as well as identify areas of cover and plan where flanking maneuvers can be initiated. We used this view in the videos and screens below to show how the enemy moved around and adapted to our positioning.

Note that these screens and videos were captured using the Xbox version of EiB, so keep that hate mail at bay. At least for now.

Action at St. Martin.

In EiB you'll be using Sergeant Hartsock to direct your squads against Nazi aggressors during a 15 day period after D-Day. Your units in Brothers in Arms are actual characters, not just cannon fodder like in Call of Duty, so you'll have a genuine interest in keeping them alive aside from the obvious benefit of their added firepower.

The Action at St. Martin mission begins as Hartsock, still a corporal at this point, wakes up to discover some wounded soldiers from the 82nd Airborne. A Lt. Cassidy presides over the situation and gave us a mission to get to a church and secure medical supplies for the injured. We set out with our M1 Garand and one fire team of soldiers Friar and Paddock who were carrying an M1A1 Carbine and an M3A1 Grease Gun respectively.

Soon after the level began we met the first group of German soldiers. They were taking cover behind a fence directly in front of us, which we've provided screens of below, both from gameplay and Situational Awareness View. To see video of what we're talking about, simply click the links under the images.

Since we couldn't really get an angle on that group, we moved left into a small field. At first it seemed clear, but as we approached a few Germans popped up behind some barrels and another group ran in and ducked behind some hay bales. After they were dispatched, we ran across the field and emerged on the other side of the fence to find that the initial group of enemies had moved and secured a more effective vantage point from which to shoot at us. In addition, a new group of enemies had appeared behind a rock wall.

We couldn't engage those enemies, though, since we had no proper cover from which to suppress and flank them, so we had to keep moving around the outside of the town. We fought through a few more groups of units until we got to a point where the enemies behind the rock wall could no longer see us. As we approached, the rock wall enemies relocated to get a better angle at us. In addition, the enemies that had started behind the fence had relocated to an abandoned car. Both groups were now poised to take us out as effectively as they could, and it was a hard fight to finally push through and reach the save point.