Left Behind: Eternal Forces - Interview with Greg Bauman

If you're a developer trying to make your way in today's booming video game industry, you're bound to come face to face with one harsh reality: this industry's a tough nut to crack. Companies play for keeps, and they don't always play fair. Image sells, booth babes sell, and the one constant on every blockbuster hit's agenda is to kiss butt and bend over backwards to give publishers and the gaming public the kind of 'ooh, ahh' thrills they've come to expect. That's the law, and there's no easy way around it.

Some companies, though, do manage to evade the down-and-dirty politics we've come to see in the marketing world. Some stand by their ideals and say "You know what? I want my creation to succeed on its own merit." Left Behind Games is just such a creature.

When I first sat down to interview Greg Bauman, Associate Producer of LBG, I didn't know what to expect. I'd met with developers of religiously-overtoned games before, and they always failed to get me worked-up about their title. Right from the get-go, though, I was impressed with not just the energy and enthusiasm put forth by the team of devs, but also with their real-world experience in the industry and what seems to be a real understanding of what makes a successful RTS game.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a modern day RTS rooted firmly in the days, weeks and months directly after the Rapture. Millions across the globe vanish in the blink of an eye, and the rest of the world is left wondering, "What do I do now?". With such a massive disruption to the world's social, political and economic structures, a great power vacuum is created; and one way or another, something has got to fill it.

Left Behind is a game of good versus evil, angels versus demons, and ultimately, heaven versus hell. True to the book series, you can side with 'the good guys', a Tribulation Force of the faithful and heroic, or you can toss your hat in with the 'villains', the Global Community Peacekeepers. In the campaign mode, you'll always play the role of the former (have you ever played a game where the goal was to let the bad guys win?), and your mission is to discern exactly what happened to the millions of people who were whisked away in the night (while staying relatively free from the GCP's martial law).

The heart and soul of any RTS game is the real-time combat system, and sure enough, LBG's experience pulls through to create a very compelling schema. Similar to other wartime RTS sims, LB:EF makes use of military units like apache helicopters, tanks, footmen and snipers. Where it differs, however (and I believe this to be the game's greatest strength), is the emphasis placed on non-military units. Sure, you can mow down your opponents with machine guns and assault tanks, but to be a successful spiritual leader (and let's face it, the basis of the game is on spiritual struggle), you need to capture the hearts and souls of the masses and sway them to your side. This is accomplished through use of special 'recruiter' units.

Recruiters are the key to your game-they can sway neutral humans (which are found scattered throughout any and all levels you find yourself in) to be either good or evil, and as a result, they are singlehandedly responsible for building your armed and support forces. The catch, though, is that they are limited in supply and can NEVER be replaced. So guard your recruiters well.

Once a unit is converted to your particular alignment, you can use it to train and build other units, take over buildings, or support the rest of your followers. Each unit, once converted, begins to be affected by another game mechanic unique to LB:EF. Spirit. In order for a unit to remain loyal to your faction, it must either have high spirit (for the Tribulation Force) or low spirit (for the Global Community Peacekeepers). This is meant to symbolize the effective disparity between the faithfulness of the good guys and the aimless, baseless obedience of the bad. Spirit decays over time, and it can be raised by praying, or lowered by cursing (the friendly, squiggly line above the head kind). Killing also lowers spirit.

This spirit gage is an interesting feature because it's treated as a basic resource (along with money, food, housing, etc, which are all still present in LB:EF). Both sides of the eternal divide can tap into this resource, but each experiences it and utilizes it in very unique and mutually exclusive ways. The Tribulation Force wants to keep its spirit high, while the Peacekeepers want to keep it low.

If the Peacekeepers' spirit gets 'too' low, demons will begin to appear in the world. These demons will manifest, search out and kill 'good' units, and eventually turn on their own human supporters. As such, it is dangerous to allow your spirit to drop too low, but if used properly, can produce extra units to help during difficult times.

One of the most technically fascinating things about LB:EF is the venue chosen by the developers for most of the in-game action. All of New York City-from parks to boulevards, skyscrapers to rooftops-all of it is mapped precisely in-game. Have a famous restaurant you like to frequent on business trips there? In all likelihood, you'll run into it in-game as well. The devs went through great pains to accomplish this feat, and they shared with us a few anecdotes about their camera-toting adventures through New York City's skyscrapers-painstaking cartography to bring out a very realistic play experience.

Also, to bring real life to the game, Chris Fabry himself has written countless individual life stories of the inhabitants of this post-apocalyptic New York City. LB:EF is not just your average RTS; it's a very directed, very controversial, and very story driven game where each individual's life story matters, and each interaction with biblical passages (in the form of scrolls) grants the player a deeper understanding of why-oh-why the world as we know it is coming apart at the seams.

One thing many gamers will likely find disturbing about Left Behind, though, is the black-and-white polarization of good and evil portrayed. The faithful are good, and the undecided are (decidedly) bad or evil. The only way to accomplish anything positive in the game is to 'convert' nonbelievers into faithful believers, and the only alternative to this is outright killing them. The implications of this assessment could make for some mightily interesting blog-fodder, but I won't waste time rehashing the obvious.

In the end, though-and I think this is the most important message to get across-this is not just another evangelical Christian creation aimed at dissing gamers' moral foundation. It's the product of a team of developers who are not only gamers themselves, but gamers who have a passion for bringing quality content to the gaming public. As CEO Troy Lyndon of LBG eloquently states, "Gamers want great games, period. The stories behind them are secondary." Standing alone, LB:EF is a solid RTS with solid game play, and it's this writer's opinion that it deserves recognition as a legitimate contender in the RTS circuit.