Tom Clancy's Endwar Voice-on Preview

Hear, Now!

In the past console-based real-time strategy games have had two problems. The first is that the control system of a console isn’t ideally suited to an RTS game and the interface therefore can be a nightmare to design.

The second problem is that everybody knows this and everyone tends to stay at the PC when it comes to RTS games instead of picking up a console-version.

Ubisoft though has cleverly side-stepped the issue of awkward controls though with a hugely inventive, massively immersive and gigantically effective control system based around voice commands. It’s fair to say that we think it’s a pretty big thing.

The voice command system for Endwar is the centrepiece for the entire game and good players need not even pick up the controller except to press the button which engages the microphone. It also makes the game nerve-wracking to play when you’re at a trade show and surrounded by your friends and peers.


Don’t let your imagination run away with you here though – the voice control system isn’t limitlessly powerful and just like the depressing reality of Wii Fit, it isn’t going to revolutionise your life or even the way you play games in general. What it will do though is change the way you play this game, forcing you into an effective and direct way of thinking that makes the game more fun to play and easier to play with.

There are limits on what the voice control system would naturally be able to do obviously, so Ubisoft has put together a voice-tree for players to navigate through and which are essentially built around a basic Name–Action–Destination format, with the keywords being carefully chose to have distinct phonemes that the game can recognise despite accent or interference.

And yes, you may doubt the validity of that assurance, but as someone who actually studied Linguistics at University I actually spent a few minutes trying to trick the system into misunderstanding me – without success.

The theory behind the voice-command structure is as solid as they come and that players have to use certain words in certain orders means that the system can work near flawlessly provided you don’t prematurely let go of the right trigger. It’s all to do with ‘hard sounds’ and dental phonemes used in these words, which vary very little in terms of timing and stress across regional accents.


Of course, it should be pointed out that it does make the game a little trickier to handle in some languages than others apparently, though Ubisoft pledges that regionalised version of the game will be available for all the major territories at around the same time. Since we only speak three languages (English, Broken English and the Language of Lurve) though we were unable to test these different versions.

The commands that can be given are diverse, useful and varied. A typical command can vary in length from “Calling all tanks, move to Alpha”, where ‘Alpha’ is a preset location on the map such as a base you are trying to capture, to “Calling all artillery create team, red team. Red team attack target.” This last command will group all your current artillery into a single unit and have them attack whatever you are currently looking at.

The ‘Target’ command modifier is perhaps one of the most useful tools for beginners who are used to just having a single battle on at a time or who plunge into battle without a plan in place to start with.

The reality though is that expert players come not to disregard it and start viewing the game not from the 3D world but from the full tactical map. The tactical map is updated in real time and allows a detailed analysis of the battlefield, where frontlines are moving and what bases belong to who – but it doesn’t limit your view just to that of the camera, which frees you up to access more information.