Warhammer: 40,000: Eternal Crusade is a massive online third-person shooter from developer Behaviour Interactive. It’s currently in its Alpha stage on Steam Early Access and is set to launch sometime this summer.
I had the chance to sit down and have a chat with Mathieu Fecteau, Associate Producer at Behaviour Interactive. We spoke about his experience pushing Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade through Steam Early Access and what his hopes for the game are.
GameWatcher: Can you set the scene for us by briefly telling us what Eternal Crusade is and what made you guys want to take on this huge project?
Mathieu Fecteau: I wasn’t a part of the project at the beginning when it was launched three years ago at E3 2013. I joined the project two months after it was announced. I had been working at Behaviour for a couple of years when I learned that they were going to make Warhammer. As soon as I found out that they had started it, I said that I needed to be a part of it because I’m a fan of Warhammer – I’ve been playing it for about fifteen years.
The project started slowly – it has been a long process but after three years I think we have made something that is where we want it to be. The idea behind it came from people outside Behaviour and so the team built on it slowly but surely. We did not make decisions from one day to another, it was more of a long decision. It’s a big game so we needed a long time to make these decisions and that made it a long process.
GameWatcher: So the game is currently in the Alpha stage and that’s super early on. What changes have you made so far since launching the game on Steam Early Access?
Mathieu Fecteau: Since we launched it in Early Access in January we have integrated the Eldar. They are not finished yet – there is still some polishing to be done there. Obviously, the console versions too – that was a big thing. The consoles are not on Early Access but it’s all part of the progress that we have made since the launch of Early Access. We have integrated the store and have our first draft of it, too. We’ve also added customisations, upgrades of weapons and mods on weapons that change the stats. So those are the main, big things that we have done. New things to include will be Orks and PvE, obviously. So those two will be available in the meantime because the game launches really soon. Of course, we have also made changes to the abilities, art improvement and things that generally improve the game.
GameWatcher: Are you surprised by any of the feedback that you have received from the community so far?
Mathieu Fecteau: Surprised! Firstly, I would have to say the IP. The feedback is really positive. You could say yes and no because looking back now, I’m not surprised but on the spot I was surprised. We have 17,000 hard-core fans that followed the game before even seeing it so obviously those guys are really into it. On Steam when we launched it for Early Access, we had a really good response. I mean, the critics were really high at that time, obviously it went down a bit, but that’s normal. People are now waiting for more and the things that we were criticised for were all things that we know will be addressed: like framerate for example or missing a race - we know, it’s not there yet. So these guys were just saying, ‘oh it looks great but we want to see this and this before we say it’s good’. Overall we were really surprised not to have that much negative or aggressive feedback and most of the time when we got a little aggressive feedback, we had a massive amount of fans saying: ‘hey, stop it. The game is in Early Access in an Alpha stage, they’re working hard and they’re going to have everything we want and we’ll be happy’. So, yeah, we’re happy and like, half-surprised.
GameWatcher: Do you have any regrets from pushing it to Early Access this early on in development?
Mathieu Fecteau: Maybe not being ready enough. Even though I was one of the guys pushing to get Early Access, we always feel it’s not done enough yet. Before being a producer I was an artist so we are never satisfied by what we are seeing but we had to push it. It was important to push it for many reasons, firstly for the visibility of the project and also for the morale. I think something that is currently live and is being played brought a lot of hype into the team. It’s always important to bring that hype into the community and people tend to forget that that has a good impact on production. So the only regret will have been not being able to put everything we wanted in the game but beside this, Steam’s experience was wonderful. Overall no, not much regret at all.
GameWatcher: You mentioned there’s a few people in the community that are unsure about the game as it is right now. Can you give us a taste of what you’d like the final version to include?
Mathieu Fecteau: What’s a final version? Haha. Because we are launching this summer-ish somewhere but that won’t be the final version. What I wanted to say, for the launch itself, is that I would like to have at least four factions and for the game to be well-balanced. I’d also like there to be a reasonable amount of material to customise and have enough to evolve into the progression trees, but the goal is not to have too much because we want to have a good, balanced game. We are symmetric but asymmetric at the same time so we’re making sure we have this ready for the launch. If we have a balanced game I’ll be happy, we’ll be happy and then we can move forward to expansions and improving the amount of objects, new vehicles and other stuff in the game. The main focus is balancing, and of course, framerate. We want to ensure that we have a good feeling about the stuff included in the game and then we’ll see what else needs to be done afterwards.
GameWatcher: So the game is due to come out in summer sometime, do you think you guys are on track to bring it out on time?
Mathieu Fecteau: I don’t think the answer would be no - I think we’re on track! There’s a lot of things to do, we’re moving so fast that we see the game evolving every week and that is impressive. Last week we would not have been able to show you the PS4 build, it was not playable, so now it is. The textures were flickering everywhere, there were no shadows, it was running at ten frames a second and now we’re there. So I’m not afraid, we’re going to make it. We’re making decisions on what’s going to be in the game - not because we want to cut stuff but just because, like I said before, we want a good stabilised build to play. So, we are on track and we’re confident but we might not get much sleep and time for ourselves in the next two months.
It sounds like Behaviour have made a lot of progress since they launched Warhammer: 40,000: Eternal Crusade in Steam Early Access. We’re excited to see what the game will look like when it releases in the summer.
