[by Greg (EvilGreg) Gueths]

Soldier-of-Fortune.com news staffer EvilGreg took a few moments out of Raven's Project Administrator, Kenn Hoekstra's ever-busy day to answer a few questions he had about the imminent Soldier of Fortune Gold Edition.

EvilGreg: Let's talk a little bit about the levels. SoF Gold is expected to have 15-20 new levels included with it. In what way will the environments differ from that of current levels, and will there be any new features in them? Kenn: All of the new levels are multiplayer in nature, similar in textures, look and feel to the original DM levels in the game. There are some new environments, including a hangar bay with a huge cargo plane and an arctic base with a submarine in the center of it...some really interesting stuff going on there. New features for the levels revolve around supporting the Gold Pack's two new game types. There are seven Control maps and eleven Conquer The Bunker maps. EvilGreg: There will be new character models in SoF Gold. How many can we expect and who will they be? Kenn: There aren't really new character models...just a new DM team composed of six players with six new skins. The skins are based on the appearances of five Raven employees. Their faces and body types inspired the look of the characters. You can choose from "Assault," "Brick," "Cobra," "Commando," "Jersey," or "Widowmaker," EvilGreg: We've heard that there will be new team-play modes. Can you tell me what they are, and what will they add to the SoF multiplayer experience? Kenn: The two new game types are Control and Conquer the Bunker. I think their descriptions are adequate to describe how they will enhance the Soldier of Fortune experience... =): Control is a new team deathmatch mode for Soldier of Fortune Gold. The object of Control is to touch the flags that are on the map in order to turn them to your team's color. Each team gains points for any flag under their control, and owning all of the flags on a map gives bonus points to the controlling team. The opposing team can steal flags from your control by touching them. You can watch the flag indicator on your screen while you play to see which team is controlling the flags. Conquer the Bunker is a "king of the hill" style game that can be played in teams or as a free-for-all deathmatch extravaganza. In Conquer the Bunker, there is one scoring zone on the map that gives you points for as long as you stay in the scoring zone. The scoring zone is marked with a special "Soldier of Fortune" texture for easy recognition. EvilGreg: Rich 'The Fatal' Whitehouse has been working on a bot for SoF that is going to be incorporated into SoF Gold. What exactly is the bot for? Kenn: The bot is only available for standard, free for all deathmatch. It wasn't designed with team games in mind, so it will be unavailable for those game modes. The bot is quite challenging, though, and good practice for honing your m4d ph4t sk1llz in Deathmatch. EvilGreg: SoF Gold is going to ship with a newer version(1.06) and will have improved Artificial Intelligence. How will this effect the single player aspect of the game? Kenn: The enemies in the single player game will react more quickly to your actions. It eliminates a lot of the standing around that some enemies did in the original game when you shot their counterparts. In addition, there are a number of other minor tweaks and enhancements to the AI that will work to make the enemies in the game feel smarter as a whole. The new A.I. will definitely make all difficulty levels of the game more challenging. EvilGreg: Seeing as how Soldier of Fortune will be upgraded to 1.06, will current SoF owners have to uninstall the game first, and then reinstall the game in order to update? Or will they be able to update straight from version 1.05? Kenn: The 1.06 patch will install over any version of the game that you have...1.03, 1.04 or 1.05. No uninstalling necessary... [Back to the top]