[by Patrick (twisted) Hardy]

Eric Biessman took some time to answer some questions I had about Raven Software's recently announced Soldier of Fortune Gold, an upcoming free add-on for Soldier of Fortune owners. Included in this interview are two exclusive screenshots. Enjoy!

twisted: Why did the Raven team decide to follow up with an enhancement pack? Eric Biessman: I think that the biggest reason that we decided to go with an enhancement pack was that we were very excited about the reception that SoF has received. We had some “free time” waiting for our next projects to ramp up and we wanted to thank everyone who bought the game so far by giving them extra stuff. twisted: What are some of the new character models that will be included in SoF Gold? Eric Biessman: I can’t go into too much detail, but I can say that it is an entire new team of six people. The team, Capture, Inc., is a bounty hunter group lead by the infamous Brian “Assault” Raffel. If you look really close, you’ll see that each member of the team is someone who works here at Raven. twisted: The enemy AI will be improved in SoF Gold. How will the player notice these changes? Will enemies become tougher and harder to hit or will they be able to navigate around walls better? Eric Biessman: Essentially, we have made a lot of little changes so that the AI reacts better to its surroundings. They have become faster, more deadly, and wake up better. It’s a noticeable improvement and we had to do some tweaking to make the game balanced again because it made the game harder. twisted: What new multiplayer levels in SoF Gold stand out to you? Eric Biessman: We tried to focus more on “real” locations for this group of levels. I think that is what is the best. The levels that have some resemblance of reality really stick out to me for their sheer coolness factor. Of course, the less real levels are also very fun to play! twisted: What are some of the new miscellaneous patch fixes in SoF Gold? Eric Biessman: The updated executable only adds the Gold mods, teams, and code. There really are no ‘fixes’ from 1.05 to 1.06 but there is a ton of additions. twisted: Btw, I loved the Elite Force Demo. I loved the levels and architecture. What was your role in the game's creation? Eric Biessman: Not much… I was busy on SoF. As soon as we finished SoF, we started on the multiplayer maps and testing the single player game. The SoF design team did most of the multiplayer maps because the Elite Force team was so busy getting the single player together. I have to say that the game is *really* looking great now and I wish that I could say that I did more. I think people are really going to like it.