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Phantom Doctrine

Phantom Doctine

We stepped into the Cold War espionage game to join the resistance.

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You may know CreativeForge Games as the developer behind the rather challenging Hard West, but now the team is back with another game called Phantom Doctrine, this time taking place during the Cold War. While we were on a recent visit to the Churchill War Rooms in London we got the chance to see the game for ourselves during an extended hands-on guided by Kacper Szymczak from the studio, during which we got to see exactly what this new experience had to offer.

It's probably more accurate to say that Phantom Doctrine is set in an alternate history version of the Cold War, as we're tasked with leading a resistance organisation called The Cabal, who in 1983 are attempting to fight against a global conspiracy which is pitting world leaders against one another, pulling the strings in a high-stakes puppet show. Obviously this is riffing off of historical (and still existent) tensions between superpowers, and even weaves real events like the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 into its own narrative, which we thought was a really cool balance between fiction and reality. The espionage side of things reminded us a little of Invisible, Inc., yet the darker reality of it all set it apart from Klei's game.

At the start of our demo we were thrown into the hideout, which is essentially the base of operations. A lot of Phantom Doctrine revolves around tactical choices, strategy, and deployment of resources, all of which comes into play when you return to the hideout and look at what needs doing to take down the conspiracy. The biggest part of this is the world map, as it's here that you can see signals that may or may not indicate conspiracy activity, at which point you send your agents to these signals to investigate. As time goes on though more signals pop up than you know what to do with, and it's a case of prioritising and sending the nearest agents to each. Time is money after all.

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When you're not sending your agents off to the far corners of the world there's plenty more for a spymaster such as yourself to be getting on with. For example, modifying your agents is an important part of the experience, as you can use a cocktail of drugs to upgrade their skills and enhance their stats. Be warned though, as upgrading one branch of their character locks out all others, so it's important to carefully consider how you want to alter your agents to be the best conspiracy-busters they can be.

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What's more is that you can even interact with captured enemy agents in the hideout too. The studio was kind enough to give us one they'd made earlier, and here we had a number of options. Of course you can kill them, which is a valid tactic since the danger level rises the longer you have one captured, which in turn increases the risk of your hideout being discovered, invaded, and your progress hindered significantly. There are other options though, and we chose to interrogate them for intel before installing a trigger phrase in their brain, which we'll come back to later.

There's also the opportunity to interact with intel in the hideout as well, which works as a sort of puzzle mini-game. Here you gather the different documents you've collected during your time in the field, assemble them on a pinboard, and connect them with lines via keywords to try and reveal conspiracy secrets. These keywords are found via scouring the intel, like highlighting phrases in documents, and before long you'll find your pinboard to be a mess of lines and links, leaving you feeling like that meme from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (you know the one).

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As you're sending agents everywhere they need to be, though, occasionally you'll run into some situations where you'll need to deploy a tactical mission. Here you're plunged into a map and have to engage in Xcom-style combat and navigation in order to complete an objective, hence why the upgrades on agents can be so useful if carefully considered. You can also call assistance from others outside of the map as well, like snipers, which places more emphasis on strategy.

What's especially interesting here is that all the maps are tailor-made but there's an element of randomness in the sense that things such as enemies and objectives change every time you play, so that no two players will get the same experience even if they're playing the same mission.

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We started in our mission - which revolved around the Korean Air Lines flight (and we won't spoil details) - with four agents all in Soviet territory, one of which we'd equipped with a Soviet disguise which he had picked up when we sent him ahead to scout the mission beforehand. Szymczak then pointed out to us that there were areas that all our agents could freely explore, but there were also restricted areas as well, where would raise the alarm immediately if we were spotted.

We won't go into the nitty-gritty of how we handled the situation, but in short we sent our disguised agent into the computer room to turn off all the cameras, at which point we sent a couple of agents round the back to access the roof via a ladder. At that point we used the trigger phrase we mentioned earlier, which turned the enemy who was already in the level into an ally, meaning we could use her to complete our objective from within the building. Then it was just a case of calling for evacuation and getting to the chopper.

It's worth noting that it isn't quite as quick and easy a process as we've described. Like Xcom, the action is turn-based and so you'll need to play out your options like a game of chess, anticipating what your enemies will do and react accordingly. Action points, for example, need to be considered at all costs, as you can only move and attack a certain amount of times before your turn is over, and you'll need to make sure you're not at risk when this happens.

Keeping yourself safe is easier said than done. As explained to us by narrative designer Paweł Kroenke, the combat isn't randomised, and so if the enemy can see you and take a shot, they will damage you: full stop. Even cover doesn't totally protect you against damage as it only limits the damage you take, so cutting off lines of sight and making sure you have cover becomes an important part of the tactical missions. At the same time though you also have to make sure that you can hit the enemies where it hurts too, so we found a fun balancing act between keeping our own agents safe for evacuation (no man left behind, after all), while also trying to dispatch all of the conspiracist scum that stood in our way, which sometimes meant calling in for sniper support if we couldn't see them ourselves.

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If you really annoy the enemies their backup can arrive in the form of planes and attack helicopters, which can really put a thorn in your side. The planes, for instance, drop bombs on your location, and if enemies start throwing grenades at you too you're going to have a bad time trying to avoid their blast radius. Luckily though you can see where blast radiuses will be on the map while taking your turn, so it seemed relatively easy to us to escape getting blown to smithereens.

What we really enjoyed about the combat in Phantom Doctrine is that when you take shots the camera moves almost to behind-the-shoulder, giving you a close-up view of the action, and with off-screen attacks like snipers and air support you get a cinematic sequence as well, all of which looked incredibly polished and complimented the action nicely.

It's worth talking about the level design too, as since the game is set in the Cold War we'll be seeing a number of different locations that are relevant to the conflict, all of which are designed with the locations in mind. The Asian levels, for instance, are bathed in the neon glow of city lights, while American settings have totally different styles, as do those in the Soviet Union and in South America.

We came away from our long session with Phantom Doctrine impressed by what we had seen, both in the hideout and the two missions we played (the other was a shorter side mission). The hideout works perfectly for the strategist who wants to immaculately plan all of The Cabal's actions, and the tactical mission is great for those who want some covert combat/exploration to get on with, and the appeal is that you can engage as little or as much in each side of this as you want. Those who don't like all the strategy stuff can rush through the hideout, while those who don't want to do the boots-on-the-ground missions can just stick to the main narrative. It's looking good right now, and with some polish we can imagine it'll draw some Xcom fans over to the Cold War conflict, and maybe even some fans of Invisible, Inc. who want a touch more grittiness to their espionage.

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