After the not so successful release of ‘WET’, Bethesda Softworks still have strong plans to push deeper into the publishing business. One the latest games from the Elder Scrolls heavyweights is the Online/Offline city shooter Brink. From the developers of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars comes this new IP that has a lot of promises in regards to gameplay as well as the new tech that’s under its belt.

Set on an island metropolis known as the ‘Ark’, this sprawling city is now one of the few habitable places on the planet due to the fast rise of the Earth’s seas. It’s not all happy sailing however as the city is on the brink of a civil war between two distinct factions, ‘The Resistance’ and the islands law enforcements. Player’s will be able to choose between a campaign for each faction and play in what studio founder, Paul Wedgwood, is describing as ‘mingleplayer’.

Brink is not strictly a single player game but neither is it a multiplayer one. As with many other FPS’s such as Left 4 Dead and Borderlands, Brink will combine a balance between the two and achieve, what Splash Damage is hoping, a more user friendly experience on a whole.

Combat is said to be modelled closely to that of the developers’ last release, Quake Wars but is spread across a much different surrounding. Each area of ‘Ark’ has a very distinct feel and ranges from claustrophobic city complexes to spread out city slums. To help players navigate around the environments, Brink is using a new type of technology developed by Bethesda known as the ‘SMART’ system.

Standing for ‘Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain’ this new mechanic is said to be the answer to fluidity problems found in most first-person shooters. In a nutshell, this mechanic calculates the players’ direction, velocity and situation and implements it towards the surroundings to give fluid movement across, under or around any obstacles. For instance, as opposed to running and jumping over a table like in normal a FPS, Brink’s SMART system will calculate the player’s intentions before they act on it. This will mean when the table fast approaches the player there is already a suitable animation on standby to give the player a more realistic experience. Combine this system with a complex environment and things start to get even more interesting, allowing characters to run up walls, vault over cars or do whatever a human being would usually be capable of.