Ubisoft Shanghai Creative Director Michael De Plater has a unique answer to the challenge of using a gamepad to control a strategy game. One, in hindsight, that seems pretty obvious:

Just get rid of it…

…Or at least, minimize it as much as possible. De Plater insists that EndWar, his team’s new entry into the expanding Clancy-verse, is designed from the ground up for consoles. But, he admits, “everyone says that.” So, his solution? Easy. “Everything in the game is done with the D-pad and A-button,” he tells us.

“Or voice control.”

Wait, what? Anxious to see if De Plater’s bold claims were legit or just another SWAT: Global Strike Team vocal façade, we went “voice-on” with the skirmish mode in a pre-alpha build of his new RTS, and we came away shocked…and thoroughly impressed.

In short, EndWar is shaping up to be much more of an RTS for action gamers – not just fans of the genre. It’s a sentiment De Plater wasn’t surprised to hear. “It’s really more of a war game than a traditional RTS,” he explains in a soft British brogue. “Essentially, we took the Brothers in Arms idea of being the commander of a squad on the ground and made him a general creating and commanding an army.”

As such, the gamepad controls for EndWar are actually kind of GRAW-like. The sticks adjust your look, the A button issues orders, the D-pad selects troops, and instead of fi ring a gun, the right trigger serves as your walkie-talkie. Hold it down and you can do everything from change views to capture control points to upgrade your units – all with your voice.

For example, because EndWar uses a close-to- the-ground, third-person camera similar to what you’d find in an action game (pressing the Back button does bring up a thermal god’s eye view similar to GRAW’s mini-maps), you’ll want to frequently cycle between your units to see what they’re up to. Doing so is easy: Saying “Unit 1, camera” into the headset mic coordinates with the location of that particular unit number on the field. And each unit number is a particular type of troop.

EndWar features seven total units, a small number De Plater is comfortable with due to its management simplicity and realism. Think about it: are there really 30 different types of vehicles and soldier types on a battlefield? You’ve got tanks, helicopters, troop transports, infantry, plus a few others, and none will ever spawn out of nowhere. Citing a “no magic” policy, De Plater pointed out that anybody you see on the ground is brought in or out by helicopter or ground transport.

Accomplishing goals – like taking out enemies or capturing control points – earns you reinforcement points, which you can spend to call in new units or upgrade existing ones. Your successes will also score special rewards like air strikes or, eventually, WMDs.

Commanding everything via voice is unexpectedly awesome, and you can string together your orders very quickly and truly feel like you’re commanding a war.

“Unit 1, camera.” “Unit 1, move to Delta.” “Unit 2, camera.” “Unit 2, attack Hostile 1.” “Unit 2, secure Delta.” “Upgrade Delta with air support.” “Calling all choppers, attack Hostile 2.” The experience is tantamount to being a coach in a war – or an AT&T call center. Either way, De Plater claims 90% voice recognition accuracy, and our playtime did nothing to refute him.

In addition to the usual solo game and online multiplayer, De Plater also promises an online campaign, whereby you choose a side and battle the game’s AI but your results are uploaded to Xbox Live and combined with the results of your fellow virtual countrymen, producing a long-term tug-of-war that De Plater hopes will spark its own dedicated community.

Despite the heaping praise that the voice control deserves, it does come with a medium-sized learning curve simply because it’s such a new way of playing a game. Of course, once we crested that curve, we really launched into the experience and found ourselves glad that the game doesn’t recognize profanities: “Red team, go f--- those bastards at Charlie up!” Ah well, we suppose there’s always Xbox Live for that…

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