Feature: 'EA LA's Louis Castle on The Battle for Console-Earth'

In this exclusive interview with Gamasutra, Westwood co-founder and current EA LA exec Louis Castle discusses re-envisioning the RTS interface with a console controller, for this summer's The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II for the Xbox 360. In this extract, Castle talks about the emotional response he hopes to see from his game, and from video games in general: "We're not trying to, at the end of the day, just sort of make a game, as much as we're trying to evoke the same emotional feelings that the audience had watching the films," Castle said, of his basic design philosophy. "We want to capture that sort of awe and wonder of watching these huge fantastic armies going at it, but we also want to have some say about which armies do what. So when we're building these products, we're looking at these films and going, 'We want to have this same emotional response.'" "Chris Crawford had a whole talk on the evolution of taste, and it was a really fascinating observation to me. When you look at any entertainment medium, the first things done are those that are overtly sexual or violent, because it's the crudest powerful emotion we can evoke in a human, and the easiest to get at. As you get older, you start to evolve your taste, you become somewhat of a connoisseur of entertainment." "With all forums of literature, eventually we get past the sort of guttural, crude forms of inspiring emotion. We have decades ahead of us to explore human interactions." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including plenty more information on how next-gen consoles can readily receive the RTS (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).