While other first-person shooters will be vying for gamers' thumbs in 2011, no game next year will look like Brink. The characters look lived in, with pockmarks, scars and receding hairlines all among the options for customization. And that customization's amongst the best I've ever seen in any game in recent memory. Sections of the gameworld–a giant ship called the Ark–harbors layers of corroding metal laid over each other in patchwork fashion. Several weeks ago, I spent the better part of a day playing Brink with the folks at Splash Damage in their studio outside of London. I came away very impressed with what's going into the title. It's the anti-Halo: scuffed-up, grimy and funky.
Brink's got more than just a unique art style to recommend it, though. The game asks what happens when society breaks down and everything's on the brink of collapse. The Ark begins in the Pacific as an experiment in sustainable community building in 2012 and then, when the sea levels start rising thirteen years later, an influx of refugees from mainlands and island atolls stream in. Players pick up the action in 2045, when the once-glorious Ark's lost contact with the outside world, becoming overpopulated withthe ugly divide between haves and have-not threatens to explode chaos. On one side is the Resistance, dissidents who distrust the elites secreted away in the spires of the arc. Their goal is to escape the Ark. Their opposition is the Security, who are trying to quell the rebellion sparked by the Resistance.

Because the environments are all so ramshackle in Brink, Splash Damage's developed an all-new movement system called S.M.A.R.T. It stands for Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain and is basically a single-button parkour modifier that lets you easily scale heights or slide into tight spots. Each faction's story will overlap with the opposition so you'll need to play both Resistance and Security to get the whole picture. Even then, a high level of moral ambiguity pervades the narrative. During the "Dirty Bomb" mission that I played, some Security team members balked at busting down doors in the slums, while the Resistance expressed doubts about the biological attack they were going to launch. There's no clear stance on who's right and wrong, which is a refreshing change from games that feed you morality along with objectives.
In the middle of all this, developers Splash Damage want to do nothing less than socially engineer a different kind of first-person shooter experience. The game design tries to incentivize good behavior in an environment where teammates kill each other for loot, focus more on their own stats or hurl slurs at each other. In Brink, you'll still level up for killing the enemy but you'll do it faster for building a stairway to the battlefield or for dealing an ally. Rewards for altruism are baked into the mechanics. Moreover, you won't have to hear anybody yelling in your ear while you play. The default setting for voice chat is off; instead, you'll get an automated voice telling you what you should be doing. If you play as a medic, then that voice tells you to go heal a downed teammate. Soldiers can use their unlimited ammo to replenish their teammates' stock.

It's a frantic constantly changing experience, especially when you're playing against other humans. Because each combat role has context-specific objectives and you can change your combat role at any time, the game also makes you feel you're building situational awareness. You'll need to do more than just be good at shooting to win matches in Brink; successful teams will be made up people attuned to the shifting scenarios. It might be a weird thing to say about a video game but a kind of holistic intuition dawned on me while playing. I felt like I could sense the whole level and what was happening with my teammates and when I focused on that, not only did we fight better, I also leveled up faster. It's more than just high-minded philosophy informing the game design. Brink's objectives get sliced up into dynamic bite-sized portions, built not just to be replayed but also to be revisited in different combat roles. The replay experience is bolstered by dynamic difficulty that actually enables the AI enemies with better decision-making.

Exaggerated avatar design. Mechanics designed to reward the better part of human nature Quiet time for voice-chat loudmouths. Hot-swappable character classes. Despite the risks of folding in so much difference into their game, it feels like Splash Damage is building a winner with Brink. An FPS that wants to make you act better and feel better… imagine that.
Brink hits PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 next spring.

In the first part of the talk with Brink's lead writer Ed Stern, he talked about how the look of the game can inspire plot and gameplay ideas. In this interview, art director Olivier Leonardi–the man in charge of Brink's aesthetic–discusses how the eco-pocalypse FPS' distinctive approach to character and environmental design came about.
Brink hits Xbox 360, Ps3 and PC on May 17th for North America and on May 20th for Europe.
I think the look of Brink is the first thing people notice and has been a big conversation point. So talk about your role in that, Olivier.
So, I supervise the whole visual aspect of Brink from modeling the environment, to animation, special effects, presentation, the HUD as well. Before Brink, when I worked on previous games, there was kind of a legacy. I worked on Rainbow Six Vegas and it was already a franchise. So I had some guidelines. When I joined Splash Damage, it was pretty much a blank canvas and we could do anything.
Your colleague Richard Hamm talked a little bit about the inspiration of hyperrealism. Can you talk about the movement and why you thought it would be a good fit for this game?
One of my beliefs is a quote from Charles Bukowski, that says, “Style is the answer to everything.” Which is to say, when you do anything in life, do it in style. So, the first goal was not boringly reproducing reality in a game. You have to add like an element of style. So that was kind of the starting point. And then, there's more practical aspects of it which is like seeing a character from a distance, you are going to be automatically losing a lot of detail. You can add a lot of detail or any kind of sculpting. But you are going to lose it.
It's going to become noise very quickly. So, the kind of inspiration of talking about the hyperrealist painters, was more in the process of doing things, not mimicking what they've done. I think two main techniques which was the deep focus and gigantic scale. Basically you scale up things so that the details just kind of pop out in your face. Basically what we did with the characters we kind of scaled-up every detail on the outfits. So, they still appear strong from a distance.

Right. So you can tell if somebody is a Heavy from far away.
Yeah, exactly. There's always the problem of identifying who's the guy way out in front. Is it an enemy? Is it a friend? We tried to separate palettes and for the factions as well so there's really a strong silhouette and a really different set of colors. Security is mostly wearing cold tones and kind of neutrals. And Resistance, we use more patchwork patterns, off-colors, and rougher fabrics as well.
(More on TIME.com: On the Brink, Part 2: Talking with Splash Damage)
The main thing about the character creation that smacks you over the head is that none of the characters are particularly handsome. They're not built with matinee-idol looks and there's a lot of idiosyncrasy to their appearances. What was behind that decision?
Once again, when you remember someone, you're going to focus on really strong facial features. So we're pushing for those mean-looking guys. We used reference from actors, too. Like, if you take a guy like Danny Trejo, this guy has got a face.
His life is on his face.
Exactly. So we kind of wanted to have those guys having a really strong personality through their faces. Yeah, we had the kind of limitation of 12 archetypes and three ethnicities. But yeah, we don't allow the player to change the main proportions.

There's no sliders.
Yeah, because we're not offering five very blandly good-looking guys. You already have that in many other games. In Brink, you're going to go for the mean guy who suits you best.
And what about the clothing and the tattoos stuff. Where does that fit into the fiction of the world?
I think that was the first thing I kind of discussed with the lead character modeler here. OK, the story says that you have this kind of really quite organized faction with Security, which, at the beginning, they're just kind of random police guys. So, some of the outfits were inspired by guys that could be like on the beat, instead of a riot police guy or special forces soldier.
Like a beat cop. Got it.
Yeah. Exactly. The kind of a beat cop with a simple shirt and badge. On the Resistance side, those guys, in the story, there are workers. So most of the outfit they use to kind of fight, are inspired by safety gear plus sports gear as well. You have some guy with kneepads. Anything that can be transformed into something that can protect you. Visually, the big contrast between factions is the well organized uniform guys and the kind of mix-and-match fabrics of Resistance.
(More on TIME.com: Airlocks and Body Parts: "Dead Space 2" Review)
In terms of like telling the story which is kind of this whole apocalyptic environmental disaster thing, how did you try to like bring that idea through the overall visual design of the world?
There's some clearly identifiable zones in the Ark. One is really clean. Even if this place had been kind of decaying like for 20 years, they still maintain ridiculous level of cleanliness for the Founders' part of the Ark. And the section on the Resistance side is gritty and rusty, and it's in this state because it doesn't have the resources to be maintained. There's no upkeep whatsoever on this part. So it's clearly a slum.

The Resistance and their families are too busy cleaning up the rich people's part.
Exactly. Some tiny stuff we put in also helps build the vision of the world. Like, if you go to the terminal of the airport, it's littered immigration fliers. It makes it feel like the Ark's a place where you'd need to apply to get into. We've added other touches like protest fliers saying, "Stop the abductions!" because people from the slums disappear and nobody sees them again. So, stuff like that.
So you have meta-story seeded throughout the environment?
Yeah. That's a concept that Ed, our writer, called Instant Deep Context. So, it could be in anything like the tattoos, fliers on the floor, posters and signs, anything that kind of gives a tiny bit on the story, a bit more information on the story.

lol i think that the "crowd" is finnally noticing brink... our plan for total domination is working! :gun:

Is that good, or bad?

both.