Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford has written a Keynote for Edge, recounting how he worked with WWII veterans on Ubisoft"s Brothers in Arms: Hell"s Highway.

Gearbox drew heavily on literature about the tactics of squad-based warfare in World War II, getting with military authors and veterans. Brothers in Arms: Hell"s Highway takes place during the ferocious Garden Market campaign, in which allied paratroopers attacked key bridges in Holland, only to be met with fierce resistance from crack German forces.

Pitchford writes, "Our mission when we made the game is to show that war is a serious business. When we first approached veterans to get their input on the game, it was tough. When we first told them we wanted to make a game they said, ‘yeah we’ve seen what people are doing with war in videogames and we hate it and it’s embarrassing and it’s not helping."

"We explained that we wanted to do it right. We were asking for their help. When they saw what we were trying to do, they got behind us and I can’t tell you how important their input has been in our approach to the game’s story and to how we deal with issues like the extreme violence of war."

He adds, "In one case we were with a guy from the 101st Airborne in Market Garden as well as a Fallschirmsjäger, a German paratrooper who was on the opposite side in Market Garden. The two of them and some of us walked the battlefields where, more than 50 years ago, they’d been trying to kill each other. Working with those guys has been an incredible and enriching experience."

The game features graphical images of violence, including soldiers dismembered by heavy munitions. Pitchford explained, "Questions about how we, as game makers and games players, deal with situations and feelings like these are not going to get easier, they’re going to get harder. We’re going to discover things that test us - how do I feel about this? How should I feel about this?

That’s going to be something that each of us, when we perceive it, will have to deal with in our own way.  This is an interactive experience and it’s going to affect us."

More here.