Brothers in Arms Double Time is not going to be a quick knock-off of the series – not even close to that. The goal is to bring the scope of the BiA franchise to play on the platform.

Of course GameZone wanted to know more about bringing this title to the Wii and Al Reed, the Studio Director for Demiurge Studios, took time to talk to GameZone about the challenges of doing just that.

When you begin to develop a game for the Wii, what are the first things that you have to take into consideration?

Al: The controller, of course! When we first got our Wii-motes (there was significant ooohing and ahhhing) the engineers went to work seeing what they could do with the controller while the designers started putting together proposed schemes. Once the excitement factor of that wore off, we began looking at other aspects of the hardware and how we could best take advantage of it.

Shooting games have suffered on the Wii because of the implementation of the Wii-mote. You can go from a focusing system that is tight to one that flickers all over the place in a heartbeat. How are you addressing that?

Al: The first thing we did was start playing every FPS for the Wii that we could get our hands on. We'd gather 'round the TV and discuss the merits of each control scheme and try to break down what each game was doing under-the-hood with movement and aiming. Turns out those other shooters didn't fail for lack of trying - It's a really hard problem to solve!

We've got an engineer here, Roger Hanna who did his master's thesis at MIT on making mouse movement, so we went straight to him to tune the cursor. The result is something that's smooth, but not swimmy and works to predict what the player is trying to do. I think we've got the best aiming cursor of a Wii to date! While we were at it, we put sensitivities and dead zone sizes to the user so you can tune the game to your tastes.

Will there be any differences in the game content on this platform?

Al: Yup! While the back-story remains the same (it's real, so it's tough to change that!) we ended up updating a lot of the levels for the new Wii control scheme.

The Wii is not as powerful a graphics machine as other next-gen systems. How are you making up for the "lack" of graphical power?

Al: Great art is where we started. From there, we ended up writing a ton of custom shaders for everything in the game. The particle effects, water effects and foliage all had custom Wii tech written for them. Brothers in Arms is a great looking game!

What do you think makes both the Wii and the Brothers in Arms title a match for each other?

Al: We picked Brothers in Arms for our first Wii title because it was perfectly suited to the platform. While the game is a shooter at heart, it is slower paced and more tactical than most. Without having to twitch all the time, we were able to slow down the movement and turning to work great with the controller.

Will there be multiplayer of any sort?

Al: Nope

What has proved to be the most difficult element to realize in bringing BiA to the Wii?

Al: Balancing the controls so that the more casual Wii owner would be comfortable while still keeping things precise enough for the FPS fans out there. We got that done by bringing in tons of players of varying skill levels and asking them what they thought. We recorded the play sessions and took notes. Charts and graphs were produced and we arrived at the right scheme very scientifically. I think everyone will be thrilled with the results.

Why do you think titles like BiA strike such a resounding chord with gamers?

Al: At their heart, the Brothers in Arms games are about letting the player live through a story of true heroism. You can watch the History Channel, but I think folks will enjoy the chance to fire up Brothers in Arms and experience it!