The Heavy Duty Q&A on StrategyCore.co.uk offers a nostalgic look back at E3, where they spoke with Peter Winichenko about Primal Software's upcoming action strategy mech game. Topics include the switch in focus to strategy, the game engine, environments, RPG elements, plans for a demo, and more. This genre switch is still apparently sinking in, as the Heavy Duty Website still calls this an action game, but the release date for the project has been updated somewhere along the way, our last notice of this was when the game was delayed from Q4 2005 to Q4 2006 (story), but the release date now reads Q4 2007. Here are a couple of pertinent questions and answers about strategy behind moving away from action:

SC: Did Heavy Duty start out as an action game?
At some point it started out as an action game, but that was many years ago. But even at that time we already thought that it would be much better to make it as a strategy game. The first idea was to make a really advanced engine with one big planet and try to make a global strategy game with some action elements, with strategic control, combots, mechs, air simulator. The thing is that the developers are fans of the X-COM series, so they decided to move in that direction.

SC: Why was it changed to a strategy game?
As this game is developed for PC, it seems that the audience is mostly interested in strategy games and role playing games. As it is a game for PC only, that is why it was changed to a strategy game. There is a big audience for PC strategy games right now. But we didn’t forget about people who like action games, so we’ve got those elements as well.