Earth and Beyond Preview

Earth and Beyond, the latest science-fiction based massive multi-player online game from Westwood Studios, will offer you a chance to participate in adventurous intergalactic travels and compete with over 10,000 live adversaries. After having great success with games such as Command and Conquer, Westwood decides to set their mark in the world of online gaming. This entire game-project will be hosted on EA.com, which, as the developers stated, has "no problem implementing and maintaining the infrastructure of Earth and Beyond."

At the core of this game is a reasonably comprehensive plot: "The age of the Universe has been placed at more than fifteen billion years. When the first Star Gate was discovered on the fringes of Sol we had no idea that it was one of the countless Gates that linked the oldest and most distant of the galaxy's planets. The scientist-monks of the Jenquai had tried to keep their discovery of the Star Gate a secret, fearing the other two factions would be incapable of grasping the significance of their discovery. But the Terrans, watching from the boardrooms of their star-spanning corporations, had spies everywhere. Seeking to prevent a Jenquai monopoly of this discovery that allows near instantaneous travel across vast distances of space, the Terrans forged an alliance with the aggressive Progen, an ordered and warlike clone culture. So it came to pass - the Gate War. Humankind fell upon each other in an epic war, fought for the same reasons wars were fought since the beginning of civilization - territory. With the weapons of mass destruction that technology has wrought, we almost destroyed ourselves completely this time. That was well over a century ago. Now, with the 23rd century nearing its end, a tenuous state of cold war exists between the Three Factions of humankind. Each of the factions has claimed a portion of the Human Sphere as its own, linked now by the same Star Gates that broke them apart. The Peace is maintained - only just - by fragile treaties and the creation of neutral peacekeepers, a byproduct of the War that nearly plunged the human race into extinction..."

Naturally, the game will also allow players to customize their characters and their spacecrafts. The ships represent a significant game element, which depicts the player's race selection and class choice. When players upgrade the ship's components (weapons, cloaking devices, and such) that will automatically take a reflection on the appearance of the vessel. This means that your ship will literary grow as time passes.

As for the technical tidbits, we know that the game's graphic engine was designed at Westwood specifically for utilization in Earth and Beyond and in Command and Conquer: Renegade (DirectX8 support is included, as we expected). The engine uses multi-pass techniques with a built in 'Level of Detail' system, which was incorporated in order to prevent the possible graphic delays caused by too many players on screen. In addition, the engine will have the ability to render a variety of huge environments and large objects - monsters, capital ships, space stations, and so on.

The designers of Earth and Beyond made it possible for you to survey over 100 distant sections of the universe, and, furthermore, it will allow you to explore the atmosphere and the ground from your ship of numerous planets that you may come upon on your travels. Since every planet is a separate object in full 3D, the players will be able to fly down to the planet surface and venture through the unique surroundings. Day and night sequences are present on all planets, but you will notice that the planets have their own distinctive environments: lava, desert, ice, etc. Each planet has its specific resources, which are used for trade or production.