Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy Preview

After four years of coding and programming Robert Heinlein's 1959 SF classic Starship Troopers will finally be released as a computer game. Initially, the game was supposed to be a 3D shooter that was intended as an iteration of the Paul Verhoeven's movie. With the fast technology leap, the game, as it was then, became obsolete and couldn't compete with the games already on the market. Many years later, Hasbro Interactive hooked up with an Australian developer team called Blue Tongue, and as a result, we'll soon be able to take a shot at playing the role of Starship Troopers' commander.

The true hard-core fans of the novel had many objections to the movie, because it didn't depict legendary Mobile Infantry (MI) as it should have done. Mr. Heinlan described them in detail, and the aforementioned fans complained mainly about penny-pinching of the movie budget. In the movie, the Infantrymen didn't carry Power Armour, which would allow them to hop around Klendathu like rabid locusts. Instead, they stormed around in hordes inadequately equipped. Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy will combine the elements from the book and the movie and place them in the same universe, clarifying all remaining ambiguities.

The game story revolves around the third Terran Space War. The plot is based both on the book and the movie. The storyline is pretty simple. The bugs from space are attacking humans; the humans defend themselves, and later in the game, exterminate the bugs on their home-planet as retaliation for their attack. Starship Troopers is a story about "marines" of the MI. All combat depicted in the book, and all clashes from the movie are recreated in the game. As opposed to the movie and the book that leave the story unfinished, so we do not get to see how the war ended, the game takes us one step closer to the epilogue of the clash. The story is divided into three campaigns that have 21 mission altogether. The first campaign is about the invasion and MI assault on the planet Klendathu and the capture of the Brain Bug, just like the movie. It looks like the developers made an effort to stick to the fine atmosphere in the book, and stay true to the movie esthetics. That means that the player will sense the desperate struggle of the MI for the preservation of Mankind, and not yet another Space War that we've seen so many times before in other games.

The player begins the game as a young lieutenant, just out of the Academy, and in charge of a small unit. Being the CO, he is responsible for every trooper in his squad, and participates in missions side by side with them. As the troopers gain experience, they gain better armament and armor. Infantrymen go through mission after mission, and gain experience only in combat. Each trooper will have an inventory with armor slots and nine other items. Your squad will belong to a platoon that will be formed of six squads altogether. For every six troopers there will be a squad leader. In case the veterans in your squad get KIA, the rookies from the platoon will replace them. In some missions, the entire platoon will have to act. The missions will be diverse-from Search & Destroy, Bug Hole Demolition, Scouting and Recon, to searching for a specific bug... Infantrymen can specialize in certain combat skills-- Medic, Stealth Infiltrator, Combat Engineer and Special Talents. The number of troopers that will become specialists during missions is very limited so take care of them. They can be used as "build" of your squad. For instance, only a specialist can blow the entrance to a Bug Hole in which your troopers have to conduct a mission. Strike Team (as your squad is called in the game) is picked from the troopers in the platoon, and the limitations are in the number of troopers and the power armor suits. There are three classes of power armor: Scout, Marauder, and Command. There will be altogether twelve different power armors for your Starship Trooper to choose. Naturally, only experienced elite units will have access to jump-pack armor suits. Other troopers will have to walk into battle...

The weapons the troopers will carry on the battlefield will be interesting, and yes, there are going be some Nukes for nuking the bug hole, or killing the Plasma Bugs. The rest of the arsenal consists of: Plasma Gun, Cannon (regular and Chain version), Light Rifle, Marita, Shotgun (regular and Modified version), NetGun, Flamer, and Missile Launcher. The game will also feature the possibility to call-in reinforcements (Air Strikes, Medical Evacuation, etc) provided by the Terran Fleet. There is no resource collecting in the game; so, the gameplay comes down to battle tactics and choosing the right strategy for your team.

The game features special characters, like the great Sergeant Zim (too bad Clancy Brown isn't doing his voice, it would have been awesome). The main team from the movie, Rico's Roughnecks, will appear out of thin air in a critical moment to save your ass from certain death. We shouldn't forget about Terran Fleet. There will be many Star Ships and numerous smaller vessels to give support and transport your troops from one place to another. The important thing is that all the main ships from the book appear in the game: TFCT Rodger Young, TFT Audie Murphy, TFT Valley Forge, and TFDT Xenophon, etc.

The game interface underwent major redesign during the development. Trooper controls have also been improved, and there are several ways of controlling them on the battlefield. Since Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy is an RTS game; the usual "drag and click" method will be the main system for controlling troopers. Then, there is an option for selecting troopers' aggression and determining how the unit searches and destroys its target. The high aggression level will result in the unit moving around the map in search for the bugs, and the low level will mean that they will stay in formation and open fire only when directly imperiled. The Squad leader control system has been made simple through pre-defined basic commands: change of formation, halt, turning on/ off flashlights on the troopers' helmets, and dispatching scouts ahead. Trooper AI will be highly sophisticated. For instance, the troopers will spot incoming bugs and automatically turn their weapons toward them. Combining short range and long-range weapons will prove essential, because the troopers will spot and aim at the bugs even before they appear on the screen. The battlefield will be presented in third person view, with a mobile camera, which can rotate around the battlefield or change angle in a fashion similar to Ground Control.

The developers did their best to depict the enemy-the bugs. There are 15 kinds of Arachnids: Brain Bug, Chameleon, Chariot, Cherry Bomber, Consort, Hopper, Larva, Plasma bug, Queen, Rhino, Royal Warrior, Warrior, Spitter, Tanker, Worker. They are all different in dimension, ranging from the smallest Chariot Bugs to the enormous Plasma Bugs. All bugs that appear in the book and in the movie will have their respective role in the game. There will be some surprises too, but they are too nasty to be mentioned here.

The graphics are developed with the support for specific 3D effects, such as T&L of the nVidia GeForce graphic cards. There will be a lot of special lighting and terrain deformation. The lighting and shadowing of the terrain is going to look best during night missions when the flashlights on troopers' helmets are turned on to illuminate the in-game surrounding. The real time terrain deformation will be visible after Nuke Bombs' or some similar weapon's explosion. The bug and troop appearance is very much influenced by the movie, and for the time being, their design and general outlook is very sharp and clean. The animations are real time rendered, rendering the gameplay seamless. The animations will actually be trigger based scripted real time sequences running from the engine. The planets on which the missions take place, and on which Starship Troopers move around, will feature all types of terrain-- valleys, open terrain, and cliffs. The gameplay will be somewhat different on open terrain than in confined spaces, often requiring a change in tactics.

Apart from the RTS mark, Starship Troopers will also have a large dose of Squad Tactics involved. This hybrid game seems promising enough, so lets just hope it will justify its license, for the sake of the great book and the movie.