One thing in particular that I love about E3 is going into an appointment with only a vague perception of what to expect, and then coming out with something that meets or exceeds these expectations to a great degree. Such was my appointment today with Play Ten Interactive, and while time constraints only enabled me to cover three of their upcoming titles, I was more than happy for the opportunity to check out everything I could. In particular, I was most interested in seeing how The Precursors was going to hold up, but was also granted the opportunity to investigate White Gold: War in Paradise and even was shown a fully functional build of PSI: Syberian Conflict. In this article, I’ll describe what was shown for these three games and how they’re progressing.

At the top of my list is The Precursors. Promoted as a triple-genre game, The Precursors offers on-the-ground FPS run and gun action, integrated space-flight, and even an RPG-based system. Plot-wise, the game surprisingly starts far in humanity’s past, in a theoretical universe where mankind has ten planets orbiting the solar system, and one is destroyed suddenly by an alien invasion. The player takes the role of a new pilot joining humanity’s space forces, and sets forth on an atypical quest to save the galaxy. Due to the game’s incomplete state, detailed plot information was not directly available, but I did get to see some of the gameplay in motion, and was also treated to a gallery of sexy looking screenshots. But let’s go into detail: By being an FPS/Space Sim/RPG hybrid, the game effectively combines a number of gameplay features into a wide-open environment. I was first shown a ground attack scene, where the player advanced on an enemy base, proceeding to clean house using a wide variety of weapons ranging from cool to downright weird (let’s just say some of the more organic weapons have some very interesting reloading animations), and then stole an enemy fighter and took to the skies, air-striking the enemy encampment back to the stone age. An interesting point is that, even while in the air, the player is given complete freedom of movement over a long distance of terrain – though I wasn’t able to find out how far this freedom extended, exactly.

A second demo level portrayed a jungle environment, which looked stunning to say the least. Bloom and visibility effects have been used to great degree to churn out some really believable foliage, and I was also shown some sweet vehicular action in the form of a buggy. The game’s physics engine seems to really be coming together and is quite impressive, and all vehicles will even feature locational damage with visible feedback, such as shooting out tires or lights (or of course the windows). Finally, after a bit of pleading on my part (a result of the space-simmer within me crying out), I was shown a quick tech demo of a space combat portion. Space combat is actually going to be relatively simplistic – anybody who’s played something like Freelancer will be right at home, though I’ll be very interested to see if more complex gameplay elements are added. There seems to be a promise of larger cruisers (or maybe even capital ships) to pilot too, but the brief space combat scene I was shown involved dissecting a target capital ship apart, piece by piece, until it eventually broke up into a very impressive explosion. The question is, will larger-scale space battles finally match the graphical and immersive intensity of Freespace 2 or Nexus: The Jupiter Incident? Only time will tell, but with over 250 promised quests to play with, a dynamic weather system, a real-time AI setup, and an almost completely open-ended gameplay environment, I’ve definitely got my eyes locked to The Precursors for it’s release in 2007, though it’s apparent the game still has a long development cycle ahead of it.

I’m allocating a little less detail to the next title I was shown, White Gold: War in Paradise, because this is actually based on the same freeform concept as The Precusors - and is also based on the same engine, no less. In the year 2010, a small revolt has occurred in a distant Caribbean country, and the player character is tasked with investigating this revolt, as well as to try and uncover some dark secrets on the island. Again, this is relatively vague information due to the game’s incomplete state, but the early versions in motion look quite cool. The game is actually focused on 20 separate islands and will have the same quest-based gameplay as The Precursors, and players can use basic cars, boats, planes, choppers, and even tanks to complete their objectives. In fact, the game instantly rang shades of the failed Boiling Point: Road to Hell, but with luck, this game will turn out to be much more successful, and the initial graphical and gameplay impressions certainly lead me to believe this will be so. I’m hopeful to hear more on this game once further gameplay and art assets are in place and the title really starts to come together (though the landscape is still gorgeous regardless…)

My final words encompass PSI: Syberian Conflict. An RTS game, Syberian Conflict was the game closest to completion – it’s currently set to be available overseas within 2-3 weeks, with a U.S. release a little further down the road. The game is set in 1967, where an unexplained object that fell into Siberia almost sixty years prior has now resurfaced into the dawn of a potentially devastating conflict for survival. At first glance, the game almost seems to be a little on the short side – there’s two campaigns (Human, then Alien) with six missions each – but after some demo time, it was found that each mission is actually relatively lengthy, with plenty of scripted events to drive the storyline forward, as well as some fierce gameplay. The game is primarily focused on using large mobile construction factors to capture “Bionodes”, which are key strategic resource points on the map that will provide that faction with the “bioessence” needed to construct units. The gameplay I was shown provide to be very brutal as well; graphically units would come apart in a bloody mess or end up being decapitated depending on how the fight went, and it was particularly gruesome watching a squad of infantry rushing into a fortified defensive position and being turned into hamburger. In addition, tanks and vehicle are blessed with physics effects, meaning that explosions are kept all the more interesting during periods of mass destruction.

Units also have unlockable special abilities, such as grenades, a shield, or per-say a “tactical nuclear weapon”, and even dedicated hero units can be called in and upgraded throughout the missions to lend support to your troops. I do have a concern in that the game’s limited mission structure, as well as a lack of multiplayer may lead to possible issues involving the game’s staying power, but the fact that there are two campaigns that promise to be quite unique in their own regard, as well as the large-scale nature of the mission system makes a title RTS fans may want to monitor carefully upon it’s release.

While these three titles were all I was able to experience directly, it should also be noted that Play Ten Interactive has a couple of other interesting games in development, such as The Wall, an intriguing cyberpunk-based action title set in a dark future, and Battle for Atlantis, which looks to be quite a cool RTS game in it’s own right. Frankly however, The Precursors alone has me very much looking forwards to the future releases by this company, and I’m hoping deeply that they turn out well. - Dave VanDyke.