The house that Sonic built is about to be blown to bits. Chris Taylor and his development teams at Gas Powered Games have teamed with Sega to chronicle the destruction of Earth in a new role-playing adventure, Space Siege. Largely inspired by the work done on the Dungeon Siege series, this new space saga evolves into new territory with a bright new engine and gameplay elements that we saw first hand.

Space Siege puts you in the role of Seth Walker, a combat engineer on the spaceship Armstrong. As one of five capital ships to escape the alien obliteration of Earth, the Armstrong is one of the last vestiges of humanity. Alien forces aren't content with Earth's destruction, following humanity to the depths of space with the intent to annihilate the fleeing race. Seth decides to take up arms in order to combat the enigmatic extraterrestrials and it's up to you to see that he succeeds in his quest to protect humankind.

For anyone familiar with Dungeon Siege and its sequel, you'll instantly feel at home with Space Siege. The core role-playing mechanics of Chris Taylor's earlier games are being revamped here, as well as enhanced by the incorporation of new elements. In fact, Space Siege utilizes an overhauled version of the graphics engine used for Dungeon Siege II.

The entirety of Space Siege occurs on the Armstrong, with Seth exploring the massive ship to route out aliens attempting to destroy it. You'll play from a third-person, almost isometric perspective, using the mouse to guide Seth through environments and clicking on enemies to engage in combat. Full control over the camera is granted, but in our demonstration it was pulled out for an overhead view. It's an old school feel that should be refreshing given the dearth of first-person role-playing games on the way.

As a robotics engineer and inventor, Seth can craft all kinds of gadgets and items to wield in combat. Additionally, you can augment his natural abilities with cybernetics, although there is a trade-off. For every mechanical augmentation Seth undergoes, he loses a bit of humanity. A gauge at the top of the screen shows the balance between man and machine. You'll have to make a choice whether you want to preserve Seth's humanity or ditch it for combat bonuses. Supposedly there are disadvantages to reducing Seth's human qualities, but Gas Powered Games representatives refused to go into much depth.

Helping Seth along in his quest will be a robot named Harvey. Discovered early in the game, Harvey aids Seth in combat without the need for micromanagement. Harvey will automatically engage enemies in battle and support Seth when needed. Naturally, you'll be able to enhance Harvey's abilities through the course of the game, although we weren't given too many details regarding his development.

Complementing the single player campaign will be cooperative multiplayer missions for up to four players. You won't be able to import your character from the campaign, but you can fully customize a multiplayer avatar with its own robot. Unlike Dungeon Siege II that simply offered cooperative play through the campaign, you'll actually play through unique multiplayer missions divided into bite-sized levels.

Quite frankly, Space Siege doesn't look like it'll do much to innovate the role-playing genre and that's okay; instead, Gas Powered Games is attempting to provide a highly polished, old school-style game with contemporary graphics. Space Siege looks to be on track for an early 2008 release.