Stormrise RTS unveiled in first video (for Xbox 360, PS3, PC due 2009)
Stormrise is an all-new RTS game in development for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, due for release in 2009, by developer The Creative Assembly’s Brisbane, Australia branch and publisher Sega.
The game will mark The Creative Assembly’s first foray into a console-focused RTS (even though the game is still coming to PC), which has been built from the beginning to be super easy to control, for use with a console pad. Which allows you to quickly and easily select units using only the two sticks and the A Button. And instead of moving a cursor with the sticks, you’ll actually make motions and taps to control different units. For example, moving units is done by choosing a waypoint with the left stick and pressing A. Choosing units is even simpler and is done via the right stick. Rotating the right stick will cycle through all of the units in the particular direction that you’re pointing in, and you’ll use A to select a unit. For even quicker swapping, flicking the right stick in any direction will automatically jump to the closest applicable unit.
The game’s biggest innovation, outside of controls, comes from the game’s viewpoints. You actually see the game from the vantage point of your units, no matter what, or where, that unit is. So if a particular unit is on top of a high building for example, you can get a more strategic lay of the land. This was a big focus of the team who wanted to eliminate the “detached” feel of real-time strategy games.
Stormrise also allows units to be commanded in the air, across rooftops, on the earth’s surface and even underground, which the developers have labeled “verticality”, claiming it “introduces multiple layers of gameplay that must be mastered for strategic advantage.”
Here is the debut trailer for Stormrise from E3 2008.
“The Creative Assembly have proven their general leadership in developing RTS games through the award winning ‘Total War’ series on PC”, commented Gary Knight, European Marketing Director, SEGA Europe. “However, Stormrise has been built from the ground up specifically for high def consoles to provide a more intense, frenetic style of game that, coupled with the all new control mechanic, will revolutionize the way RTS games are played.”
Set on a bleak and barren earth, devastated by a catastrophic event centuries ago, Stormrise sees the Echelon and the Sai battling to survive in a hostile and uninhabitable wasteland. Remnants of a superior technological people the Echelon survived the event through self-educed hibernation, whilst the Sai, a more tribal faction, still exist having learnt to adapt to their surroundings and the new environment. Having evolved in vastly different ways, the differences between the two factions have spurred much animosity and hatred between the two races, and the future of the planet is now hanging by a thread . . .
