Space Siege Preview

Space Siege is trying to be an action shooter, but it's still an RPG underneath.

Space Siege looks a lot more casual than Chris' other games. That TA and SC, two of the most hardcore real-time-strategy games around, and Dungeon Siege, a popular but not massive success, are Space Siege's predecessors, is perhaps somewhat ironic. But when you think about it, and when you speak to Chris Taylor himself, it makes perfect sense. Gaming is changing. The rules are changing. Chris reckons super complicated hardcore games are on the way out. And he believes simpler, quicker, more action oriented games which gamers actually finish (Space Siege will take roughly 15-20 hours to complete), are on the way up. What we have here is the result of this realisation.

And you can see that in some of the game's mechanics. When you die you re-spawn ala BioShock, so you won't see a game over screen anywhere in Space Siege. The game won't allow your character to fall off ledges or bridges into the lower bowels of the Armstrong either, instead putting up invisible barriers to make sure players won't suffer annoying, frustrating deaths. And the combat is yet another effort to wrap dice-roll based shoot-outs in a real-time skill-based blanket (see Mass Effect and Tabula Rasa).

Chris says that lots of games suffer because while they appear to be 3D they are in fact one dimensional. He highlights this by showing off Space Siege's multi-layered levels. So one second you'll be on a bridge that peers down towards an endless black pit of doom, the next you'll be lower down in the ship, with a sense that you're actually underneath that bridge and not just somewhere else on the Armstrong. An interior section he showed off had Seth motoring his way through various Kerak in an area that had varied levels, with the combat spread across them all. It looks a lot better than fighting on a flat plane anyway.

The game won't be coming out till summer next year, so expect its graphics to get better.

Talking of looks, I wasn't massively impressed with Space Siege's graphics. I know it's early days, indeed Chris made a point of mentioning it, and there's some lovely physics, with grenades bouncing off walls, pretty explosions and impressive lighting, but nothing made me say "wow!". I was especially disappointed by the Kerak, which looked to me like a really basic Alien/Tyranid hybrid, and not in the least bit frightening. That's not to say the game won't look incredibly polished when it's released. All I'm saying is that at this early stage the game's graphics aren't blowing me away.

While Space Siege is a PC game right now, I'd bet my house on it coming to the consoles, in particular the Xbox 360. It just looks well suited to a pad, much more so than RTS Supreme Commander, which we revealed was coming to Microsoft's next-gen machine back in October. Add to that the fact that the four-player online coop campaign, specifically designed for online play, doesn't sound like a bad fit with Xbox LIVE, and you've got a home banker right there.

Will Space Siege turn out to be any good? It's too early to call, and we're waiting on some hands-on time before we start to cast judgement, but with such an impressive track record behind him, you wouldn't expect anything other than high quality gaming from Chris Taylor's talented fingertips. Now... where did I put that bionic eye?

Space Siege is set for release on PC sometime in Summer 2008.