Space Siege

By Alan Bell

Developed by Chris Taylor (Total Annihilation)'s Gas Powered Games (Dungeon Siege series, Supreme Commander) and published by Sega, Space Siege is an Action RPG (ARPG - a game type popularised if not entirely invented by Blizzard's Diablo series). Unlike most ARPGs (or RPGs, for that matter), Space Siege is set in a SCI-FI setting - there's no Orcs, Elves or outright magic to be seen here.

In the late 22nd century, so the story goes, man leaves earth to explore the stars. It turns out we're not alone in this big old universe. The first new race we encounter must have been deeply offended by our aftershave; a badass and high-tech bunch of aliens, they attack without warning, wiping out our colonization fleet and then heading straight for Earth, to exterminate the remnants of our society.

Taking the role of Seth Walker, a Space Marine type, the player's goal is to prevent what remains of humanity from being completely wiped from existance as the Kerrigan chase you (and what remains of Earth's civilization) across the universe.

The SCI FI setting isn't the only departure from what we've come to expect from the ARPG genre. When killing mobs (from MMO parlance - short for mobile, refers to the bad guys that are running around the place), they won't drop "loot"; instead, they'll explode in a hail of "parts" (similar to Ratchet & Clank's "bolts", if you've played that). Simply pressing Z at any point will suck up these parts for later use at an NPC (non-player character, the other "good guys" you can trade with or get quests from) vendor.

It's when spending these parts that things get interesting: Space Siege ultimately has two paths that the player can go down. Spending parts on upgrading Seth cybernetically will give him great abilities and make the game easier, however as Seth becomes more and more cyborg he will become less and less human - a change which will be reflected in how the player is treated by the game's NPCs. Alternately, the player can elect to retain Seth's humanity (spending the parts exclusively or at least largely on weapons upgrades, armour, etc, instead), knowing that it will make for a more difficult game - albeit one with a significant (and as yet unknown) "bonus" at the end.

Additionally, the player will have a robot sidekick (think of it as a drone shooting platform), on which parts can be spent in order to upgrade its various capabilities - namely its firepower.

It's not yet clear what perspective the game will be played from (third person in the vein of Dungeon Siege is assumed but it may yet alter from that) or what the system requirements and online capabilities will be but, knowing Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games, we expect something pretty impressive and are positively champing at the bit to get a crack at some playable code.

Currently headed to Kiwi PCs in Q3 2008, the concept of a console version has been hinted at (but not confirmed) by the developer - should that be announced, we'll be sure to let you know. Look for an updated preview closer to release.

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