Starcraft: Ghost Preview

With the help of Nihilistic, the developers behind Vampire: The Masquerade, Blizzard will be reentering the console market with Starcraft: Ghost, a tactical stealth action game based on one of the most popular real-time strategy games for the PC. Blizzard certainly seems excited about revisiting the Starcraft universe for the first time in a few years, but it seems even more keen on giving its fans an opportunity to get up-close and personal with the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss for the first time in full 3D. Of course, that was also a potential issue in the early development stages of Starcraft: Ghost--the question of what all these elements should look like, when for the most part all we've seen of them is an overhead view of two-dimensional sprites. Still, Nihilistic and Blizzard both feel confident that they'll be able to appease the most ardent of fans while attracting a whole new audience that has yet to experience the Starcraft universe. There hasn't been much revealed on Starcraft: Ghost--in fact, what has been revealed may not even be a part of the final product since Blizzard and Nihilistic are still debating certain aspects of the game--but what we have seen so far certainly looks interesting.

Starcraft: Ghost places you in the role of Nova, a soldier with the ability to strike without being seen. You will have to infiltrate enemy installations to retrieve information or inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible. In addition, you'll also participate in outdoor campaigns where you can order tactical nuclear strikes on specific positions or even order one of the massive Terran ships to bombard a target with its powerful weapons. Either way, Blizzard wants to convey the feeling that you're playing a key role in a battle that's taking place over an entire planet, much like in the original Starcraft, and the decisions that you make will ultimately have an effect on the outcome.

Indeed, it seems as though numerous decisions will have to be made in even the most straightforward of scenarios, as the demo we were shown at the Tokyo Game Show reveals. The first few seconds require that you make a quick decision based on variables such as how many enemies there are and what their position is in the level. When Nova drops from the ceiling of a hangar to the top of a small Terran dropship, you'll immediately have to scout the area by maneuvering the incredibly flexible camera around the environment--in this particular situation, two Terran marines are patrolling the area. You can either avoid them entirely or take them out using Nova's predatorlike stealth capabilities. The latter is admittedly much more fun because you can literally walk right up to a Terran marine while cloaked and shoot him at point-blank range with the sniper rifle. But that particular course of action can be detrimental to your safety since it can potentially alert the enemy and make your life much more difficult.

The room adjacent to the hangar, where there's only a single security camera, gives an even better idea of how much freedom you're given in the game. You can either avoid the camera's line of sight, which will be indicated onscreen as a sort of neon triangle, or you can attempt to disable it using one of Nova's skills. While one strategy certainly seems to be safer than the other, it remains to be seen if there are any significant advantages or drawbacks to using either strategy.