Most Important EaW Previews (*Quoted)

Cain · April 25, 2005

Game Spy PC - One of the first ones - The newest one is the last

It's easy to get excited about Empire at War, especially if you're a child who was reared on the original Star Wars trilogy. Even at its most superficial levels, it feels completely right: if you've even glanced at the screenshots, you can't help note just how darn mighty those AT-ATs look, nor can you deny how impressive the aura of sinister majesty that surrounds a fleet of Star Destroyers flying in formation can be. It's clear that Empire at War is being created by people who care as much at Star Wars as you do.

While You may not know the name, you're probably familiar with developer Petroglyph's legacy. Comprised mainly of developers from the studio formerly known as Westwood, it's no overstatement to say that the heads behind Empire at War include many of the RTS genre's pioneers. The classic Dune 2 -- which arguably serves as the blueprint that RTS games still adhere to -- came out of this group, not to mention much of the immensely popular, and, for the most part, critically acclaimed Command & Conquer series. Yes, one could say that Petroglyph knows what it's doing. But as is evidenced by much of Empire at War's design, the studio has no interest in retreading the path that it helped blaze. Quite the contrary: Petroglyph aims to do with Empire at War to the RTS genre what Blizzard has done to MMORPGs with World of Warcraft -- to do away with the tedious elements (resource gathering, I'm looking at you), and emphasize the bits that players most enjoy. Which means blowing things up. It's a trap.

Picture a galactic map populated by 20 or 30 planets (the exact number is yet to be finalized). At the outset of the campaign mode, their distribution is markedly uneven between the two factions, with the Empire, naturally, controlling the bulk of them. You have your entire army at your disposal to deploy to all corners of the galaxy -- you can send a group of Mon Calamari cruisers to engage the Imperial fleet orbiting Planet X, for instance, while in the meantime dispatching land forces to overrun the modest defenses of Planet Y. You won't start from scratch after every mission, either; the units you amass throughout the course of the campaign mode stay with you as long as you keep them intact. As a matter of fact, go ahead and shelve the notion of "missions," as they apply to RTS games. Think of Empire at War's missions as you would quests in an RPG.

At the game's outset, there isn't anything you have to do, specifically. Rather, depending on where you choose to deploy your forces, different missions will become available to you. Some of these missions will be one-offs, and some will tie in to larger story arcs, but all of them will have ramifications over the world at large. Empire at War's galaxy is persistent, so the aftermaths of the battles you engage in have a bearing on more than just the game's narrative elements; if that big-assed Imperial fleet parked over Planet Z is beating the crap out of you repeatedly, it's not a bad idea to turn tail, run, and devise a more devious strategy. You'll lose your units for real, and recovering from such a loss is much more difficult than reloading a save after seeing the "Mission Failed" screen. Especially if you're playing as the Rebel Alliance, which is far from able to match guns with the Imperials. One TIE "unit" is actually a squad of multiple fighters.

Resource gathering is present in the game's design, in the traditional sense, and to be honest, it doesn't seem to me that Petroglyph has fully hammered how it's going to work in the long run. I was told that the amount of resources at your disposal is tied directly to how many planets are in your possession. Certain planets will yield certain types of commodities -- if you control the Mon Calamari homeworld, for instance, you'll have the ability to crank out their neato capital ships -- with central, densely-populated worlds naturally being "worth" more than remote, barren backwater systems. Bases factor into this, too. You'll have to establish a base on any world you control before it becomes truly defensible -- in other words, before you're able to crank out units from it. Not all planets are created equal in this sense, however; the aforementioned podunk planets won't be able to support truly high-end bases capable of generating the most elite units in your army. Then again, these systems probably won't see as much action as the Hoths and Yavins of the galaxy, so I guess it balances out.

You probably have something of a clear picture as to how Empire at War will play out, at this point, and if there's even an ounce of you that gets excited about breakthroughs in RTS design, then you're probably simmering with anticipation. Granted, we're yet to see how compelling both the space and land combat systems will prove to be, but given the developer's pedigree, things look pretty good. The multiplayer elements are just as exciting: the campaign mode can be played competitively by two players, and there will be a host of skirmish maps available, for competitors preferring a more conventional RTS experience.

Empire at War, you can say, had us at "Hello." But as we discover more and more beautiful things about, our desire and admiration for it doesn't cease to increase. Hopefully we'll have much more on it as its release date approaches.

Computer Games - Interview

Joe Bostic of Petroglyph talks to Computer Games Magazine about Star Wars: Empire at War, the upcoming land and space based RTS game for publisher LucasArts.

While Star Wars strategy games have had a checkered past (Rebellion or Force Commander, anyone?) LucasArts is once again bringing an RTS title with the Star Wars name to the PC. This time it's Star Wars: Empire At War and its being developed by Petroglyph, made up primarily from team members who worked at the former Westwood Studios, makers of the Command and Conquer game series. Computer Games Magazine got a chance to chat with the game's lead designer Joe Bostic to find out more about Empire at War.

Computer Games - There have been other PC Star Wars strategy games before but none of them have achieved a high degree of critical acclaim. What kinds of lessons from those previous games did the development team take to heart while working on Empire at War?

Joe Bostic - The biggest lesson learned was that we didnâ€™t want to go in the same direction that traditional RTS games are heading. That is, toward increasing the tedium and workload on the player due to mistaking â€œmoreâ€