GameSpot recently visited the Game Developers Conference 2002 in San Jose and took an up-close look at Micro Forte's upcoming online third-person action game, Citizen Zero. Citizen Zero is based on the company's BigWorld engine, which the company is also marketing as a world-building application to be used in developing massively multiplayer online games. In addition to these hands-on impressions, be sure to check out our exclusive interview with Micro Forte's Simon Hayes and Paul McInnes, who'll tell you all about both BigWorld and Citizen Zero itself, and show you the impressive capabilities of the engine. Look for the video down at the end of this article.

Citizen Zero itself is a futuristic sci-fi third-person action game in which you play as a character in a land that was formerly a penal colony--no doubt a tongue-in-cheek reference to the developer's home country of Australia. In Citizen Zero, you'll be able to create a character and arm it with both melee weapons, like swords, and firearms, like machine guns. Citizen Zero not only has detailed character models, it also has a detailed character animation system that allows for interpolated movement--so that characters can transition from running to walking to fighting with no breaks.

Though we didn't see too much of the game's ranged combat, we did see that Citizen Zero's melee combat will actually let you parry your opponent's attacks and even break your opponent's guard with a forceful blow. But since Citizen Zero will also be an action game, it'll let your characters fight against each other and the game's sci-fi enemies (we saw a tribe of nomadic humanoids and a herd of human-sized, dinosaur-like reptiles) in real-time, as well as do other things you might expect from a 3D action game. For instance, players will be able to make their characters climb onto ledges and scale walls. Micro Forte's developers actually approached an exceptionally high wall with their characters, and had one receive a boost from the other, then reach down from the wall to help his companion clamber up.

Citizen Zero's world is huge and varied; we saw the developers travel through open, grassy fields with rendered high grass both during the day and night, as well as through an impressively detailed underground city lighted by neon signs and street lamps. In addition, Citizen Zero will have vehicles that player characters can use to travel quickly--we saw a light, jet-propelled, one-person vehicle whose handling seemed to fall somewhere between riding a jet ski and flying a jet pack.

Though Citizen Zero is, at least to some extent, a demonstration of the BigWorld engine for prospective licensees, it's also shaping up to be a very impressive game. Citizen Zero is scheduled for release sometime in 2003.