Star Wars Republic Commando Updated Hands-On

With the continued progress of the Star Wars prequel trilogy in full swing and the release of Episode III looming less than a year away, LucasArts is going to great effort to expand Star Wars in the video game sector. One of the key parts of that effort is Star Wars Republic Commando, a first-person shooter that places you in the role of an elite clone trooper in command of a crack squad tasked with carrying out behind-the-scenes special missions for the Galactic Republic. Though we've previewed the game several times before, we got to play through a mission set in a new area at a LucasArts event that gave us an even better feel for Republic Commando's scope.

Republic Commando will send you and your clone squad to such idyllic vacation hotspots as Geonosis and Kashyyyk.

The game will be broken into three major areas--the Episode II planet Geonosis, a large Republic ship, and the wookiee home planet of Kashyyyk--with each of the three being split into a number of missions. We got to see and play through a mission on Kashyyyk, which is overgrown with jungle vegetation and therefore provides a sharp contrast to the previous levels we've seen, which have primarily been set in dark, close-quartered interiors. In the Kashyyyk mission, we had to lead our squad of clone commandos through a heavily forested area, fighting off first a series of battle droids and droidekas, and later a group of trandoshan mercenaries guarding a landing pad, the destruction of which was our mission objective.

In addition to the guns-blazing shooting action, which Republic Commando seems to have a lot of, the Kashyyyk mission provided many examples of the game's context-sensitive command system. For instance, we took out an enemy manning a large turret and then were easily able to send one of our teammates to jump into the turret and turn the tables on our droid foes. We also had our troops detonate obstacles and hack into computer systems at various times to clear a path toward our objective. Issuing these orders is as easy as approaching an object you can interact with (denoted by an onscreen icon) and hitting a button to have one of your allies deal with the situation.

Of course, as often as you'll have your teammates doing things for you, you'll also simply be blasting away at the enemy yourself, mainly using a multipurpose energy rifle that can fill a variety of different roles. We gunned down a horde of those flimsy battle droids in the Kashyyyk mission, although the droidekas and their energy shields posed a more-daunting problem. In this case, we were able to lob an electrostatic charge grenade to disable the shields so we could safely dispose of the spindly-legged droids. The trandoshans were more adept at using cover than the droids, so we opted to use a sniper rifle to dispose of them. As an amusing aside, we managed to score a hit on one merc's jetpack, which sent him hurtling off wildly into the canopy overhead.

We asked director Tim Longo about what we might see in Republic Commando from the current and future Star Wars prequel films, and he told us the game is being used to help bridge the gap between episodes two and three of the saga. The planet Kashyyyk is featured prominently in Episode III, for instance, and we were told that you'll encounter--and occasionally have to do battle with, or even rescue--some key characters from the upcoming movie. One of the new villains, General Grievous, will make an appearance in the game, and you'll even have to take on one of his aides--and we were told it will take your entire squad to bring this enemy down.

Republic Commando is approaching the alpha stage of development, so it's more or less feature-complete, and it's looking pretty darn good at this point. All of the enemies we got to shoot at, from the various droids to the trandoshans, were faithful to their big-screen counterparts, and the environments of Kashyyyk were suitably overgrown with plenty of industrial equipment scattered around for good measure. The game uses some nice graphical effects for its energy weapons and also features one of the better-looking explosion effects we've seen in some time. We got to play the Xbox version of the game and also saw the PC version in motion, and while both use comparable graphical assets, the PC game is higher-resolution and ran at a smoother frame rate overall.

Star Wars Republic Commando is shaping up to be a fast-paced shooter with some solid strategic elements thrown in, and we're interested to see more as development progresses. The game is slated for a February 2005 release, and the team plans to use the time between now and then to tweak and polish Republic Commando into a more-cohesive final product. We'll bring you more on the game as it happens.