E3 2001 Hands-onPlanetSide

First-person shooters have been a staple of online gaming for years now, so it only seems natural that Verant Interactive, the creator of the phenomenally successful EverQuest, would try to create the first persistent-world FPS. PlanetSide is an ambitious game, but even at this early stage it's looking like Verant has another hit on its hands.

PlanetSide puts you on one of three empires caught in territorial combat. Your overall goal is to take land away from the other two empires. However, the land in question is nothing short of enormous. The area we were shown featured a large, sprawling landscape, with trees, individual blades of grass, and even mountains visible far off in the distance that you could climb, if you wanted to trek out that far. We were told that this landscape represents 1/16th of the size of one of the game's continents, each of which will allow for as many as 600 people to play simultaneously.

You will take on missions throughout the game. Some will be solo missions, but others will require you to team up with others. Some, like a direct assault on an enemy base, will have huge groups of players working together. When players take over an enemy base, they can set it up as a respawn point, so when their teammates die they will appear right back in the enemy's territory. Completion of these missions gives you ability points, which can be used to build up skills, such as the ability to hack enemy computer systems or heal other players. These skills have their uses, but don't confuse PlanetSide with EverQuest--at its heart, PlanetSide is still a first-person shooter, and so just because someone has built up a character doesn't mean the character can't be killed by a newbie. Also, stats of all kinds will be recorded, so by accessing terminals you'll be able to see how many times you've died, your total kill count, and, because PlanetSide features full friendly fire, how many times you've killed your own teammates.

Because the gameworld is so large, there are a number of vehicles at your disposal. The buggy allows for one person to be the driver and the other the gunman. When you hop into the vehicle, the camera shifts to a third-person perspective and shows your character getting into the vehicle. Driving the buggy is done from a first-person perspective, with your hands shown on the wheel in front of you. There will also be some limited air vehicles, including a dropship to transport players across the map. Each of the three teams in PlanetSide has its own weapons and vehicles, and you will be able to steal these from the corpses of your enemies.

PlanetSide is far from complete, and it's got a long way to go before Verant will be ready to hold an external beta test, but from what we've seen, fans of first-person shooters are in for a real treat when it's released next year.