Earth & Beyond's story starting soon

Westwood has announced that this month's update to Earth & Beyond will include the start of a planned epic storyline that will lead to major changes in the galaxy. The update features 15 new missions, most of which deal with the ongoing story. Westwood suggested that the upcoming events will see warriors building a massive defense shield, tradesmen building a long-range stargate, and explorers seeking out more than 50 encoded data fragments.

The upcoming update will include a number of other features. Players can look for improvements to the cloaking, environment shield, and negotiation skills. The new missions will also include three level-50 promotion missions. Westwood promises some improvements to the in-game stories and mission terminals, which will, for example, make the terminals issue missions faster. Finally, there will be some special content for Valentine's Day.

Westwood is going out of its way to let players try out Earth & Beyond. There's a demo program that gives prospective players five days free. The 1.2GB demo can be freely downloaded on this GameSpot page.

For more details, check out our previous coverage of Earth & Beyond.