Ghost Wars E3 2005 Impressions

At Hip Games' E3 2005 booth, European developer Digital Reality is showing Ghost Wars, a new military-themed real-time strategy game with a few unique concepts. The game focuses on antiterrorism operations, putting you in control of an elite military group called the Government Special Operations Group. Though the game itself is still nearly a year away from completion, Digital Reality gave us a quick look at some of the special things this game will offer.

The level the developers showed us was set in Cuba during a fictional revolutionary overthrowing of the current regime. The actual specifics of this scenario weren't really shown, but we were able to get an idea of how the mechanics of the game will work. You'll have the typical type of units, including soldiers, tanks, helicopters, and such. However, what makes Ghost Wars unique is how you control them. While you can just use the typical kind of point-and-click movement, you can also select a specific unit and zoom the camera in to take its viewpoint. If you choose a soldier, you'll go into first person, and if you pick a vehicle, you'll go to third person. From there, you can control that unit manually, attacking whatever you like. Soldiers can also get into parked vehicles on the field and drive them.

Units in the game will be upgradable in a number of ways, letting you specifically level up individual units to improve their performance on the battlefield. And you'll need to level up, because Digital Reality is endeavoring to make the opponent AI in the game quite challenging. AI units will run for cover and hide inside buildings, meaning you'll have to bring in your tanks and choppers to take those buildings down. And boy, can you. Though not all the deformable objects were in, the developers showed us quite a number of big-time building and vehicle explosions that looked pretty impressive. The developers are also working on creating some very dynamic real-time lighting and shadows, which, if the examples we saw were any indication, should be very affecting when finished.

You can expect to find Ghost Wars on PCs early next year. We'll bring you more on the game soon.