Terminus Screenshots

Vicarious Visions CEO Karthik Bala stopped by the GameSpot offices this afternoon with a month-old build of Terminus, his company's upcoming space combat simulator. Unlike Wing Commander or FreeSpace, however, Terminus is completely open-ended and is a very ambitious project for Vicarious.

From the outset, players choose one of four factions to play. Each faction - the United Earth League, the Mars Consortium, the mercenaries, and the pirates - has its own campaign and difficulty level. Each campaign consists of over 90 non-linear missions that can be replayed with completely different outcomes. "Our toughest challenge was to implement a scripted storyline on top of this dynamic universe," Bala told GameSpot. To pull it off, Vicarious implemented a sophisticated artificial intelligence system that gives computer players the same options as human players. This means that AI pilots can post contracts on human players' heads, or can take on jobs from either the human or AI side in a gameplay effect that blurs the line between computer and living players.

The ambitious game boasts a 700-page script and over 600 lines of spoken radio chatter. Terminus will be published by Vatical and will release this April. We'll have more on this game in the future, but in the meantime, check out the screenshots linked on the top.