RicaneliteSega release info on a New RTS Stormrise
Is there some sort of wager going on in the developer community as to who can make real-time strategy games work on consoles first? EA has certainly been trying with ports of their Command & Conquer and Battle for Middle-Earth franchises, Microsoft has teamed up with Ensemble Studios for Halo Wars, Ubisoft is casting their lot with voice recognition for Tom Clancy's EndWar, and now Sega is entering the fracas with Stormrise, a new RTS for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
As you can read for yourself on the game's official website (via PS3fanboy), Sega describes Stormrise as the first "truly 3D RTS" -- that is, you control events on the ground from a third-person view, and participate in skirmishes that take place "on battlefields comprised of sprawling cities and towering skyscrapers that let you play in a truly 3D environment." As for how the player would go about controlling an RTS from a third-person perspective using a console controller, Sega promises the method will be "revolutionary" and "groundbreaking" and...they don't say much more than that. It will, apparently, involve something they call the "Tactical Playbook," which seems to give the game an intriguing football-like method of issuing orders to your units.
In terms of the game's story, it seems to have a bit in common with the recent DS strategy game, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where Earth's "protective atmosphere" has been destroyed; somehow, this doesn't kill all life on the planet, and those who survive form two different races -- the Echelon and the Sai. These races then proceed to battle each other for control of the land, because once the Earth has been reduced to a barren wilderness, obviously you'd want control over it.
Hopefully Sega will have more to show us about Stormrise at E3 next week, so we can get a better idea of how it's shaping up. But if we were to put up our own money in this console RTS horserace, we wouldn't be too surprised if Sega emerged victorious. After all, they already got their feet wet publishing Petroglyph's Universe at War for the Xbox 360 earlier this year, and let's not forget they were doing console RTS long before it became fashionable. That experience has to count for something, right?
