Preview: Fracture

LucasArts unveil its Great New Hope, that's neither Star Wars or Indy, or PC.

We recently visited LucasArts HQ in San Francisco to hear about the company’s focus for the years ahead. After speaking with president Jim Ward, we were pleased but not amazed that LucasArts are taking a fresh new look at what it does well, and jumping in with a new game world that is neither Star Wars or Indiana Jones.

According to Ward, LucasArts has three goals for the years ahead:

1. Improving Star Wars game quality
2. Reinvigorating the Indy franchise
3. New ip (intellectual property) development.

Star Wars games are famously a hit and miss affair. The company is bound by, one senses, heavy handed guidelines for what can be done with the sacred universe. So it’s rather nice to hear that our cries have been heard. Time will show whether this is more than just a promise.

Given the miracle that there is in fact going to be a new Indiana Jones film, you can expect several years worth of new Indy games in the years ahead.

But what’s potentially the most interesting is the third part of the equation. LucasArts/Film very rarely venture into a new ip. When it does, it goes all out and we generally see years worth of games, expanding the new game world. This must be a wonderfully warm feeling for developer Day 1 Studios, it pitched an idea for a new game to LucasArts at last year’s E3 and now the company finds itself at the center of LucasArt’s development and marketing activity. Scoring a publishing deal with LucasArts isn’t a guaranteed golden ticket in anyone’s book though. Day 1 are under immense pressure to deliver a game that can be the new jewel in LusasArt’s crown, and hopefully lead to several sequels and spinoffs.



While there’s little doubt Fracture will be a high quality game – expect the best in voice acting, music, cutscenes etc, it’s remarkable how formulaic and unoriginal it is. Fracture is a Halo clone, pure and simple. While we only saw one level in action, it could have been from any space trooper shooter in the last 5 years.

The character design, weapons, architecture and gameplay feel is Halo all over. LucasArts has been a conservative publisher for most of its history, but it was quite clear that at the press showing that playing it safe is going to make Jack a bored gamer.

There's stil a year of development to go, and we were only shown one small part of a level, though it was wondered that surely there must have been something more exciting about Fracture to show off.



Halo with holes
Fracture does have one ultimately neat trick up its sleeve, and whether the game is a success or not hangs on how well it’s executed. Besides a standard array of spacegrunt weapons, you will be able to shoot off various guns that alter the terrain around you. Not everything in the game world will be deformable, but almost all the ground will be.

We were shown a few examples of weapons, including:

The Vortex – creates a tornado-like spinner that sucks anyone nearby in.

Bangalore – tunnels under enemy fortifications.

Plus a variety of weapons that dig nice big holes, or create mounds or mountains.

We’re promised that the opponent AI will react tactically to any deforming tricks you pull, countering with their own in a battle of trench digging.

Generally speaking, being able to play putty with the turf will be used in gameplay to:

• Create protection on the move. Out in the open? Just jiffy up a mound of dirt to take cover behind.

• Navigation. Can’t quite jump to that ledge? Raise the terrain under it and just walk up your new access ramp.

• Puzzle solving. A force field protected sentry gun giving you grief? Raise the terrain under it so it mashes itself against the shield and explodes.