Preview: Fracture

Clearly the very first thing most gamers will try and do when Fracture ships is look for exploits. Loads of QC will go into making sure the player can’t mess with the pathing and break anything, yet still empower the player that they can do funky things with each level.

Throwing all its eggs into the terrain deformation basket, with Fracture, presents many challenges for the developer. For example, don’t expect to see water anywhere much, all sorts of problems there. If pulled off successfully though, this does have the potential to offer creative and exciting combat. Hopefully one where clever players reap the greatest satisfaction.

We took kindly to hearing that the pace of the game was entirely up to the player. While the demo was extremely frantic - notably moreso than Halo, typically, the tactical nature of terrain deformation should allow slower players to stretch it all out a bit.

Unfortunately LucasArts president Jim Ward stated at the preview showing that “Fracture is the first game to use terrain deformation as a gameplay element”. That’s a bit cheeky, as well as being a big fat lie. Magic Carpet anyone? Excite Truck? Sim City…? The list goes on. We hope they quickly drop that claim. It’s not necessary to claim it’s the first anyway, well executed terrain deformation can be a wonderfully effective backbone for a game, and it’s the quality of the execution that’s important, not whether it’s breaking any new ground for innovation.



The gameplay we were shown was certainly action-packed. Ground raising and falling all over the battlefield, vortexes spinning and sucking, particle effects galore. Addressing the Great 2007 Buzzword, ‘physics’, LucasArts were only able to confirm that the 360 and PS3 versions will dedicate at least 1 core to physics. When we asked if there would be a PC version the response was a tight lipped “no comment”, which we took to mean “we’ll see how the console versions sell first”.

LucasArts stressed that the game world and its characters will be “compelling”. While the characters are lackluster, the world premise is pretty cool, and thankfully shows that even super conservative LucasArts are prepared to be at least a bit edgy when it matters.



It’s a post climate-change world of 2160, rising sea levels have sliced the US in half, with east and west islands now enemies at war. It’s a battle of a high-tech weapons race on the east (‘Pacifica’), vs an advanced biological science (clones!) race on the west (‘Atlantic Alliance). The easties regard the cloned westies as “sub-human”, a term we don’t hear much outside History Channel Hitler documentaries.

You only have the option to play the east tech race, which is very disappointing. Multiplayer will allow access to the west, but we’re still bummed at being forced in only one direction in SP mode.



We’re looking forward to playing in levels that portray US landmarks in a post-disaster interpretation. We want to see the Statue of Liberty’s arm poking up through the rubble, dammit!

There’s no first-person mode, unsurprisingly, but still disappointingly. Giving the player only a 3rd-person view only to “reinforce the relationship between the player and character” is a little petulant, given the generic space marine character. By forcing us to look at the dude we’ll somehow bond more with the character? Well that’s the plan.

Fracture has good potential as a Halo alternative, and while we weren’t given any info at all about multiplayer, it’s not hard to imagine the fun that’s possible.

Fracture is planned for a mid 2008 release.