Empire At War Announced for the PC

Attempts made by the house of Wookie to create a real time strategy have been hit and miss. Their first major attempt was in house with Star Wars: Force Commander, but the taxing system requirements and choppy interface doomed the title to exists on fanboy shelves.

Next came a hit that spawned 2 add-on packs, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Using Ensemble’s Age of Empires engine, the game could pit up to 6 players at once gathering resources and waging battle against each other, a la Command and Conquer, the de facto title in RTS gaming. Battlegrounds provided several factions from past and present films and varied their troops, weapons and vehicles immensely. Fans were given true control of the armies of the Star Wars universe.

Now for release in Fall 2005, LucasArts goes for the source and colaborates with Petroglyph Games, who were key in development for nearly every Command & Conquer game ever made. Star Wars: Empire at War will once again give players control of the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire and all their resources, including for the first time, space combat. Screen shots available at the official site are more than promising, clean colorful and closer than in any previous game. The camera looks to get as low as eye level as the battles are happening. It should be noted that this feature was available in Force Commander, but ultimately slowed all but the most high end computers to a crawl. Additionally, game play in single player campaigns will be persistant: battles won and to what extreme will echo throughout the galaxy, changing events and battles that players can enguage in.

According to the website, only the two major factions can be chosen, as events are placed a few years before Episode 4 (A New Hope), but multiplayer can still get 8 players head to head online.