It must be nice to have single-handedly spawned an entire sub-genre of videogames. I wonder if Alan Emrich knew that the phrase he used when previewing Master of Orion back in 1993 would stick and go on to define its own class of games. Apparently he's still around somewhere, we should bring him in and ask him about that, would make a good read... what? The preview? Oh right, yeah. Back in June we interviewed Chris Stewart of Kerberos Productions about their upcoming 4X Strategy sequel, Sword of the Stars 2: The Lords of Winter, and at this year's GamesCom we sat down with him to go over it in more detail.
 

Ok, whilst the MARS 2.0 engine is looking good, I don't remember it looking this good...

The original Sword of the Stars game was released back in 2006, and went some way to help renew interest in a sub-genre that only really had Civilization to keep it going at the time. It combined traditional turn-based 4X gameplay with an oddly cinematic and engaging real-time combat model that really added flavour to off-set the natural dullness empire management can sometimes have, and the fact that it's now getting a sequel is a perfect example of how successful it's been. Things were a little dire when their original publisher Lighthouse Interactive went bust, and even the Murder of Crows expansion may not have made it to retail. But who should step in but Paradox Interactive, who helped bring about the last SOTS expansion, Argos Naval Yard, and who are now publishing this sequel.

Sadly, The Winter Lords still doesn't have a playable build for us to play with, with Chris only showing off some more Tech demos of how the ships will look, and a rough glimpse at how the new system dynamic will play out as well. In fairness though, in person the MARS 2.0 Engine is looking quite good. Even back in 2006, MARS 1 could have been considered a little bit dated by modern standards, but having rebuilt the engine from the ground up, Kerberos have kept up to date with current rendering technologies, and whilst it may not be top of the range, it's still competitive.

Smooth lines, high-detail ship models... hell, you can even give individual ships names and it will appear on the side. A lot of work has gone into the details of ships, since they are basically the main element of the game. Ships have been made more modular as well, and will include more parts, and more hardpoints and elements to 'interact' with during combat (read: blowup). Ship classes have been tweaked, and a great emphasis has been placed on the larger ships.
 

Look at the hardpoints on this baby

Not much seems to be changing with regards to how combat works, aside from the odd tweaking. In the first game, ships moved along one set 'plane', which they only diverged from in order to avoid collisions. Now, there are three separate 2D planes that ships can operate along, to give a faux-3D feel and expand the combat dynamics a bit more. It's still early days though, so we'll keep you updated should anything change.

The only other big thing to talk about is the galaxy map. In a move similar to what Creative Assembly did in Empire: Total War, Kerberos have made a similar trade off: The galaxies themselves will be physically smaller, but each Star now has a whole system to explore. There will be a sun, planets, asteroids and other objects to control and interact with, which will do wonders for the strategic element of the game. How can you have front lines when you may not even be able to control a whole system, and the enemy can just go around you? Chris was showing off a tech demo of the system at GamesCom as well, and it looking impressive, but we'll need to see how it handles. This "Size to Detail" balance will need to be carefully tweaked so that games aren't too small.

Apart from that, a lot of the old-school Sword of the Star elements seem to be coming in. Tech trees will still be randomised, and they will be balanced as well so that you're never prevented from winning just because you don't have certain rare techs or anything like that. Due to the time progression, the technology levels have also progressed, so no need to re-invent stuff you were researching during the first game. The composition of systems, such as how many planets and other stellar objects will also be randomized, and you can now also create semi-autonomous 'provinces' within your empire when certain requirements are met. Above all, the game is going to stick to the core mantra - Easy to Play, Hard to Master.
 

I wouldn't want to meet this in a back alley

Sword of the Stars 2 is looking like it will be a very worthy sequel. It's still very early days at the moment so it's hard to give any worth-while analysis, but we're optimistic in the sense that we don't believe they're going to dick around or anything. The key thing to watch out for in the coming months will be to see if the developers take an 'appeasing' steps to make the game more appealing to a wider audience. We'll be keeping an eye on this one, and we can't wait to get a hand on the first playable build.

Most Anticipated Feature: Too early to tell at this rate, but I reckon the improvements made to ship design might be a little bit special.