GameSpot Previews Emperor

[Gobalopper]

GameSpot has just finished the first preview for Dune Emperor. It includes 8 new screenshots, not from the trailer, as well as a lot of new info. I am just reading through it now and will post a recap when I get a chance.

Update: - Here are a few important points I have summarized from the preview:

- Westwood will be officially announcing the game later this week.

- You will spend most of the time fighting on Arrakis but you will also fight on the homeworlds of the Atreides (Caladan), Harkonnen (Geidi Prime), and Ordos (Sigma Draconis).

- You will be able to ally with five other factions including; House Ix, the Fremen, the Sardaukar, the Guild, and House Tleilaxu.

- Once you ally with one of the above factions you will gain access to some of their units or structures, up to a total of 5 each.

- Each House has about 15-20 units. Unlike past games only three units/bulidngs are the same for all, the Harvester, C-Yard, and basic Infantry.

- The Atreides super-weapon emits a subsonic pulse and a holographic projection of a massive hawk that will scare units away and then paralyze them.

- The Harkonnen Buzzsaw can not only kill Infantry but will also destroy spice fields. Once again the Harkonnen have the Death Hand atomic missile.

- The Ordos have mech like units and hovercraft. The Ordos Kobra can be both a tank and artillery when deployed. Their superweapon is gigantic bolt of electricity, you can see it in one of the screenshots.

- Campaign is much different then in the past. You now have control over where you fight and your choice affects the rest of the battlefield.

- You can zoom as well as rotate the camera.

- The new interface is much more streamlined then before, you can also enhance your buildings with upgrades. For example, you can add a ramp to the Refinery to increase the number of Harvesters that can unload at a single time.

- There are 33 territories and more then 100 randomly generated missions.

- There are two multiplayer modes, skirmish and multiplayer campaign. In campaign mode three people can play together over a LAN or Internet and save their progress to continue later.

- The game has three worm types, small, medium and large, if you ally with the Fremen you will be able to summon and even ride them.

- Scheduled for a mid-2001 release.

- The game will have about a minimum requirement of a PII 266 but might even reach to PIII, resolutions could be as high as 1600x1200.

From this preview it seems the game will certainly raise the bar in some aspects of the RTS genre. The requirements they mention seem fairly high, but I guess when you go 3D that is what happens. The part about being able to ride the Sandworms sounds cool, it was probably the most requested feature after Dune2k. I wonder if the Sandworm in the trailer was small, medium, or large? :)