Imagine flying around in a beautiful space shooter with nebulae and 3d sound and beautifully rendered, high-poly ship and station models where all of the enemies (and friendlies) actually have brains and can do unpredictable things. Imagine being in space with 30 or even 100 of these other players and duking it out with tons of variable loadout choices. That’s Allegiance: Beautiful graphics and large-scale multiplayer space action. Simple as that. Well, except for the squadron part. Allegiance was built for squadrons from the ground up. Pre-recorded quick comms. Strategic commands. Wings. Squadrons. Wingman commands. We did all of that stuff and more to really make it advantageous, nay, necessary to be successful as a team. So that’s Allegiance: Large-scale, beautiful space action game for squadrons. And that’s really it. Well, except for the strategy part. You may have heard me say it before (and Rob mocks me unmercifully), but I’ll say it again for those who weren’t paying attention. Imagine playing a game of Age of Empires or Starcraft where YOU are one of the units. Ain’t that just a cool concept? So squadrons take on a new twist because you have a group of other warm bodies that you’re working with to accomplish a team objective (Conquest, Prosperity, Artifacts, CTF, Deathmatch). Several on your squadron might form the Alpha wing that harasses the other team’s miners. Others form the Delta wing, which defends your miners and buildings. Still others form the Foxtrot wing which acts as a quick strike force and can mobilize to help one of the other two wings when needed. And one guy becomes commander and spends the whole time managing investments, choosing the technology path for the team (to get you better stuff) and commanding the battles from the 3rd person, RTS view of the game. OK. So that’s Allegiance: “Beautiful, squadron-based, large-scale multiplayer Space Action game, where you’re one of the units in an RTS.” We coined an acronym for the game type and genre: BSBLSMSAGWYOOTUIARTS. We’re hoping it will catch on. –Joel Dehlin, original Microsoft Game Developer (more historical info on the FAO Wiki) |