Preview

Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Day 1 Studios, LLC.
Publisher: LucasArts Entertainment Company
Previewed by Justin Fassino on 2007-07-16

Fracture was just announced a couple months ago, but the game is far enough along that LucasArts took the opportunity to show off some gameplay, giving us a look at the terrain deformation mechanic everyone is talking about. The verdict? It's not just a gimmick; the terrain deformation system in will be what separates this third-person shooter from every other third-person shooter so far.

It's not what you're thinking, though. Sure you can blast holes in the ground, which is cool, but the game isn't all about destroying the soil. It's also about building it and using it to your advantage during combat. A series of weapons that affect the environment in different ways were showcased in the demo, and I will talk about those in just a bit. But first, a little plot background might be helpful.

The game takes place in the year 2161, and the world is a much different place. Global warming has radically altered the surface of Earth; flooding has buried nearly all the coastal areas on the planet, creating a great ocean divide between the Western United States and Eastern United States. While the East is heavily invested in cybernetic technology and sharing that knowledge with Europe, the West secedes from the Union after ideological conflict regarding genetic research and allies itself with Japan and China. Civil war breaks out, and the player is thrust into the conflict as Mason Briggs, a member of the Atlantic Alliance.

Both sides use terrain deformation on the battlefield, so the player won't be the only one in control of the ground. But don't worry, the player will be able to do some pretty impressive things. In the demo, one of the mission objectives was to destroy two of the Pacifica turrets. Briggs first had to find his way into the facility, and to do this, he had to tunnel his way underneath the structure. He could do this in a couple different ways: by shooting the ground at the base of the wall (which would be slow) or by throwing a bunch of grenades, which would drastically lower the floor of the map and reveal a hole in the foundation of the building big enough to walk through. Once the turrets were located, another problem arose: how to destroy them? For one, the turrets were huge and mostly impervious to gun fire. For another, they were protected by a huge energy shield that deflected outside fire but still allowed them to shoot at attackers. The best way to solve that puzzle was not to cut out the ground underneath the turrets, but rather to raise it up. By growing the surface directly below the turrets, they were lofted into their own shields and destroyed.

Raising and lowering the terrain are not the only things players can do in Fracture either. It will be possible to raise low walls that can be used for cover, of course, but other weapons will allow for more interesting combat strategies: the spike grenade will explode and summon a pillar of cooled magma from the ground that will raise up objects or players who happen to be standing above it. There's a rocket launcher that shoots its ammo beneath the surface of the level like a torpedo, and the player can trigger it to explode at any point during ts journey. There's a gun that gathers together small rocks on the ground and forms them into a rolling boulder of death. And there's a grenade that causes a black-hole like whirl-whind to suck up everything nearby, even ammo and fired shots (and by shooting at it, you can make the vortex more powerful).

All in all, Fracture is an extremely organic and dynamic game. The surface the player runs on has never felt so unstable; in fact, it feels more like a controllable ocean, a material of limitless potential, rather than the solid, non-interactive surfaces gamers are used to. If the entire game plays like the demo, Fracture should be a critical success when it comes out in 2008.

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