Tabula Rasa

E3 2006 First Look Preview

Tabula Rasa is no stranger to E3, but each of the previous two years has seen a game markedly different from the current iteration of this massively multiplayer online title. This year it has evolved into a taut shooter featuring two factions – humans and the Bane. But the Bane made a mistake in invading Earth. It made an enemy who was willing to take the battle to the worlds the Bane owned.

The game was on display at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles. Featuring fully integrated voice chat, a mixture of shared spaces and instanced spaces, as producer Starr Long stated, the game has “the front end and pace of a shooter and the back end of a role-playing game.”

Everyone will start as the same character class but at level 10 there is a beginning of the branch class tree, in which players can begin to specialize. And if the player wishes to create a different class, it is simply a matter of cloning the character.

The game will ship with three planets and will ship with 50 levels. The death penalties will be minor, and are mostly of the respawn variety with small penalties. Environmental damage will be factored into the game – meaning that aspects of the environments can cause damage.

While mission-driven, the game will constantly be in motion with the machine of war. Primary PvE (player versus environment), the game will also have consensual player versus player. In addition to a wide variety in monster types, the mobs will also employ different strategies and players will be tasked to employ a variety of weapons (from cryogenic, EMP, poison and the like) to find the most effective way to take down the enemy.

Open battlefields will have control points and whoever owns the control points will control the battlefield.

Graphically pleasing, Tabula Rasa will “ship when it is ready,” Long said.

For All E3 2006 Previews