The Cardassians have taken over a section of DS9. It's up to you to reclaim it. Game Info Publisher Simon and Schuster Developer The Collective Genre Action Origin U.S. Release Q1 2000 Every room on the Defiant is reproduced here in high detail. This Bajoran Science Vessel has a beautiful bridge, but it looks like no one's at the controls. Sisko might enjoy his brief visit to the Bajoran monastery...if the fate of the whole universe weren't resting on his shoulders.

The press pack gives just a little insight into the story. It picks up where the show left off. The Pah Wraiths, a race of super-powerful, oracular aliens, are coming back. From where, we don't know. What we do know is that the key to their power lies in three red orbs. The point of the game is finding the orbs before your enemies. If you succeed, all will be right in the universe. If you fail, well, let's just say that things won't be too pretty.

You play as one of three characters in the game—Sisko, Kira or Worf. The character voices are all done by the original actors from the show. You can progress through the campaigns as whichever of the three characters you choose. Richard promises that the campaigns will play out differently for each character. This is primarily a function of the different attributes that each characters has; Worf is more direct and confrontational, Kira is more stealthy and Sisko is sort of a compromise between the two. Additionally, each character will have two missions that are unique to their campaign.

The team really wanted to establish a sense of teamwork and parallel story development to the title. It should seem like the three campaigns add up to a larger single story. Within the context of the missions themselves, you'll have the opportunity to use an interesting NPC command system. Other characters will be present in the background and you can call on them to help you. For instance, on the station itself, you can communicate with O'Brien or the ship computer and have them reroute power to particular systems, or give you access to restricted areas. Richard really wants the player to feel like they're "working with a team."

The character animations are pretty sharp. The game is played, almost exclusively, from the third person perspective. This is for three reasons. First, fans of the show will get all goosey when they can see that they're running around as ol' Benny Sisko. Second, you get a real feel for the scale of the levels. And last, the third person view really highlights the neat character moves--rolls, climbing, and such.

One of the really amazing things added into this game is the speech animation. The Collective has obtained the use of a special technology that converts wav files into separate phonemes. Remember phonics? Then they created animations for each of the spoken sounds that the character makes. The result is that you can instantly translate any wav file into a pretty credible facial animation. The program can even give more or less emphasis based on the volume of the sound. Very cool.

There are three big disadvantages to third person views and it looks like DS9 will be able to work around them. The camera work is all well done. We didn't run into any of the clipping problems that usually occur in such games. Your character will also become semi-transparent if the camera moves too close to their back. But the biggest difficulty is in aiming. DS9 includes a reticle that shows you exactly where your shot will hit (or nearly) and there's a scope view for most of the weapons that you can treat a lot like a regular FPS.

There are more than ten weapons in the game representing Federation, Cardassian, Klingon and Jem'Hadar technologies. Most weapons also have a secondary fire option as well. The secondary fire from the phaser is worth mentioning. It acts more like a tool than a weapon. This weak beam is perfect for melting ice, short circuiting doors and opening locked chests.

Richard said that one of the benefits of using the Unreal tech is that it "allows you to build your worlds very quickly." There are over 30 separate environments in the game. Not only are the levels massively huge, they're also beautiful. In fact, one of the principal designers from Unreal heads up the team that's handling the levels for DS9.

Fans of the show will be very impressed with the work the level designers have done on the station itself. You can roam around huge areas of DS9, from the ops center to the power hub. More impressive is the Defiant design. All of the Defiant is included--engineering, sickbay, transporter, and so on. There is a greater sense of verticality in the game than you'll find in the show. Most of the ship sets in the show are a little too claustrophobic to make good game levels. The game includes all sorts of pipes, balconies and ladders so you can get a height advantage over your opponents.

Richard was only able to show us a few levels--the DS9, the Defiant and a Bajoran Monastery. Richard promises that there're lots more in the game. And you won't spend the majority of your time on the station either. Richard says, "Only 25 percent of the game takes place on the station. The rest are entirely new environments." In some cases the new levels are based on ideas from the show. The designers take a small set that appears for maybe five minutes in the show, then imagine a level "based on that aesthetic and sort of extrapolate."

Release is still seven months away, but it looks like the game is almost done. The only problem is that there are almost no other characters in the levels yet. Take a look at our screenshots. It looks like a remake of Omega Man. All told there are something like 60 characters in the game. The Collective has added a new race to the mix, the Grigari. These are metallic or "bio-analogous" aliens. Richard says that the main concept behind the Grigari is that the team "wanted a character good for blastin'."

There are also some pre-scripted vignettes to be added—which, if you remember my first paragraph, run through the engine itself. Another of the big challenges is keeping up with the updates to the Unreal engine. There's been a lot of redundancy. The guys at The Collective decided to add particle effects and decals to their engine. Once they were done, the got the latest Unreal upgrade, complete with particle effects and decals. Let that be a lesson to you. If you wait long enough, someone else will do it for you.

-- Stephen Butts