Fracture shakes up Xbox 360 and PS3 @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on May 03, 2007

News: The return of destructible environments.

LucasArts has announced they've teamed up with Day 1 Studios to create a new franchise that attempts to bring fully destructible environments to the Xbox 360 and PS3.

The game will be titled Fracture and it will tell the story of a future American Civil War between the Atlantic Alliance and Pacifica. You see, the country has been split in half by a massive flood and this destruction to the environment will be a key feature of the gameplay.

Here's what LucasArts has to say about the story and the game:

Reshape the battlefield Ц and the fate Ц of a broken nation in Fracture, the new IP from LucasArts and Day 1 Studios. УGroundbreakingФ in more ways than one, this 2008 blockbuster utilizes technology only possible on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Amidst a backdrop of worldwide ecological and seismological chaos in the mid-2100s, the United States has been split in two by the УGreat FloodФ. As a result of the polar ice cap melting, the Mississippi River has destroyed the central portion of the United States, causing an ill-equipped Federal Government to fail and literally cutting the country in half. These two halves are left to fend for themselves in the aftermath.

The East, now known as the Atlantic Alliance, symbolic of their union with Europe, puts its faith in surviving this new world in cybernetics, an established yet evolving technology now more than 150 years old. On the other side of the flooded continent, the Western states, now called the Republic of Pacifica and having allied with Asia, resort to solving their problems at the genetic level, effectively restructuring the DNA of its inhabitants Ц a method the Atlantic Alliance finds morally reprehensible.

By 2161, it only takes a hint of unauthorized military preparation in Pacifica for the newly restored president to order a strike in the heart of Pacifican territory - an outpost in the now dry San Francisco Bay. This strike leads to the unthinkable: an epic conflict with global implications fought on U.S. soil. As a soldier in this struggle, Mason Briggs uses explosive, terrain-deforming weaponry to change the face of battle: He not only destroys the land in his path, he outright transforms it to gain the strategic advantage in completely unscripted ways no game has ever seen. With such a devastating arsenal at hand, Briggs never leaves any battlefield the way he found it.

In addition to extraordinary weaponry that allows players to do things previously only imagined, each side of the conflict, Pacifica and the Atlantic Alliance, boast soldiers with powers beyond those of ordinary men. Genetic augmentations provide Pacifican forces with amazing abilities, while Atlantic Alliance soldiers like Briggs counter the threat with the more УtraditionalФ method: cybernetics. The differing states of superhumanity result in balanced yet stylistically different combat tactics that have never been seen before.

Features

Truly next-generation gameplay Ц Groundbreaking terrain deformation allows players to reshape the battlefield on the fly with futuristic weaponry of the year 2161, allowing for unprecedented power, freedom and control.

All new story and characters from the company that brought you Star Wars and Indiana Jones, as well as Mercenaries and Thrillville Ц Players assume the role of Mason Briggs, a demolitions expert in the mighty Atlantic Alliance army and the next great action hero.

Plausible future conflict Ц As stem cell research continues to proliferate and spirals out of control, ideological differences over genetic enhancement place the player at the threshold of an epic battle of tomorrow between genetics vs. cybernetics as two powerful armies, with vastly differing tactics and advantages, square off. The battlefield will change forever.

Fracture is currently scheduled to ship in Summer 2008 and we'll have more soon.