Real-time strategy hit a high point with Total Annihilation, but the creator, Chris Taylor left the genre behind to craft both Dungeon Siege games. Now that Taylor's creative legs have been stretched, strategy's superstar inventor is cooking up TA 's spiritual successor: Supreme Commander.
Since leaving the RTS scene, Taylor found that the industry firmly slipped into creating real-time tactical games. Or worse still: resource wars. "To bring strategy back, you need scope and scale," said Taylor to PC Gamer. "You need a Theater of War." Taylor brings it back with his generals-and-big-sticks-poking-figurines-around-a-map-of-Europe style strategy - just like war movies of the '50s. To accomplish this, Supreme Commander will incorporate a unique zoom ability that will let you direct your units from on high - you are the titular Supreme Commander, after all - giving you a satellite-type view, where units are merely small icons. Of course you can also zoom down onto the meat-grinder battlefield and watch stuff explode, but the real magic happens between the extremes.
Every battle has a different zoom level that is "just right." Ships at sea are platforms for ultra-long-range weapons and naturally operate at a much different level of scope than your ground-pounding tanks. Controls and interfaces are elegantly similar across all scenarios; you'll group and direct your forces the same way no matter how you observe them. Your Supreme Commander unit occupies the top of the food chain - a massive, walking, whoop-ass factory.
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