Precursors (video game)

Plot

The player takes the role of a young pilot of the humanoid Amarn race who is fresh from the academy, where he had a strange virtual reality exam experience, which made him being sent to the single Amarn colony planet Goldin to serve his people. On this outback desert planet he is taken under the command of Captain Ridiger, who was a friend of his late father and who also offers him the old spaceship that his father left him, provided he can find a power cell for it, that was stolen by bandits.

After some missions for Ridiger, the civilians and/or the bandits on Goldin the player can acquire the missing power cell and Captain Ridiger will present him his father's spaceship. Several space missions for the Amarn government follow before a catastrophe sends the player on a more critical quest away from Goldin. First he needs to go to the forest planet of Gli, where alien birds called the Clatz are fighting among themselves while being manipulated by the Democratic Union, and then to the rocky moon Reandore, where the Empire and the Free Traders are in the midst of a small war.

The Precursors themselves were an ancient and mythical race that disappeared a long time ago leaving strange high-tech pyramid artifacts behind on many astral bodies, such as Goldin and Reandore. While on the former a simple religious cult developed around the Precursors pyramid, on the latter an Imperial lab tries to unlock its secrets, which is the final target of the player in the game.

Gameplay

While not having a direct connection to Boiling Point: Road to Hell and White Gold: War in Paradise, The Precursors retains similarities to the atmosphere and gameplay mechanics, and the mixture of RPG elements and FPS combat. Players will enjoy a free-roaming world, with vast open areas, diverse weapons and a multitude of land, air and space vehicles. The player will be able to do a multitude of missions on six different planets or moons and even the interior of spaceships and space stations. He will have many different vehicles to use in engagements on the ground ranging from simple buggies and flyers to hover tanks and mechanical robots. After getting a spaceship he will also be able to engage in space trade and combat with other factions in between the planetary missions. The player's spaceship can be upgraded throughout the game and the player character himself developed using a perk system. Such features will diversify the ways in which the players can customize and improve their character, and give them more freedom to personalize the game experience to their own desires.

Factions

There are six main factions in the game. Two being aliens and the rest representing various humanoid factions which are split into separate alliances that are usually fighting each other. Among these factions are the Empire, the Democratic Union, the Free Traders, the Clatz of the Nest, the revolutionary Clatz, the bandits and the civilians.

History

The Precursors has been in development for PC and Xbox 360 from Kiev-based developer Deep Shadows. The game was built based on Deep Shadows in-house game engine Vital Engine 3 which also powers White Gold: War in Paradise. The game was first demonstrated in August 2005 at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany and at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles in May 2006.

The Precursors was released on the 4 December 2009 as retail for the PC in Russia. In May 2010, a spokesperson from Deep Shadows confirmed that the console version of the game has been put "on hold" indefinitely. In December 2010, an English version was made available via digital distribution by GamersGate.

After the end of official support by Deep Shadows, remaining bugs and issues, like the missing voice overs in the localized English version, were fixed by the game community via unofficial patches which also form the base of and are included in the current English digital distribution versions of the game.