Starhawk, Lightbox Interactive’s spiritual follow-up to the popular online only title Warhawk, will feature a single-player crusade that should last somewhere from five to eight hours. The story will revolve around the character Emmett Graves as he embarks on a vendetta to find his brother who has become the leader of the enemy faction, the Outcast. Formerly humans, the Outcast were deformed and mutated by Rift Energy and it is these creatures you must fight in Starhawk’s massive levels designed to force the player to forge their own path to victory as the enemy A.I. quickly adapts to block their every move.
When the notion that the length of the story mode – though in line with recent industry standards for the genre – may be too short arose in a recent interview with Eurogamer, LightBox Interactive President Dylan Jobe had the following to say to set his new project apart:
For ours, all the missions you play through, you can play through again and get a very different experience. You can build different structures next time through. You can unlock different medals and challenge yourself in those combat sandboxes in a different way. You can get a lot of gameplay out of it.
The ability to build structures, as referenced by Jobe, is a part of Starhawk‘s new “Build and Battle” feature. This additional gameplay mechanic will see players earning Rift Energy through defeating other players and A.I. enemies. Rift Energy which may then be spent on adding strategic elements to the field of battle such as supply depots, barriers, various turrets and more. This new RTS styled mechanic has split opinion among some fans but the real star of the show is again set to be multiplayer. LightBox expects the average players time spent in online multiplayer to far exceed that of the single-player mode and as such is maintaining a heavy focus on the development of online play. On average, gamers spent an incredible 210 hours playing Warhawk.
Starhawk is expected to offer E3 attendee’s their first chance to go hands-on with a playable version of the game next month so stay tuned to PlayStation LifeStyle as we report live from the floor.
