Genre: Turn Based Strategy
Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive
Developer: Kerberos Productions
Release Date: May 2007

It is not unreasonable to claim that every great story is made truly memorable by the villains that drive the conflict in the tale itself. This is especially true for games. What would Diablo have been without the hulking red guy at the end? Would Starcraft have shone as brightly without the Zerg? Where would every WWII game ever made be without the dreaded countenance of Nazi Germany? Contrary to this basic truth of storytelling, there seems to have been a recent shift toward moral ambiguity in the protagonist/antagonist structure. This is especially true of World of Warcraft, where the good guys are often bad guys and the bad guys aren't really bad, they're just tragically misunderstood. One could argue that this was the case in Sword of the Stars, where many of the actions of the "evil" races were really just perspective-judgments. Race "A" goes to extremes to survive, and anyone who gets caught in the wheels of this process then sees that race as the bad guys. Well the developers of this game, Kerberos Productions, have decided to eliminate this grey area and provide a classic enemy that will never be mistaken as glamorous anti-heroes. When you're Born of Blood, there can be little doubt as to your genetic motivation.

In a nutshell, Born of Blood will be the first content expansion for Sword of the Stars. Its most notable feature will be the new race it introduces to the franchise universe, the Zuul. As you will soon see, most of this preview will center on these guys; they're interesting enough to warrant the attention. There are some other new additions, however, so don't feel that your loyalty to the Hiver/Humans/Liir/Tarkas will punish you with no new toys. There's a little something for everyone.

So without any further ado, I give you: The Zuul! You may remember them as the "slavers" random encounter in Sword of the Stars. They've come into their own with ferocious zeal, attacking everything that moves and growing more powerful in the process. Let me state this as plainly as possible: There is no mistaking the intentions of the Zuul! They are inimical to life, period. Their warped cultural heritage is centered on their god abandoning them, and they want to find out where it went so they can exact some form of spiritual vengeance. This leaves exactly zero room for empathy, pity, sympathy, kindness, weakness, or even technological development. They are out to kill, and anyone or anything in the way is just practice and a source for more materials.

The Zuul are so savage that they don't really have time or patience for the research and development stage of a sentient race's growth. Instead, they rely on brute force and theft to gain technology and materials. This is not to say that the Zuul are mindless; they just see it as easier to crush the enemy and take anything useful from the defeated foe. As a result, their ships have a jagged, controlled-chaos appearance. Eerily, they also tend to be a scorched, rusted-out condition that looks uncomfortably like blood. In many cases, it might actually be blood: Zuul Deardnaught class starships use the skulls of Liir Ancients as part of the forward hull.

Like all of the basic races in Sword of the Stars, the Zuul have their own approach to faster-than-light travel. Like the humans, the Zuul use node-warp, but the difference is that, while the humans seek out natural node-tunnels between the stars, the Zuul crudely carve out their own, which has its pros and cons. The main advantage is that they can more directly travel to where they want to go, but the main disadvantage is that these are unstable constructs that decay and collapse over time unless they are maintained. Interestingly, the Zuul are the only race to use their FTL methodology as a weapon type. In combat, they can open node-rifts directly in front of an enemy craft. The end result is disastrous for the opponent: Hiver, Liir, and Tarkas hull structures aren't designed for node-travel, and it doesn't take long for their ships to be ripped apart. Human craft can handle the effect without damage, but because they have no control over the nodes, they are still forced to travel the distance to wherever that particular node will take them. In any case, this Zuul trick is ruthlessly effective.

The Zuul also use slavery as a weapon. They can send massive harvester disks to the surface of a planet, soak up a percentage of the population, and make off with them to do whatever work they wish, wherever they wish. One of the more devious tactics one may employ with the Zuul is to hit a home system, raid the main planet of its populace, glass the planet itself, then send its people back down as slave labor on their own home world.

OK OK, enough with the Zuul for the moment. I did say there were other features coming as well, so how about I cover some of them? Two things that immediately caught my attention were the graphical flourishes and the voice acting. Kerberos has decided to throw in some small visual embellishments, courtesy of galactic "noise." There are some nebula gas effects present that, while minor, help make the 3-D starmap look like more than just a mass of floating Skittles. I don't really know why, but this stood out to me. As for the voice acting, it's really more a question of the vocal effects used for the Zuul phrases. In this case, it's as inhuman as inhuman gets, without losing its coherency. I think that fans will approve of the synthesized menace.

There are also some greatly improved tactical options, like a modular communication system reminiscent of the "hotkey+hotkey=phrase" system that Tribes had. What Kerberos is aiming at here is mechanically similar, but covers almost all the possible ground you could ever hope for. With Born of Blood, you'll be able to query your allies on almost every level; combat, diplomacy, and trade are all covered. You can taunt your enemies as well. This system will be employed by the A.I. as well, so you can effectively chat with the CPU. Can it pass the Turing Test? Probably not, but it's still a solid and utilitarian feature.

Also, I was shown a new tactical display that shows your empire, your allies' empire(s), and your enemies' empire in amorphous-colored blobs. It's extremely handy to quick-view the potential challenge you're up against should you decide to puncture into enemy territory. Simply put, if your enemy is red and you open up this view screen and see over half the galaxy is a red cloud, then there's a pretty good chance you're up for quite a fight. My words don't do justice to the utilitarian benefit of this view, but trust me when I say it's probably going to see a great deal of use amongst tacticians.

Kerberos has whipped up some new pre-made galaxy models too, including a flat-plane 2-D map. Think of it as an olive-branch offering to those people who never could warm up to the 3-D maps that were a defining element in Sword of the Stars. Along with these new maps are some new sandbox tools that give a player greater control over their games, like a planet size slider bar and population density controls.

Finally, all of the races get some new weapon and hull options, like the "acid cloud" missiles that bathe an area in armor-eating nanites, or the Gatling-cannon energy weapons that build on the idea of "more is better." Why have one energy cannon when you can duct-tape three of them together and fire them in rapid succession? Culturally, the Zuul like these a great deal. There is also an impressive new hull option called the Plasma Projector, which hurls a massive area-of-effect spray of super-heated plasma. Its recharge is slow, but when you're dealing with the interstellar battleship equivalent of a shotgun, one blast is usually all you need.

My time at the Kerberos offices was brief, and there is much I saw that I couldn't fit into this preview, like the deeper cultural details of the Zuul. Arinn Dembo (Sword of the Stars, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura) has outdone herself in her mythology of these brutal new bad guys. Overall, I think that Born of Blood will please Sword of the Stars fans, and it should even be strong enough to pull in new players who missed the ship the first time around. If the greatness of a story is directly proportionate to the depravity of its villain, then Born of Blood is set to turn yet another tired 4X cliché (the "evil race") on its head with a level of thought, detail and passion rarely seen in this genre.