12 JULY 2006
DESIGNER DIARY #2 - IMPROVING THE GAME

Star Wars: Empire at War made quite an impression on gamers when it shipped earlier this year. This real-time strategy game is set during the classic Star Wars movie trilogy, when the Rebel Alliance fought the Galactic Empire. Empire at War features both ground and space battles. You send fleets to battle for space superiority over a planet and then dispatch ground forces to seize the planet itself.
The expansion won't just introduce a bunch of new vehicles for each of the two existing factions, however. It will also introduce a brand-new third faction--the Underworld--which is made up of the seedier element of the Star Wars movies, made famous by smugglers and crime bosses such as Jabba the Hutt.

This new faction isn't a mirror of the existing Rebel and Imperial factions, either; it plays in a completely new way. For more on all the changes in the expansion, we turned to Joe Bostic, director of game design at Petroglyph.
DIARY #2