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Republic: The Revolution - Hands On Preview
Chris Leyton
22/08/2003
We finally get the chance to take Republic for a play-test and came away suitably impressed...
Isnāt it a cruel life, why do the games you look forward to always suffer from delays; itās been over four years since we first laid eyes upon āRepublic: The Revolutionā, with its fancy āinfinite polygonā graphics engine and intriguing storyline and settings.
Thankfully the wait is now over, Elixir Studios hyped PC strategy title is released towards the end of the month and weāve been putting a virtually finished build through its paces.
For those that havenāt been following the progress on āRepublicā, players take on the role of a political activist with a personal vendetta against the current regime in the fictional state of Novistrana ā“ a break-off republic of the former Soviet Union. A ruthless dictator, Vassily Karasov, rules the country with an iron fist; with seeds of discontent spreading throughout the nation, itās up to you to seize power and liberate the masses.
Essentially Republic is a political strategy title of the likes weāve never seen before, certainly the game plays quite unlike anything weāve ever experienced before and requires your utmost concentration to succeed.
Players begin the first mission in the little town of Eraliev; itās up to you to begin your faction in this town, bring others to your cause and increase your support amongst the populace.
The actual gameplay of Republic revolves around selecting different types of actions and placing these in a timespot on your scheduler. Each day is made up of three different time sections, each of which can be allotted an action. Naturally as other characters join your faction the amount of actions you can carry out increases.
The different types of actions available to you are based on the āideologyā concept that governs Republic: The Revolution; essentially all characters, locations and actions belong to either Force, Wealth or Influence. This works similarly to a game of āScissors, Paper, Stoneā where Force beats Influence, Wealth beats Force and Influence beats Wealth - hence a Force action such as āVandaliseā would work well in a district governed by Influence.
For the majority of actions you simply choose a character, choose an action and then a location, the game will then place this action in the next available time-slot. Certain actions require the locations to be secretive, so itās probably not the best idea to try and spray propaganda graffiti in a bustling shop-centre. To discover more locations in each district youāll have to ensure your information levels are kept high by carrying out such actions as Investigate, Survey or Canvas; not only do these reveal more āsecretiveā locations but also help to raise awareness of other factions actions in the district.
Certain actions allow the player to tweak the outcome, such as gearing a āCanvasā campaign towards capitalism or democracy. Other actions require you to have conversations with other characters; this is carried out by a little mini-game whereby you allocate points to four different conversation buttons and must play these against the other character ā“ score enough points and you win the conversation.
As you begin to muster up support you can move into other districts and begin to win over their support, however rival factions will do their best to de-credit you and your work. This is when the game begins to get really interesting, as you constantly have to work against other factions to decrease their support, whilst also winning over the districts population. Each district is geared towards one of the different ideologies, and as such your percentage of support will give you a certain amount of resources each day to spend on actions.
With every successful action carried out by your faction members their experience points will raise, allowing you to increase the effect of their actions and open up new ones; in total the game contains close to 200 different actions varying from Revelations to Assassinations, quite simply the epic scope of the game is enough to totally consume you.
Itās a concept that is excruciatingly detailed and took us a number of plays to simply get the notion in our heads, to be fair itās likely that only die-hard strategy fans weāll have the perseverance to stick with it, however those with perseverance will be rewarded. At times Republic plays more like a strategy board-game akin to Chess or Go, itās the constant attack/defend mechanic that lends this feel and will certainly appeal to fans of these games alongside those who like the political orientation.
Thankfully each stage contains a number of fixed objectives to push you through the game and progress the story. Although itās highly likely youāll still find yourself without any direction at times, carefully paying heed to these will quickly get you back on track.
In the first years of development itās fair to say that Republic was no more then a tech-demo of Elixir Studios impressive āinfinite-polygonā engine; this has since been renamed to the āTotalityā engine after complaints that the term infinite was impossible. Unfortunately the years in development have lessened the immediate wow factor slightly especially in terms of lighting effects, however Republic is still a majestic title in the visual department; the towns that the missions take place in are large affairs but detailed down to the smallest detail such as individual petals on flowers in a window box.
Certainly the visuals during the cut-scenes that greet every action look wonderful in motion, with a wide range of convincing animation and good camera work to heighten the cinematic sensation.
