Oxide Games Announces Ashes of the Singularity as the most "Advanced RTS" Game Yet

A few days ago at GDC, the gaming industry got to view the next big thing when it comes to RTS gaming and since I am a HUGE RTS gamer myself having grown up playing Command & Conquer among other RTS titles, I have to say this interested me quite a bit...

The game in question? Ashes of the Singularity. It uses the brand new and quite advanced "Nitrous engine" for graphics. It's a real time strategy game that has an immense scale in which even the smallest units have their own diverse and independent weapon systems. Thousands of these units all fight independently on the battle field. The biggest thing noticed is that the focus is not on a certain group of units in a battle but more-so the large-scale war across multiple battle fields at once.



Dan Baker, the Graphics Architect had this to say about that and the game engine;

"The scale of Ashes required us to create a new type of 3D engine, we wanted to make a game that didn't just depict a battle but an entire war in real time, with thousands of independent units acting simultaneously."

The game offers a robust multiplayer setup full with league structure, leadboards, stats and other features along with an "epic" single player campaign mode that tells the story of the Singularity and the complications arising from humanity's evolution away from their physical form.

And speaking of story, here's more on that;

Humanity has shed its mortal skin and evolved into beings of pure consciousness but the Singularity is a thing of the past and the future of human existence is now being threatened. Most post-humans now wield godlike power yet they find themselves at war for the domination of the Milky Way galaxy as well as many more galaxies with the Haalee, a sentient AI who is determined to save the universe from post-human predation.

Brad Wardell, President & CEO of Stardock had this to say about the story;

"In Ashes of the Singularity, players can take command of the forces of either the post-humans or those of Haalee, this is a galaxy-wide struggle in which each 'battle' wages across the surface of an entire planet. The scope of the conflict is unlike anything players have seen before."

This game does sound pretty incredible, possibly an uber version of Supreme Commander as I always found that game to be pretty massive in scale. I also wonder how much it will differ from a game like Planetary Annihilation? Hopefully a good bit as it left something to be desired. Universim also comes to mind as a similar game yet not as graphically advanced it would appear. With that said, be sure to stay tuned to the site as we'll probably be doing a preview on this game in the near future.

For now, have a look at a video demonstration of the game in action;