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To me, Stormrise seems to be a game that was designed entirely around its interface, and some of the results are quite interesting when you consider what typefies the RTS genre - even those that have made it to console games. The concept is basically, "design a control scheme that allows a player to manage an RTS style battlefield from the frontlines of the battle, and lets them to do it using a console's standard controller." The game that evolved from this baseline looks and controls uniquely enough that Creative Assembly and Sega also plan on moving it to the PC after the initial console releases, so the meat of the game seems to be deeper than JUST the control system!

The first point of Stormrise is that you will control your forces unit by unit. A unit can be as simple as a scout, as powerful as an armored tank, or as complex as a battalion of 40 infantry soldiers ... they're all handled in basically the same way. You select the unit you want to work with using a "whip" mechanism. This means that on a console controller you'll flick a thumbstick in a particular direction, and your focus will jump to the next unit in that direction. Alternately, you can HOLD the thumbstick in a particular direction, and release it when the camera is indicating the exact unit that you want. This lets you make, for example, a "double" jump in a given direction with a single press instead of two "flicks" on your controller.

The next major point in Stormwatch is that your units aren't typically under direct control. You won't micro-manage your firing patterns in Stormwatch - instead you'll work with "playbooks." The simplest way to think of a playbook is as a military doctrine. Given units will have a wide combination of formations, firing disciplines, and cover behaviors, and a "play" is one combinatoric possibility within that range (with the "playbook" being all available combinations). Do you want your infantry to advance to a given spot, in a direct line, using a crescent formation, and ignoring all incoming fire from any enemies that they chance upon? Select the right play, point your unit in the right direction, and off they go.

Now - the key combination of these first two points is what REALLY drives Stormrise! Notice that in the first paragraph I talked about the player's focus, and how it was centered on whatever unit the player was controlling. When you combine that with the schema for giving orders (go here, and do it like this...), you begin to realize just how important scouting and visibility is in Stormrise. If your camera is centered on your infantry, and you want to move them around a building into cover on the far side of that building, you'd better have a way to accurately convey that order. It's not as easy as scrolling the map a bit and clicking over yonder (though you CAN use your 3d wireframe map if you've scouted an area)! This makes high ground and well placed scouting units very valuable, as they allow you to "control" the battlefield quickly and carefully, with a minimum of order repetition. Hold on, though - that might sound tedious. Are you telling me that if I don't have "eyes" on a section of ground that I've fairly well secured, I can't give orders to cross that ground without running scouts around? Thankfully, that's not the case. The control scheme allows a number of actions that mimic appropriate intelligence, including "join this unit." All you have to do is choose a playbook for a unit in your battleground's backfield, and order it to move up and join someone at the front. It will decide the best way to go about it, and handle the particulars of all that intervening territory for you. This blend of "required intelligence" and "artificial intelligence" seems to average nicely, and allows smart commanders some legitimate strategic advantages while not being downright annoying and picky about visibility and ground control.

Lastly, we got a selection of impressions and factoids that are naturally of interest to fans of the genre. There will be three factions (Psi, Echelon, and your generic "humans"), each having infantry units, armored vehicles or beasts, and a basic air force unit. Each of THESE will be available in three flavors: standard, armored up, and elite butt-kicker. This makes for a total of 9 units in each faction, so the theorycrafting in Stormrise will probably be fairly light! The "currency" in the game is power/energy, and gathering it is as simple as ordering the appropriate unit to build a reactor on a power node. The game can handle multiplayer up to 8 participants, and the maximum team size is four. One thing that intrigues me is "join on the fly" play - a gimmick previously restricted to the FPS genre. I'm a little unclear on the details, but the devs seem very confident that it will be a grand feature; I certainly hope they're correct as that's kind of a wild idea. Factions can mix freely in multiplayer, so you have no restrictions there if you happen to like a different warband than your friends.

Stormrise is, at heart, an RTS. If that style of game isn't your thing, then no amount of "unique" will make you want this title. What it CAN offer is a change of pace for people who enjoy RTS challenges, and aren't afraid of a different look than your typical "top-down, drag a box over some units and give them some instructions until they hit a fight, then manage the battle as individually as you can" offerings. Look for Stormwatch in early 2009 on XBox 360 and PS3, with the PC version following shortly thereafter.