[Review] StarCraft: Ghost

[Lunix I]

StarCraft: Ghost is an unreleased military science fiction stealth-action video game previously under development by Blizzard Entertainment. Part of Blizzard's StarCraft series, the game was announced on September 20, 2002, and was to be developed by Nihilistic Software for the Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 video game consoles. Several delays in development caused Blizzard to move back the release date and the game has not yet materialized. Nihilistic Software ceded development to Swingin' Ape Studios in 2004 before Blizzard bought the company, and plans for the GameCube version were cancelled in 2005.

Blizzard announced in March 2006 that the game was put on "indefinite hold" while the company investigated seventh generation video game console possibilities. Subsequent public statements from company personnel had been contradictory about whether production was to be renewed or planned story elements worked into other products. The continued delay of Ghost had caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was ranked fifth in Wired News' annual Vaporware Awards in 2005. In 2014, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that Ghost was officially cancelled.

Unlike its real-time strategy predecessor StarCraft, Ghost was to be a third-person shooter, and intended to give players a closer and more personal view of the StarCraft universe. Following Nova, a Terran psychic espionage operative called a "ghost", the game would have been set four years after the conclusion of StarCraft: Brood War and cover a conspiracy about a secretive military project conducted by Nova's superiors in the imperial Terran Dominion. Very little of the game's storyline has been released; however, in November 2006 after the game's postponement, a novel was published called StarCraft Ghost: Nova, which covers the backstory of the central character.

During StarCraft: Ghost's gameplay, the player's character Nova must use stealth and darkness to reach objectives and remain undetected. Nova has a cloaking device that allows for temporary concealment, but certain hostile non-player characters can overcome this with special devices and abilities.[1] Nova is also equipped with thermal imaging goggles and a special EMP device for disabling electronic devices and vehicles.

In addition to the focus on stealth elements, StarCraft: Ghost includes a complex combat system. Blizzard planned to include a small arsenal of weaponry with assault and sniper rifles, grenades, shotguns, and flamethrowers. Nova can engage in hand-to-hand combat and uses these skills to eliminate enemy threats quietly. If alerted, enemy characters will hunt for the player, set up traps, and fire blindly to nullify Nova's cloaking device.

Nova is highly agile, acrobatic, and able to perform maneuvers such as mantling and climbing ledges, hanging from pipes, and sliding down ziplines. The player has access to Nova's psionic powers honed through training as a ghost agent, such as the ability to improve her speed and reflexes drasticall. StarCraft: Ghost includes many of the vehicle units featured in StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War. Some vehicles, such as space battlecruisers and starfighters, only play support roles, while others, such as hoverbikes, scout cars, and futuristic siege tanks, can be piloted by the player.

The multiplayer mode in StarCraft: Ghost differs from the stealth-based mechanics of the single-player portion. It aims to give players a personal view of the battles from the real-time strategy games of the series. Accordingly, Ghost's multiplayer is structured around class-based team gameplay and fighting in a variety of game modes. Ghost incorporates traditional game modes from multiplayer video games such as deathmatch, capture the flag, and king of the hill, but also introduces two game modes specifically designed for the StarCraft universe. The first is "Mobile Conflict", which requires two teams to fight for control of a single Terran military factory with the ability of atmospheric flight.

Using vehicles and team tactics, both teams must first board the structure and then capture its control room to fly it to the team's starting point. The structure must then land and be defended from capture by the opposing team for a set amount of time.

Ghost takes place in the fictional universe of the StarCraft series. The series is set in a distant part of the galaxy called the Koprulu Sector and begins in the year 2499. Terran exiles from Earth are governed by a totalitarian empire, the Terran Dominion, that is opposed by several smaller rebel groups. Two alien races discover humanity: the insectoid Zerg, who begin to invade planets controlled by the Terrans; and the Protoss, an enigmatic race with strong psionic power that attempt to eradicate the Zerg. Ghost takes place four years after the conclusion of StarCraft: Brood War, in which the Zerg become the dominant power in the sector and leave both the Protoss and the Dominion in ruins. The game follows the story of Nova, a young ghost agent—a human espionage operative with psychic abilities—in the employ of the Dominion.

Although the game has been indefinitely postponed, the backstory for Nova was released in the novel StarCraft Ghost: Nova by Keith R. A. DeCandido. It was meant to accompany the game's release, but was published in 2006 after development halted. In the novel, Nova is a fifteen-year-old girl and daughter to one of the ruling families of the Confederacy of Man, an oppressive government featured in StarCraft. The Confederacy is overthrown by rebels, who go on to form the Dominion. Nova has significant psionic potential, but has been kept out of the Confederate ghost operative training program because of her father's influence. After her family is murdered by rebels, Nova loses control of her mental abilities and accidentally kills 300 people around her home. She flees from her home before she is caught, and is later forced to work for an organized crime boss as an enforcer and executioner.

She is rescued by a Confederate agent who is investigating her disappearance during a rebel attack on the Confederate capital that leads to the Confederacy's destruction. Nova is consequently acquired by the newly formed Terran Dominion, who erase her memory and train her as a ghost agent.