E3 2001 First ImpressionRepublic: The Revolution

On the last day of E3, we had a private one-on-one meeting with Demis Hassabis, founder of UK-based Elixir Studios and designer of its first game, Republic: The Revolution. Last year, Hassabis introduced the extremely ambitious ideas behind the game--one of which lets you aspire to become the leader of a small Eastern European nation by being able to individually influence any of its unique inhabitants. You're able to rise to power using politics, military power, religion, crime, and more. Judging from this sort of scope and the fact that Republic was announced only a year ago, it's no surprise that Republic won't be available until next year. However, the game has come along very far in the last 12 months. We had a chance to see the game engine in action, and, more importantly, the game itself being played.

The most surprising aspect of the game is that it actually borrows some of the best elements from The Sims--only it has a serious theme. Each individual citizen in Republic exists within the gameworld as a highly detailed 3D character. You can see each individual's unique facial features and can distinguish little details. For example, you can see some characters smoking cigarettes--and you can even zoom all the way in and actually see the cigarette butt when the character pauses between drags. Hopefully, the final version of the game will allow for more animation of the characters' faces--as it is, the faces are very detailed but static. However, already, the characters are fluidly and realistically animated. They're as articulate as the characters in The Sims.

Of course, the game itself is much different from The Sims. Republic takes place in the early '90s in the fictitious nation of Novistrana, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. Novistrana is made up of a beautiful capital city, four major cities, and 16 smaller towns. You have a floating, disembodied vantage point over any of these, which is reminiscent of the godlike perspective in Black & White. Only, in Republic, you're no god. It'll actually cost you money to travel from city to city.

Republic will share the elegant simplicity of The Sims' interface. It also has an interesting resource model. The game has three actual resources--force, money, and influence. These are literally quantified, and you earn each of them by affiliating yourself with people who have particular qualities. For instance, if you're friends with a boxer, you'll gain force--and you can later "spend" it if you want the boxer to go rough someone up for you. The three resources counterbalance one another, letting you concentrate on different types of approaches as you see fit.

You use resources to compel your allies to perform actions, such intimidating someone, giving speeches, inciting riots, bribing people, and so forth. You can be moral or immoral as you see fit, and you'll have to deal with the consequences of your approach no matter what. Your past actions may even come back to haunt you. The game will let you perform about 250 different actions. These will play out differently, depending on the characters involved and their particular skills, and you can even tweak actions. For instance, you can have the boxer go easy on someone or have him rough someone up real good. The sheer variety of things you can do in Republic is extremely impressive.

Actions in Republic play out like scenes of social interaction in The Sims. Republic even uses gibberish reminiscent of the hilarious gibberish in the Maxis game, only it sounds graver. We saw a sequence with an ex-boxer bullying an old priest, and the gibberish convincingly portrayed the interaction.

Republic shows a lot of promise. We'll have more details on it very soon.