One of the core gameplay elements of the RTS, is that it's in fifth person, or seventh – essentially, up in the sky looking down. You tend to have a HUD with extra information on it and there might be some advisory character in the corner telling you what a mess you're making of things. However, that's not what Flagship does. Putting you in the first person perspective, aboard your very own starship, you control your forces on a 2D display in the middle of your command deck and then watch the battle play out, right through your window.
The best bit too, is that it's being built with native VR support. That's doubly exciting for Rift users, who have seen several developers pushing games like Star Citizen or Eve Valkyrie, and while they too look exciting, they're all a bit similar: space dogfights. Flagship offers a different gameplay mechanic, whilst giving you the best seat in the house to watch it unfold. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVr98bTzxH8′]
It's not just a single or multiplayer arena battler either. Flagship, when released, willl have a full story driven campaign that sees you taking on alien foes and battling your way across the galaxy, expanding your territory and making real strategic decisions, alongside the tactical ones in-battle.
Essentially ladies and gents, we're looking at our first real VR attempt at recreating Ender's Game.
The art in the above trailer is placeholder pre-alpha for now, so it's not the best looker out there, but it sets a great proof of concept, giving the developers at Urban Logic Games a lot to live up to.
The game's development is still in the early stages, but the guys behind it have put a rough estimate for release as sometime in 2015.
KitGuru Says: Now this is really exciting. I want to see more VR strategy games, it's a great platform for it, as it works so well in a cockpit setting.