In 2090, tectonic weaponry is developed in California. A few years later genetically engineered humans come about, given the novel moniker of humanity 2.0. Unfortunately they start to mutate, so genetic tech is banned in the east at least, and scientists flee to the west, to California, land of the ever-liberal devils, where their research is still allowed. At the same time, because of global warming and a mankind's general wastefulness, the middle sections of the United States become entirely flooded with ocean, isolating the east and west.
Eventually the eastern remnants of the United States align with what's left of Europe to become the Atlantic Alliance, who feel it's fine to dabble in cybernetics research but avoid genetic tampering. The west, on the other hand, embraces all kinds of tweaks to the double-helix, and aligns with what's left of Asia to form Pacifica.
Enter Jet Brody, the newly imagined lead character for Lucasarts' and Day 1's Fracture. He comes from the submerged middle of the United States where he roamed around in gangs, but was eventually picked up and employed by Colonel Lawrence of the eastern states' military. He'll then go on to fight Pacificans in the ensuing battle that occurs over genetic technology. It seems initially the east attacked the west, but the reasons for such an attack were a little vague. Apparently not all Pacificans are evil, just a splinter faction Lucasarts wasn't willing to reveal many details about.
And while there seems to be plenty of story elements in the game, or at least a significant amount of backstory for an action game, the real hook of Fracture is terrain deformation. With grenades, explosive guns, and a special tool called an entrencher you'll run around altering the height of the landscape at will. During the demo of several levels we saw at CES, Lucasarts showed off quite a few methods for how this kind of gameplay is being implemented.
Things started off with Jet Brody stuck in the dried-out basin of San Francisco Bay. In the distance a gloomy Golden Gate bridge loomed in front of a bright yellow sky, and banks of sand and rock thrust upwards on all sides, interspersed with bits of metal. Jet himself is decked out in metallic armor will lots of flashy looking glowing bits, looking something like a UT3 character model.
It just so happens that the dastardly Pacificans have entrenched themselves in the bay's banks as well, having built bunkers and AA batteries. The objective for this part of the mission was to disable the guns so your buddies could make a landing. At this point we were shown tectonic grenades, which cause little islands of land they detonate on to spring upwards and form little hills, and subsonic grenades, which forces terrain to sink. Your entrencher performs a similar function, capable of being toggled to raise or lower the terrain.
It's important to note that your entrencher isn't actually a weapon you have to switch to – it can be used right alongside the sizable arsenal Jet eventually gets access to, a result of the fire commands for weapons and entrencher being on different buttons. Terrain deformation did appear to have a significant impact on combat, as raising terrain creates instant cover for your character. As enemies fire at the newly created mound, it seemed to slowly return to its original state, but that can quickly be changed with another few jolts from the entrencher or another grenade. Some foes will have terrain altering abilities of their own, creating cover and reacting dynamically to how the battlefield changes. We were told programming the AI to adjust to newly generated cover and the like has proven to be one of the more challenging aspects of the project. Of course if you don't want to bother with fiddling with the environment you can always just shoot enemies in the face, but it seemed far more entertaining to toy around with the land.
After taking out a few foes on a hillside Jet approached a bunker, but with no real point of entry. No problem, just create a new one. Using the entrencher Jet was able to tunnel under one of the concrete walls to gain access, blast through a few corridors of Pacificans, and find the first AA gun. The thing was impervious to standard weapons fire, so yet again Jet had to rely on his entrencher to advance. There are types of terrain (metal walls, for example) that aren't susceptible to deformation effects, but the AA gun happened to be sitting on dirt, which was definitely able to be manipulated. By blasting the land under the gun, it rose up and collided with a force field that protected it from incoming fire. Unfortunately for the gun, contact with its once defensive shell destroyed it entirely. A second AA gun was also taken out in this fashion.Continues