I hate what a cliche of cynical games journalism that headline is, but it really is the most accurate thing to say about the situation.
Stormgate — the early access multiplayer RTS inspired by StarCraft II — recently launched its 0.4.0 update, with the headline feature being a complete redo of its much maligned story campaign. The new campaign is actually pretty good, but it’s hard not to worry that this it comes too late to reverse Stormgate‘s fortunes.
It’s important to be clear how big of a change this is. Frost Giant Studios didn’t revamp the campaign. They threw it out and rebuilt a new campaign from scratch. Only small elements of the original campaign remain, like relics of a lost civilization.
The inciting incident (and associated cinematic) are the same: Scientists experimenting on an alien relic opened a Stormgate, and the Infernal Host flooded through to bathe the Earth in fire. But pretty much everything past that is different.
The human Vanguard faction is no longer depicted as a group of rebels surviving in the wastes of Earth’s fallen civilization. Instead, it’s reimagined as a group who escaped Earth’s destruction to settle elsewhere in the solar system. The campaign now depicts their first expedition back to Earth in the hopes of reclaiming the homeworld.
I think this is a good change on multiple levels. The pristine, high-tech aesthetic of Vanguard units and buildings makes a lot more sense now that they’re not supposed to be rebels living off scraps. It also provides a very natural way to introduce Stormgate‘s setting; the characters are learning what has become of Earth right alongside the players.
Amara Nassar is still the main character, and still really hates the Infernals for killing her dad (that and the whole omnicide thing), but she’s been softened a bit and is now also kind to her friends and generally a more well-rounded and sympathetic person. She’s also no longer the team leader but a lieutenant under Blockade, which makes sense given his greater age and mentor role within the story.
The gameplay has been rebooted along with the story. I’ve still played only the free missions, but I can say those, at least, are better than their predecessors in the original campaign. The new missions aren’t groundbreaking, but they do have better pacing and more interesting mechanics.
In between missions, there are now interludes where you can wander around your ship and talk to NPCs, Mass Effect style. There’s also a new visual novel style dialogue system that allows them to add a lot more chatter without (I assume) the expenditure of cut scenes. Helps flesh out the characters.
There’s also now a lot more progression across missions. In this Stormgate once again decides to borrow from multiple Blizzard RTS games. You can spend credits to permanently upgrade units like in Wings of Liberty, and Amara can level up like a Warcraft III hero, but with a bit more depth.
Some of the ways you can build her are pretty fun. She starts out with a point blank AoE “death blossom” attack, and you can upgrade it to also teleport and shield her. It feels great to blink her into a crowd of enemies and watch her mow them all down in the blink of an eye.
The graphics have also received a huge overhaul. Textures are more detailed, lighting is more immersive, character models look much better, and the Infernal faction has had a visual redesign to make them both grittier and more alien. The major character Maloc got a particularly dramatic glow-up, going from a generic floating demon dude to a surreal cosmic horror with far too many arms in places there should not be arms.
This is accompanied to a pretty big revamp of the Infernal faction in competitive multiplayer, as well as other tweaks to the overall PvP experience, but that remains a section of the game that I don’t participate in, so I can’t speak to the quality of those changes. Chatter on social media seems positive, though. Unfortunately, co-op has not benefited from any of these recent improvements and remains frozen in time as an artifact of the game’s early state, but the developers promise it will be updated at some point.
Some issues remain. The campaign still doesn’t offer manual saving, only checkpoints, and the audio mixing is still a bit messy. I often couldn’t hear what characters were saying mid-mission because the combat sounds completely drowned them out.
The new campaign is not a masterpiece, but it’s pretty solid, and compared to how poor the original was, the difference is staggering. It’s gone from roughly a 2/10 experience to around a 7/10. It’s hard not to feel that this might be coming too late, though.
The poor state Stormgate was in at launch has left it with a cratered player count and a tattered reputation. The consistent pattern of shady behaviour from the developers also makes it hard to want to invest in the game; they no longer feel like plucky underdogs worth cheering for.
Cost is also still an issue. We’re still being asked to pay around triple the price of story content in SC2, and while the quality of the campaign is much better, I still wouldn’t really say it’s equal to SC2. Inflation is a thing, so I could live with perhaps paying the same price or slightly more, but paying three times as much for something that still isn’t as good remains a big ask.
I really try to be an optimist when it comes to games, and I love a good redemption story. I’m not cheering for Stormgate to fail. If nothing else, it would be another blow to the beleaguered RTS genre.
But it’s hard not to feel like the game has already squandered its chances to win the hearts and minds of the community, and while the campaign revamp is a huge step in the right direction, I’m not sure it’s enough to dig the game out of the hole it’s found itself in. Once again, it needs to be said you only get one chance at a first impression, so you better make it count.
The world of online gaming is changing. As the gray area between single-player and MMO becomes ever wider, Massively OP’s Tyler Edwards delves into this new and expanding frontier biweekly in Not So Massively, our column on battle royales, OARPGs, looter-shooters, and other multiplayer online titles that aren’t quite MMORPGs.
