The Precursors

The Precursors is the latest game made by Deep Shadows, the same developers which made Boiling Point: Road to Hell and White Gold: War in Paradise

The gameplay is best summed up as Deus Ex meets Freelancer. The game is a hybrid of a First-Person Shooter, Role-Playing Game, Stealth Based Game and space-based Simulation Game. The player is capable of doing whatever he wants, trade with merchants or extort them for money, work for The Federation, The Empire, or La Résistance, investigate long lost ruins... you can travel through space, actually land and play around in planets and space stations. (Granted, you can only land on six planets, but they're pretty big and detailed).

The player takes the role of Treece Creighton, a young pilot of the Amarn race who is fresh from the academy and is sent to work for an agent of the government in the Amarn colony of the desert planet Goldin. After several missions, the Amarn's home planet mysteriously explodes and Treece is sent on a quest to find out how and why it happened.

Tropes used in The Precursors include:

• An Entrepreneur Is You
• Anticlimax
• Automatic Crossbow: Useful as a stealthy ranged weapon. (Hollywood Silencer is averted in this game)
• Back Stab
• Death World: Planet Reandore. Driving from one point to another in that planet counts as a mission on it's own right.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted in the same manner as in Boiling Point.
• Genre Busting
• Kleptomaniac Hero: NPCs don't react to thievery unless you pick a lock, hack a keypad or a computer. Even then, you can usually disable the alarm beforehand.
• Precursors: With a religious cult devoted to them.
• Relationship Values: One statistic for each major faction of the setting. Unlike in Boiling Point you won't be able to work for all of them.
  • Civilians.
  • Democratic Union.
  • The Empire.
  • The Brotherhood of Free Traders.
  • The Clatz Nest.
  • Bandits.
  • The Clatz Revolutionaries.
• RPG Elements: You have Experience Points, and you choose a new ability with each Level Up.
  • There are hundreds of non-linear Sidequests, many of them having multiple solutions.
• RPGs Equal Combat: Actually averted. You will have to fight to complete the game, but most missions can also be completed with stealth, or with diplomacy (If you have a good relationship with the faction you're going against).
• Scenery Porn
• Simulation Game: The "Space Travel" part of the game.
• Single Biome Planet
• Space Does Not Work That Way
  • Space Is Noisy
  • Streaming Stars
• Stealth Based Game: Though it's not always possible to be stealthy, most missions can be done like this.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can kill, steal, and extort as much as you want. Many optional missions target people who really don't deserve it.
• Wide Open Sandbox