The world itself in Planetside is pretty cut and dry. It’s huge (made up of about 13 continents, each roughly 64 square kilometers), it’s persistent, and there are three giant empires vying for control of it. As battles ensue to acquire and hold the various positions the environments will be shaped as a result of the conflicts. It’s largely an action game mentality in an RPG world. On top of this there are a number of vehicles available to players to use in order to navigate the world. At this point there isn’t the ability to mount weapons on vehicles, but there are weapons on the vehicles already that can be manned by a gunner. What players do in the world is up to them, whether they are going it alone or as a group, but there doesn’t seem to be any sort of class distinction yet dividing up players into heavy weapons, recon, and other specialties. It seems players purposes will be defined by the weapons and armor they chose to use and how they mix and match them. Many of these items will be purchased through shops in the game as it will use a commerce system.

Besides equipping weapons and armor to use for wrecking havoc players will be able to add implants to their characters that will provide various enhancements to their abilities. There will of course be a limit as to how many one can have and the energy consumption of each. They are quite permanent, so players will have to choose carefully which ones they equip. Also helping is a variety of abilities (totaling 70) that characters can acquire, helping give a tiny bit of an RPG flavor to Planetside.

To cut down on the Big, Dumb Jerk Factor there will be a warning system in the game. Since Planetside allows friendly fire there’s bound to be a number of people tempted to torment gamers by constantly bumping them off. So here’s where the warning system comes in. If someone starts going around causing mayhem the people on the receiving end can issue a warning after which the offender will lose use of their firearms for a period. If the warned person continues to be a problem in the future they’ll be banned outright.

So, on the one side the game is sounding pretty snazzy, on the other it sounds sort of like Halo at its core. At least the Halo we heard about two years ago when it was still a PC Only game. Now the question is: Will we gravitate toward it because it’s an experienced company by the name of Verant that is making the game? Halo is still much like Planetside, and Neocron also shares in this game’s spirit (and can be played for free by the way), and we’ve seen the jumbled mess that is WWII Online (which could always be improved if the right patch comes along). Despite the hype and the promise that comes with the mere utterance of the name Planetside it still has a lot to live up to when it’s released. If it can live up to it though, oh my.