Ladies, gentlemen, I am a fortunate man. I've recently had the chance to spend some hands-on time with the War in Heaven alpha, including an early build of the campaign.
Age of Aquarius took ten months to complete, start to finish. War in Heaven has been in the works for longer than that, and it shows. This campaign, my friends, is a different beast.
I won't be talking much about the story, but I will say there's been a tonal shift since Age of Aquarius. This is not a family-building interdimensional adventure of self-discovery. This is a war story. It is grim. It is gritty. You aren't going to be concerned with destiny and fate, you're going to be concerned with the spillage of live ammo on the hangar deck that's keeping your reinforcements from launching.
And it is unquestionably awesome.
I have seen remarkable things. Darius has put a lot of effort into building a new, more cinematic style of combat for AoA. Everything is faster and more lethal. UEF ships fire volleys of tracers like something out of a World War II newsreel. GTVA (Tevs, as the Earth pilots call them) fighters seem more brutally competent than anything in the retail campaign. They look downright fearsome: Myrmidons and Persei break into the merge spewing long, gorgeous streams of Balor fire, while the nimble little Kulas harries with four-bank Prometheus volleys. Once the dogfight really kicks off, the Tev pilots almost seem like they're actually switching targets and covering each other. I usually play on Insane, but this is definitely a campaign for Medium if you want to avoid being gunned down again and again.
The UEF gets beautiful toys as well. Their fighters are generally more specialized than GTVA counterparts - light and swift, their fragility compensated for by the use of modular armor repairs from UEF support ships (much like in 'The Procyon Insurgency.') Instead of bombers, they have gunships, which mount fearsome rotary cannons, packs of missiles on external racks, and enormous mass drivers capable of breaching destroyer armor. These gunships are death-dealers - unless a Myrmidon or Kulas gets in behind you, in which case you're Balor food.
The dogfights are also more tactically interesting than in the retail campaign. GTVA fighters sometime use Morningstars to push you away from a target you're escorting. Bomber wings are almost always accompanied by fighters for protection, and a lot of them are packing Helioses.
On both the tactical and strategic level, Darius has put a lot of effort into addressing what we might term 'The Mobius Question': how to make the GTVA seem like a competent, aggressive enemy, instead of an organization of buffoons. GTVA front-line warships seriously outclass their UEF opponents, and when a Hyperion or a Bellerophon enters the scene, the UEF's mainstay cruisers and frigates have no chance in a straight-up fight. To compensate, the UEF ships sometimes use cluster munitions on their missile launchers, spewing wave after wave of low-yield swarm munitions to occupy Tev AAA beams - but, to be honest, it's going to take a hard fight to bring down the more advanced GTVA ships. One advantage the UEF has is the Narayana artillery ship, which they mostly use to chase off big foes like Raynors and Titans (the Tevs are smart enough to jump out if in danger of being destroyed.)
Fortunately, the Tevs still use the Aeolus cruiser and Deimos corvette, and these ships are on more even footing with UEF capital ships.
A good example came up when I was ordered to disarm the forward beam cannons of a GTVA corvette. "Oh boy," I thought. "Disarming forward beams? What a shockingly original task, Darius!" But two Aeolus cruisers were positioned to cover the entire approach to those forward beams with their AAAfs, and I found that if I charged in too early, defensive fighters pounced on me. These are not Shivans - they are calculating, prepared opponents.
Development is ongoing. Right now, the UEF's higher-end fighter weapons are extremely powerful, and Darius is working to correct that. The storyline is also being iterated again and again to bring out the tactical and strategic details of the war.
Oh, and the music? AoA's exhilarating electronica sound has been enriched by a set of orchestral, epic tracks that go well with the 'Total War' feel of this new chapter. Darius custom-builds music tracks for missions at an impressive rate.
I've made a few suggestions for the project. One thing we're playing with implementing is squadron names for all the GTVA fighters, to give them a bit more character. This may show up in some or all of the missions.
