Neocron Preview
By Eric "Lanzer" Furst

  
Enter a mega metropolis.

The rain penetrates your thin overcoat as you hunch your briefcase closer to your body. You take a step into the street, and hop back quickly as a hoverbike speeds past. A CamBot sputters about overhead as you look up and down a street defined by the shadows of towering buildings. Conversations of those passed by diminished to a murmur by the hum of neon and the rants of a nearby tech junkie. You take a deep breath of polluted air and hurry on.

These are the streets of Neocron.

This is your life, and you've got work to do.

Welcome to Neocron. An MMORPG/FPS (Massively Multi-Player Role Playing Game/First Person Shooter) based on a future where the world has been ruined by Nuclear War and recreated into a totalitarian-controlled super-city. You take control of an ordinary citizen, and as thus can go about an ordinary life of working, eating, and abiding by the rules enforced by the CopBots roaming the streets. You may also turn to a life of crime, hacking or killing your way to the top of the social hierarchy. Often becoming rich and unfortunately for you, famous, for the past may come back to haunt you.

 

There will be four starter classes, the Tank, the Private Eye, the Spy, and Psi-Monk. From these initial archetypes you begin to focus your skills towards various professions, including a Hacker, a Bounty Hunter, a Merchant, or a Thief. First person shooter style combat against other players is an option. However, if you kill too many people your Soul Light will become too dark, and CopBots will no longer be so lenient with you. Thus, forcing you to move from your once-safe apartment to one in the Pepper Park or the Outzone.

Despite the path you choose, be it one of light or one of darkness, you will have many options available to you during your stay in the world of the future. There will be holomatch games available to fine-tune your fighting skills or upon which to gamble. And there will be terminals, where you can invest all your earnings in hopes of future prosperity, find jobs, bounties, or purchase the latest in "self-defense" weaponry.

Only time and Beta will answer the questions about the finer elements of the game.