Accordingly, Ghost's multiplayer is structured around class-based team gameplay and fighting in a variety of game modes. It aims to give players a personal view of the battles from the real-time strategy games of the series. The multiplayer mode in StarCraft: Ghost differs from the stealth-based mechanics of the single-player portion. Some vehicles, such as space battlecruisers and starfighters, only play support roles, while others, such as hoverbikes, scout cars, and futuristic siege tanks, can be piloted by the player. StarCraft: Ghost includes many of the vehicle units featured in StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War. The player has access to Nova's psionic powers honed through training as a ghost agent, such as the ability to improve her speed and reflexes drastically. Nova is highly agile, acrobatic, and able to perform manoeuvrers such as mantling and climbing ledges, hanging from pipes, and sliding down ziplines.
If alerted, enemy characters will hunt for the player, set up traps, and fire blindly to nullify Nova's cloaking device. Nova can engage in hand-to-hand combat and uses these skills to eliminate enemy threats quietly. Blizzard planned to include a small arsenal of weaponry with assault and sniper rifles, grenades, shotguns, and flamethrowers. In addition to the focus on stealth elements, StarCraft: Ghost includes a complex combat system. Nova is also equipped with thermal imaging goggles and a special EMP device for disabling electronic devices and vehicles. Nova has a cloaking device that allows for temporary concealment, but certain hostile non-player characters can overcome this with special devices and abilities. Nova is shown engaging a group of Terran guards in a firefight.ĭuring StarCraft: Ghost's gameplay, the player's character Nova must use stealth and darkness to reach objectives and remain undetected. Gameplay Campaign File:Nova in combat (StarCraft).jpgĪ screenshot of the game in 2005 just prior to its postponement. Very little of the game's storyline has been released however, in November 2006 after the game's postponement, a novel was published called StarCraft Ghost: Nova which covers the backstory of the central character. Following Nova, a Terran psychic espionage operative called a " ghost", the game is set four years after the conclusion of StarCraft: Brood War and covers a conspiracy about a secretive military project conducted by Nova's superiors in the imperial Terran Dominion. Unlike its real-time strategy predecessor StarCraft, Ghost is a third-person shooter, and was intended to give players a closer and more personal view of the StarCraft universe. In 2014, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that StarCraft: Ghost was officially cancelled.
Although Blizzard Entertainment refuses to list it as such, video game journalism outlets including IGN and GameSpot list Ghost as cancelled. The continued delay of Ghost has caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was ranked fifth in Wired News' annual Vaporware Awards in 2005. Subsequent public statements from company personnel have been contradictory about whether production will be renewed or planned story elements will be worked into other products.
Nihilistic Software ceded development to Swingin' Ape Studios in 2004 before Blizzard bought the company, and plans for the GameCube version were cancelled in 2005.īlizzard announced in March 2006 that the game is on "indefinite hold" while the company investigated seventh generation video game console possibilities. Several delays in development caused Blizzard to move back the release date and the game has not yet materialized. Part of Blizzard's StarCraft franchise, the game was announced in 2002 and was to be developed by Nihilistic Software for the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2.
StarCraft: Ghost was a military science fiction stealth- action video game previously under development by Blizzard Entertainment.