By Brad Cook

“We sell you a universe. Do with it what you like.” The voice crackling over my starship’s speakers belongs to Bernd Lehahn, managing director at Egosoft Software. I’ve returned to the X universe, which I previously visited for X2: The Threat and X3: Reunion, to learn more about the final installment in the series. Centuries earlier, our solar system was cut off from the X universe after a cataclysmic event, but the previous game reunited the two areas of space, albeit with potentially tragic consequences: the mechanized Xenon race immediately moved in to attack. (To learn more about the X Universe’s back story, see our X3: Reunion article.)

“Earth was always merely a myth in the X Universe,” Lehahn explains. “The big theme of all the X games was always the return to Earth, but their storylines were more a universal definition of species, technologies, political relations, and developments, rather than a linear plot.”

Starting Points

I gaze out my craft’s forward window at the Sol system’s bustling activity, where ships flit between massive space stations. A woman’s voice interrupts my reverie — she’s Erin Iovis, a Terran scouting the area with patrol leader Samuel Plinter. Lehahn and I head toward the two ships, which had come across a group of fighters belonging to the Xenon, who show no mercy, especially toward their former masters with the mysterious, jet-black starcraft. Thus the storyline that began the X series comes full circle, and Plinter and Iovis are in for a heck of a fight.

“We sell you a universe. Do with it what you like.”

- Bernd Lehahn, managing director

Iovis is one of four characters — each with specific starting abilities and back story — to choose from when you begin a new game; the others are Argons, who descended from a group of Earthlings cut off from our solar system centuries earlier. You can also begin the game with a generic character whose destiny you mold to your liking.

As you complete Terran Conflict’s intersecting storylines, you unlock more characters who offer new challenges, allowing you to see the X Universe through the eyes of other races, including the aquatic Boron, the ritualistic insect-like Paranid, the aggressive Split, and the reptilian Teladi. The game’s eight corporations also offer secondary storylines that you can follow to see where they lead; don’t forget to explore out-of-the-way places too: they may hold fascinating secrets.

Lehahn elaborates: “When you choose a character, you basically select a starting point: a different ship, different relations to the races, another place to start in this huge universe, and a few special missions.”

There’s plenty to explore, and you decide how to experience those adventures: you can accumulate resources and ply the trading lanes with your wares, amassing a vast fortune in the process, or you can assemble a mighty military operation, building factories to produce ships and weapons and even training marines to board enemy capitol ships. Or you can travel the shady side and become an intergalactic pirate; just make sure you’re willing to endure the wrath of most of the pilots you come across.

Evolutionary

“The X series is evolutionary,” Lehahn says. “The concept was the same from the start: Provide people a realistic and simulated universe and then give them as much freedom and realism as is technically possible. We think X3: Terran Conflict is the best X game we can make inside the boundaries defined by the series.”

Those are some large boundaries, judging by a look at the X Universe’s sector map. Iovis and Plinter have defeated their Xenon attackers, but they’re already warning fellow Terrans that the fight was simply the first skirmish in a larger war. As Lehahn steers his ship toward the nearest jump gate, I decide to follow them and see where I wind up. It should be an exciting ride.

To Boldly Go… A Paranid ship heads for deep space.

Shots Heard ’Round the Universe. A battle begins.

Mining Operation. Asteroids provide rich stores of valuable resources.

If you liked this game, check out:

• Battlefield 2142
• Cosmic Encounter Online
• EVE Online: Empyrean Age
• Halo: Combat Evolved
• Homeworld 2
• Master of Orion III
• Star Wars: Battlefront
• Star Wars: Empire at War
• Vendetta Online

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X version 10.5.7
• 2.16GHz Intel processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 256MB video RAM (Nvidia GeForce 8600, ATI Radeon X1600 or later)
• 7GB hard disk space