Maxis and EA announce Darkspore, sci-fi Action-RPG version of Spore

While EA's 2008 god-game, Spore, was met with mixed reviews largely due to its Digital Rights Management software, SecuROM, it apparently did well enough to merit Maxis continuing the franchise, in a sense.  Announced at San Diego Comic-Con, Darkspore will utilize the Spore Creature Editor to enable players to highly customize their experience in a fast-paced, sci-fi Action-RPG.

Despite the similarity in its title, Darkspore is "not an extension of Spore, however, it was inspired by and shares some of the unique innovative technology we created for Spore: the award-winning Creature Editor," says Lucy Bradshaw, General Manager of Maxis.

Darkspore features online co-op with player information stored on the Darkspore servers, and, what's possibly the most promising bit of information that can be gleaned from the announcement panel, Mike Perry, the Executive Producer, says, "...you can install the game client anywhere you want to and on as many machines as you want to," providing the haters of SecuROM with even more confidence that they were right, and EA was wrong.

Darkspore seems unique from other Action-RPGs in that players select a squad of three characters, rather than a single character, and can switch between them at will during the level.  Each character has an arsenal of unique abilities, and some abilities can be used by any of a players other characters as long as the character is in the squad.

Similar to the Director in Valve's First Person Shooter franchise, Left 4 Dead, Darkspore features an A.I. director that observes the players progress and spawns enemies that will challenge them accordingly.  Darkspore will be available on Mac and PC some time in February, 2011.

The Darkspore website already features profiles for three playable characters, referred to in the Darkspore universe as "Living Weapons," as well as two placeholder slots for characters that have yet to be announced.  These characters can be further customized through the Creature Editor as the player collects parts with unique stats.

See a full video including the announcement trailer, gameplay video, and the quotes featured in the article above right here:

Enjoy this article?  Receive e-mail alerts when new articles are available by clicking "Subscribe" at the top of the page.  Tweet about it.  Share it on Facebook.  Go tell your grandma; maybe she'll love it, too.