Tom Clancy’s EndWar is a new franchise developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, who for the first time may produce a non-sequel. Unlike previous Tom Clancy games, you will not control one person or a small squad, but a whole battalion. You will be able to choose out of three sides: The United States (Joint Strike Force), the European Federation (Enforcers Corps) and finally Russia (Spetznaz Guard Brigade). While most units resemble each other from each faction, there will still be some small differences. For example, the European troops will be more focused on Electronic Warfare.

The majority of the game is as with many RTS games the online play and this is one of EndWar’s major trump cards. You will be able to fight the other factions over territories in a consistent battle. The faction that has won the most battles will then receive the territory, while the other 2 factions will need to try and capture it again. The final goal of the game is to control the North-Atlantic theatre. Afrika, the Middle-East and Asia will not be playable, but these areas can still be added in the future, with who knows, new factions!

It seems as if the developers behind the game wanted to let the player create a bond with his troops, because for every battle you’ve won, your troops will gain experience. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t want some battle hardened soldier ready to kick the enemies soldiers that came straight from boot camp? We can already imagine the many cursing words if one of your most experienced units died. What we also came to know is that Scott Michell (Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter) will be the leader of the American JSF and that Logan Keller (Rainbow Six: Vegas) will be the one with the same job on the European side. Who will be the icon of Russia is sadly not known.

One of the biggest innovations in the game, but at the same time also the one with the most risk, is the Voice-Command feature. With this you will be able to command your army by shouting orders through your microphone. For the people who are a bit shy to start shouting against your television, you can also just use your controller. A major advantage of this is that you can control one squad with deadly precision with the controller and at the same time tell your tanks to flank the enemy. If this is going to be possible and the feature works as it should be, we’re going to have some very nice experiences.

The team behind the game also had the opinion that realism is second to fun. The maps for example are ‘only’ a square mile to guarantee as much action as possible. So artillery won’t be positioned several kilometres away, but only a couple of hundred metres behind the frontline. As a final note, you will also be able to watch the games of the best commanders through a replay mode, so you can improve your tactics.

Information about the many units is quite sparse. This can be explained because the game has been delayed till fiscal year 2009. In other words, we can expect it earliest in April. Let us hope that Ubisoft will take their time game and they can launch a new franchise. If this would work, I have finally found the game that can make die-hard RTS PC gamers drool!