Giving Voice To The Void: Ancient Space

Earlier today, I exposed one gaping hole in my nerd-knowledge - I didn't watch a single episode of Star Trek until 2011. I knew that Kirk ladied his way around the galaxy and that Patrick Stewart made things just so, like a spacefaring Kiping, but I hadn't actually seen them in action. Picard was nothing but a facepalm to me. A press release from Paradox threatens to tear my remaining nerd cred to bits. It contains an announcement for an RTS, Ancient Space, made by CreativeForge, who you may remember as creators of the intriguing Hard West, currently Kickstarting. Ancient Space is the studio's previous game and it's due out later this year. Details and sci-fi actor studded voice cast below.

It's a narrative-heavy RTS, which left me hoping for live action C&C style video sequences, but since I've got a list with the voice cast on here, I don't think that's the case. First, a few details about the game:

New Frontiers, Classic Gameplay: Build, maintain, upgrade, and strategically command a multitude of ships in tactical battles and missions, facing aliens, pirates, and the unknown

An Explosive Space Opera: A compelling story, performed by a stellar cast, follows the player as the fleet tackles questions of humanity and science in an epic single-player campaign

Live with Your Choices: Each mission advances the plot, and introduces new challenges to be met by choosing the right crew and the right upgrades for the job

I'll need to see more before I can begin to predict whether this is my sort of RTS. That would be slow-paced and strategic rather than click-happy, and a quick glance at the website suggests I might be in luck.

Ancient Space features real time strategic starship battles that encourages tactical maneuvering. In time honored RTS tradition, you build and upgrade your fleet as you complete mission objectives and gather resources which allow you to progress further into the game. Chart your approach – from defense to offense and everything in between such as escort and stealth missions.

Here's the voice cast, along with my admissions of shame:

John Billingsley (Star Trek: Enterprise, True Blood)
Aaron Douglas (Battlestar Galactica)
Ron Glass (Firefly)
Richard Gunn (Dark Angel)
Dina Meyer (Starship Troopers, Star Trek: Nemesis, Saw)
Dwight Schultz (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager)

Well, straight away you can remove all the Star Trek. Haven't seen 'em, won't be getting round it for a good long while. I have seen Galactica and enjoyed it a lot, but I still had to check who Aaron Douglas played. He was Tyrol - THE CHIEF WHO WAS NOT A MASTER.

I've never seen Dark Angel but I have seen Starship Troopers and Saw. In the former, Dina Meyer played Dizzy Flores, who was "the quarterback for the Buenos Aires fieldball team", according to the Starship Troopers Wiki. Bugs ate her. In Saw, she was an investigator and her ribs cracked into bits in one of the later films because that is what those films are about.

I have seen True Blood but don't remember Billingsley's coroner character. Perhaps he wasn't in the first season, which proved to be plenty enough vampire for my tastes.

The big one, of course, is Ron Glass.

I've never seen Firefly.