during space battles and have no use of their special abilities). Plot The game's plot is that of the Galactic Civil War and the construction of the Death Star. It occurs during the events leading up to A New Hope. In the Rebel campaign, the fledgling Rebel Alliance begin with an attack on the shipyards at Kuat introducing the player to basic space combat before infiltrating the planet of Wayland on a basic ground combat mission. The campaign explores how the X-wing fighter is pressed into the service of the Rebel Alliance, the liberation of Kashyyyk, the first whisperings of a brand new Imperial superweapon and ultimately the Battle of Yavin. The Imperial campaign features Darth Vader and his search for the fledgling Rebel Alliance, interspersed with missions to help complete construction of the Death Star. It then transpires that the plans for the Death Star have been stolen so the player has to seek out the traitor who has passed the plans to the Rebels, intercept Princess Leia and then use the Death Star to crush the Alliance once and for all. Development Star Wars: Empire at War was first mentioned in 2004, by then-president of LucasArts Jim Ward. He discussed the possibility of a RTS video game set in the Star Wars universe, stating "...there's a bright future there for games based on these new properties as well as original Star Wars games like a new real-time strategy PC game that Petroglyph is developing for next year". Ward described the game as taking the real-time strategy genre in a new direction and outlined plans to balance the gameplay between hardcore games and audiences familiar with the Star Wars franchise. The game was unveiled by LucasArts on January 21, 2005 with an original release date set for the end of 2005. LucasArts said that the newly formed Petroglyph Games would be developing an original 3-D game engine, titled Alamo, for Star Wars: Empire at War and that the game would support online battles for up to eight players. Lead designer Joe Bostic outlined the gameplay for Star Wars: Empire at War, stating the developer's priorities were for players to have easy control of ships during space combat because of difficulties with the structure of the space aspect of the game. He said that the scaling of the various units in the game was another difficulty that the developers had