GameCyte

If it weren't for Tom Clancy's Politika, 2008 would mark the ten-year anniversary of the famous Tom Clancy game title prefix -- and with the intellectual property rights to the man's good name securely in pocket, Ubisoft celebrated those ten years at their Ubidays 2008 press event, broadcast live from the Louvre this morning. Following a brief montage honoring titles ranging from the original Rainbow Six to the latest Splinter Cell and Advanced Warfighter, Ubisoft showcased the future of the franchise with live demos of HAWX and EndWar.

There was very little on HAWX we hadn't already heard back in April (save the fact that the game is set in 2014, two years later than planned), but as to what was shown... well, it looked pretty spectacular. Opening with a bombing mission in the skies over Rio de Janeiro, the demo began slowly, a silvery F-22 lancing across the sky.

Using HAWX's much touted assist systems, the pilot was directed not only towards the target, but actually -- via a series of translucent, triangular rings -- all the way through a high-altitude loop before swooping down on the hapless enemy installation like, well, a certain carnivorous avian. Up to and including the game's very nicely detailed 3D city (modeled using real satellite data), there were few apparent visual differences to set the game far apart from Namco's rival Ace Combat series -- until a dogfight began.

Those who have played Star Fox 64 will remember a certain thrill at the mention of "All-Range Mode." For the uninitiated, there is a moment in that game's first level, and in many subsequent, when the conventions and trappings of the series' rail shooter origins are thrown gloriously out the window in favor of true 3D combat in an open arena. HAWX's revelation was equally stunning: when the dogfight began, the camera left the cockpit entirely and zoomed out -- far out -- for a wide-angle view of the proceedings that encompassed every craft and projectile weapon nearby. What followed was a cinematic 3D joust of missile and flare, attack and counter attack, loop and stall and other fantastic maneuvers that looked like an absolute blast to play.

God only knows why Ubisoft hasn't released a single video or screenshot of such a dogfight -- for some reason, their advertisers are taking the CG route with this one, as demonstrated in this new trailer:

Although we'd been briefed in advance that EndWar would be "playable entirely through voice commands," it was another thing completely to see it in action.

Controlled solely by the voice of creative director Michael de Plater, the RTS responded nimbly to simple voice commands ranging from "Unit 2, Secure Bravo" to "Calling All Gunships: Attack Hostile B." Each time de Plater uttered a command, the on-screen manual interface flew through menus, bypassing numerous button presses with effective shortcuts. Camera control was equally fluid; when units spotted enemies or completed objectives, the camera would automatically zoom in on these points of interest, and manually diverting to the perspective of an individual unit was a simple "Unit 2, Camera" away.

Assuming the game requires a minimum of voice training, we imagine EndWar players might well forgo manual control entirely in favor of playing general.

Here's the new trailer for EndWar, again with an emphasis on cinematics, but decidedly less CG:

On one last, world-conquering note, Ubisoft announced that with the addition of playable Ghost Recon units and HAWX air support, EndWar is "just the beginning of the creation of a Tom Clancy universe, where we'll see more and more crossover between the games, storylines, characters, novels, movie shorts and cinema."

That way, they'll have plenty of material for the eventual Tom Clancy MMO.