Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes Preview
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again? Hasn’t it? Won’t it? Ronald D. Moore’s reboot of Battlestar Galactica aired from 2004-2009, and it was a phenomenon. It was the kind of success story that invited merchandise tie-ins. There doesn’t seem to be a television revival of BSG happening any time soon, but that hasn’t stopped Alt Shift from trying to capture a bit of that early 21st-century magic with their new game Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes.
The Cylons Were Created By Man
In Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, you are the commander of a military starship trying to protect the last vestiges of the exiled human race. You will command squadrons of vipers and raptors, defending civilian ships long enough for them to make an FTL jump. The action is real-time with pause. You are given as much time as you need and a lot of information, but resources are scarce, and sacrifices will be made. Between combat encounters you will manage the little you have and make choices in a visual novel style.
The multiple gameplay systems overlap in pleasing ways. Any one of the systems might have felt a little thin on its own, but when combined, there’s a zippy rhythm driving the action forward. There is a larger roguelite structure, promising strategic unlocks across future runs. The moment-to-moment gameplay feels extremely polished, more so than Alt Shift’s last game Crying Suns. Beyond the TV license, their sophomore effort feels like a logical continuation of the ideas of their first game.
From the little bit of the game available to play, It’s a bit difficult to know how these roguelite elements will unfold. The meta progression systems in Crying Suns could give us some idea, but there is potential for something much deeper and weirder. After all, Battlestar Galactica loves history repeating itself across cycles. Will the roguelike progression intersect with the narrative?
Kobol’s Last Gleaming
The presentation in Scattered Hopes is excellent across the board. If you are a fan of the show, the game has the look and sound down. We get tracks from Bear McCreary’s fantastic soundtrack, the corners cut off of all the books, the landline phones in space, all the series hallmarks. There’s even a version of the show’s opening sequence (though without the pounding drums of the ‘sex and violence’ montage that would always play after the credits).
What really sells me on the potential of Scattered Hopes isn’t how faithful the adaptation is. I’m more intrigued by the original story. We get all the familiar archetypes from the show, but we are following different ships and different characters. You’ll be right at home with the hotshot pilots, slimy politicians, and earnest paternal figures that make up the Colonial Fleet. But this isn’t the exact same story. We aren’t actually following Starbuck and Apollo and Gaius Baltar, so there is still room to choose your own path. This is the perfect compromise between giving me what I like while not forcing me to play in a narrow sandbox.
So Say We All
Battlestar Galactica games have always felt a bit weird. There were game contemporary with the show, but none of them really managed to grab a lot of attention. The best BSG game, Deadlock, didn’t come out until 2017, years after the show had concluded. That game had the ships and the twelve colonies, but it was a prequel to the show. As such, a lot of the best parts of the desperate struggle for the survival of a species was sort of flattened into a more generic humans versus robots space battle game.
Scattered Hopes feels a bit more true to the spirit of what made the show work. There are still some open questions about what the final game will play like, especially the long-term challenge of the management aspects. But the style is so good, I want to believe that the substance is there too. I tried to rewatch Battlestar Galactica recently. It was okay! I was feeling its age in its style and its politics. Scattered Hopes manages to feel more like the show as I remember it. If it delivers on its gameplay, it will easily be the most exciting thing to happen to Battlestar Galactica in quite a long time.
