Tom Clancy’s EndWar wasn’t that successful. I’ve never asked Ubisoft about it but it would be difficult for them to make the argument that “The game was so successful we switched off the multiplayer servers and never developed a sequel for fear of consuming all the players’ time” sound plausible.
Instead of a full-blown sequel the developer are creating a browser-based tie-in that’s less RTS and more tower defence.
So it goes.
“The original game was on console and it was faction versus faction, but what was lacking was not everyone was connected,” creative director Michal Madej told Polygon. “There wasn’t a shared theater of war. But on browser, almost everyone has a web browser, so we can try to achieve the goal of the original EndWar of having everyone be connected.”
Despite what Ubisoft are saying on this one, it appears that EndWar Online will share little with the original game besides the setting. The RTS mechanics are gone. In their place is a version of the tower defence game Anomaly. Both players will build towers to defend their base while also selecting units to march in waves at those towers. It’s very much a Rock, Paper, Scissors-style game with helicopters beating tanks, tanks beating smaller vehicles, smaller vehicles beating infantry, and rocket infantry beating helicopters. Of course, there are variations of each unit within their subcategories to add variety to proceedings.
There will be a singleplayer campaign made up of 50 different missions spanning 10 chapters.
EndWar Online will be entering closed beta later this year.