Today’s popular culture has seen no shortage of trilogies. From Star Wars to the Matrix to the inevitable Halo 3, franchises seem to be increasingly arriving in groups of three. Advent Rising studiously follows this trend – it’s a sci-fi trilogy with new chapters arriving at a steady pace, has a self-contained universe, and promises to break out into other media avenues after its launch. Yet there is something special about the project, despite its seemingly by-the-numbers strategy.

Advent Rising is a third and first-person action game with the player in the shoes of Gideon Wyeth, a human. However, in the Advent universe, the human race is one of mysterious power, regarded as both savior and saboteur by the galaxy’s other sentient races. The Seekers are devoted to humanity’s destruction because they pose too great a threat, while the Aurelians vie to protect the humans, putting great faith in their noble purpose. The story was penned by Donald Mustard (Director of the project) and his brother Geremy Mustard, and it promises to deliver an epic adventure.

To flesh out the back-story and dialog, Ender’s Game writer Orson Scott Card has signed on to script the series. Card has also agreed to write forthcoming novels that will most likely expand the story’s universe – in a similar way to the Halo books. The game’s chapters will appear on PC and Xbox, with the latter two installments most likely appearing on PC and Xbox2.

While the story seems to have potential, Advent’s hype so far stems from the gameplay. New developer GlyphX has had much success in their innovative control scheme dubbed Flick Targeting, which is similar to the common lock-on feature except that targets are switched by