By the time I got to the top of the Metreon--a bizarre, maze-like coalition of restaurants, movie theaters, and corporate advertising--the last thing I expected to find was an elevator. They have elevators? In buildings? Who would have thought. Bumbling through closed doors, I collapsed onto one of three plush seats set in front of a large widescreen display. Food and drink was spread across a table, as if they had anticipated someone like me--someone who would require replenishment before facing an hour of methodical carnage. Fortunately for everyone involved, Richard Garriott was more in control of his faculties. I have never played a game from the Ultima series, but I have read about them, and heard many stories of the famous assassination of Lord British. And yet there he was: Sharply dressed, well groomed, and appearing quite confident as he enthusiastically (despite nearing the end of a seven hour shift) presented NCsoft and Destination Games' new science fiction MMORPG, Tabula Rasa. In many ways the title is appropriate, as the game has seen significant changes over the course of development. However, based on Garriott's presentation, Tabula Rasa is shaping up to be a rather complete package, and one that may exploit a relatively untapped segment among the MMO market: action.

"It's still an RPG," Garriot said overtop the cracks of laser blasts and sounds of marching soldiers. Garriott's team had wasted no time, dropping its saved spaceman straight into an instanced scenario. The basic premise of Tabula Rasa is fairly straightforward: a world-destroying alien race called the Bane has invaded, and players--each representing survivors of their home world--must unite to bring them down. Anyone who has ever read a comic book can probably skip that portion of the instruction manual.

Yet while some games focus on over-arcing stories, the emphasis in this case seems is placed on smaller-scale encounters. Garriott described a method that involves presenting the player with moral choices, reminiscent of a game like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and indeed the instance portion of Tabula Rasa felt very much like a rich single-player experience. Garriott likes to refer to these situations as "ethical parables," and the particular parable that he was sharing with us apparently involved a lot of alien ass-kicking. An isolated Bane research facility is turning dead soldiers into human-killing monstrosities, and the player is tasked with infiltrating the premises and "ethically" blowing it up.

"It's still an RPG," Garriott reminded us again, but there was the spaceman crouching behind sandbags and taking cover, snapping off quick ranged shots with his laser rifle, and all from a third-person perspective. "If he were to stay there too long, the Bane would move in there and attack him," he continued, emphasizing the role that tactics could play. Crouching behind an embankment will reduce the chance a player will be hit by half, but will not hinder his chance to attack, encouraging players to consider their environment when in battle.

Immediately of note was the targeting reticle, something seemingly more at home in Gears of War than an MMO. Garriott was quick to explain that while it is perfectly correct to aim like a traditional shooter, once the reticle is moved away your avatar will continue to attack the previous target until the crosshair is hovered over another enemy. This "sticky-targeting" system seemed like a logical balance between fast-paced action and tactical strategy, allowing you to navigate a menu and equip a grenade without having to worry about simultaneously hitting a robot between the eyes.

As the spaceman strode forward through fairly standard alien landscapes, sometimes awkwardly switching from a straight run to a diagonal slant, enemies of all sorts hurled themselves at his squad. In one shockingly abrupt exchange, the spaceman's NPC teammates utterly decimated the opposing enemies before he had even fired a shot. "Wow," Garriot said, "That was the fastest they've been taken out all day." Flying enemies cruised in from above, exposing weaknesses in their defenses. Friendly dropships flew overhead, making fast touchdowns off in the distance. Immersion through chaos was clearly the objective, and to that end, the liberal use of NPCs lent a lot to the epic feel to the world.

When the spaceman reached the entrance of the facility, a giant mechanical walker leapt down from above, blocking his path. "This is a Juggernaut," Garriott said, as the Metal Gear-style beast began to issue forth an impressive barrage, raining rockets down from the sky. "You can actually dodge those," Garriott noted, as the demonstrator switched out his rifle for a rocket launcher of his own. This is an RPG?

"It's still an RPG," Garriott pleaded, over and over throughout the demonstration. He seemed to be afraid that some sad, senile reporter would go home and actually write it up as the next Tomb Raider. In defense of this poor, hypothetical man, Tabula Rasa could indeed be mistaken as a third-person action game at a casual glance. This is due in large part to the streamlined user interface. While most titles in the genre fill the lower portion of the screen with a myriad of menu bars and hotkey buttons, the only permanent interface consists of a couple discreet boxes, which display the left and right mouse-button bindings. These boxes can be expanded on the fly, allowing you to efficiently change your equipped weapons and powers.

The game is indeed an RPG, as Garriott was happy to prove by opening up multiple character-related windows. "I actually have the highest level character of any NCsoft employee," he boasted, noting that the current level cap is set to 50. "It took me a couple of months to get this far," he said, after revealing that he had only reached level 26.

Once inside the research facility, cooperation becomes paramount, as computer consoles can be accessed and enemy systems such as security cameras can be taken under your control. The game will feature integrated voice chat, enabling players to quickly communicate. Garriott brought up a scenario wherein one player could stay behind and relay important information to the others by utilizing cameras. A short time later, a robot with a shield projected around itself ambled toward the spaceman, prompting Garriott to explain how a human teammate would be required to spontaneously risk his life by running through the shield in order to disable it.

After routinely demonstrating the advantage of long-range weapons while pummeling the facility nexus, the team shifted gears by briefly showing off a small portion of the other major component of the game: The Battlefields. These wide-open spaces will feature multiple linked control points, which will interact with each other much like the flags do in a round of Battlefield 1942. When a point goes down, installations that are linked to it will be disabled. This will impact spawn points and battlefield facilities, as well as the availability of instance missions. As with the instances, NPC soldiers will fight alongside players, although under battlefield conditions they will eventually develop strategies in order to take strongpoints. "The game is constantly playing itself even when people aren't in it," Garriott explained, noting that the Bane naturally have the edge until players get involved. It was difficult to get a sense of how robust these zones would be, but the potential for epic battles was very clear.

With no formal character classes, Tabula Rasa instead features a branching skill tree, which affords players the ability to specialize in particular areas. In addition, the save system is more akin to a single-player game, in that your character's state can be "cloned" multiple times (sixteen as of the current build, although Garriott noted this was an arbitrary number and likely to change). This addresses a major complaint of many MMOs, in that exploring different character classes requires a major time investment. In Tabula Rasa, players can clone their characters before each level of skill advancement, thereby allowing them to spawn several characters that could branch off in multiple skill directions from that point on.

Garriott seemed most proud of the fictional backstory that has been crafted for the alien world. In what he described as a "Tolkien-esque" approach to story, an entire pictographic language has been designed for the alien culture, in which "Logos" graphics are combined to form actual phrases. Players can collect Logos, learning their meanings as they progress through the game. Garriott showed us one location that featured a massive aged tree with dozens of Logos imprinted upon its bark, explaining that they described the history of the alien world, and that a player could eventually come back and decipher the glyphs themselves. These Logos also factor into the gameplay, providing the player with magical effects, which Garriott likened to "Force powers."

Plenty of developers are currently trying to chip away at the Blizzard behemoth, often beginning a phrase with a thinly veiled jab, such as, "Unlike some games..." In this instance, Garriott is justified in punctuating the game's distinctions. Tabula Rasa is anything but a World of Warcraft clone, and genuinely attempts to offer up a new experience within the rapidly bloating MMO genre. Set for release this fall, Garriott hopes to include "thousands" more into the closed beta in the coming months, as well as holding an open beta prior to launch.