Slitherine recently gave us a look at the gameplay from their upcoming Terminator Dark Fate Defiance title. They provided what looked like a full mission, as well as some other details about the game. They even answered a few fan questions live on stream. I enjoyed most of the movies, and that dark, post apocalyptic setting draws me in. Since I’m excited for the game, I took some notes during the stream. I’m going to share some of the highlights with you below.

Terminator Dark Fate Defiance is an RTS set in the American southwest between the rise Skynet and the ‘future’ shown in the movies. You will be playing as ‘The Movement’ which is one of many human resistance cells. Overall the gameplay looks a lot like Broken Arrow or Steel Division. There is no base building, which is my favorite kind of RTS. You can customize your units’ loadout between missions, which allows for some pretty unique playstyles.

It offers a lot of tactical gameplay like Starship Troopers Terran Command. You can garrison buildings with infantry, elevation and cover matter, and you will have to plan for logistics. Your units will need to be resupplied with ammo, so keep those supply lines clear for long battles. There will be a tactical pause to help you manage everything too. Once the battles are over, you can ‘scavenge’ the battlefield after each mission, or choose not to. This will lead to different equipment to add to your soldiers’ loadout or resources in general.

Terminator Dark Fate Defiance includes some RPG elements. There will be certain ‘named’ NPCs throughout the campaign that have unique abilities. The character they showed in the preview was a ‘sniper’ (I totally missed his name) that could hack The Machines’ vehicles. This forced it to attack other Machine units, but there was no direct control of it. These characters you meet in game can actually die, and it will impact your campaign. Gives it a bit of a Game of Thrones feel. It’s also possible for you to never meet some characters, so there are a lot of possible outcomes. You can also choose whether to ally with different factions to share technology, or not, and both will provide different benefits. Allying with a faction will increase the types of units you will be able to recruit between missions.

They also confirmed a multiplayer mode. This includes 1v1 and 2v2 modes, both PvP and skirmish. There will be three factions in multiplayers, The Movement (civilian resistance cell), The Founders (remnants of the US military), and of course the Machines.

There were a few other extras that I thought were interesting from the viewer submitted questions:

• The artillery in game will automatically switch to the best ammo type based on the target.
• The Air Support unit for the mission was an AD-2/AD-4 plane, though they said there were other air strike types. (We all want that big, beautiful BRRRRRT)
• There will be Steam achievements

Slitherine has been spreading their wings from historical strategy games lately, and digging into other IPs like Starship Troopers and Stargate. We’ll see how well a Terminator game does very soon, because they announced a release date of winter 2023 for Terminator Dark Fate Defiance. This means we’ll be crushing the machines by Christmas. Here’s hoping this game doesn’t turn on its creators. Or its players.