Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance, a real-time- strategy game based on the 2019 smash hit, is due to hit Steam in Winter 2023.
Once scheduled for release in 2022, “gritty” real-time strategy title Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is now scheduled for launch this winter on Steam.
Defiance is, of course, based on the 2019 film Terminator: Dark Fate. Developed by Slitherine Software, the RTS sees players take control of three factions fighting for dominance in a post-AI, post-apocalyptic future. On the human side there are the Founders and the Resistance, and their biggest opponent is Legion – a network of worryingly powerful artificially-intelligent machines. Remember Skynet in the earlier Terminator movies? Legion is basically Dark Fate’s version of that.
Humans being feeble-minded creatures, though, rival factions of flesh bags often find themselves fighting among themselves for resources. Defiance therefore sees you leading your group of survivors in a post-Judgement Day landscape, locating supplies and new recruits, fending off attacks from other human groups, as well as mounting counter-offensives against machines bent on wiping carbon-based life off the face of the Earth.
British developer Slitherine has real pedigree when it comes to making complex strategy games based on licences; across their 22-year history, they’ve previously brought us the likes of Battlestar Galactica Dreadlock, Warhammer 40,000 Gladius – Relics of War, and Starship Troopers: Terran Command.
Announced in 2012, Defiance was originally being developed in conjunction with Russian studio Cats Who Play, but the following year saw the studio exit the project, with all work completed up to that point handed over to Slitherine. That certainly explains why the game was delayed for about a year.
Defiance is the latest in a string of tie-ins to Terminator: Dark Fate, Hollywood’s most recent – and doomed – attempt to get the Terminator franchise back on its feet. Back when the film came out in 2019, Firefly Games released Terminator Dark Fate – The Game, a free-to-play mobile RTS that was also about building armies and fighting machines.
Games based on the Terminator franchise can be iffy at times – as most tie-ins are – but here’s hoping this latest, cerebral take on the sci-fi series will succeed where the more recent movies have faltered. You can see Defiance in action in Slitherine’s recent Twitch stream.
