LucusArts are known mostly for their work on Star Wars themed games, so this new announcement may come as shock to you when you learn that they are working on something that is not Star Wars. Named Fracture, LucusArts have teamed up with Day 1 Studios to bring an intriguing-sounding game onto people’s radar.

The game will throw you into the 22nd Century, in the year 2161. The game sounds like it is going to do what Red Faction did way back on the PS2, whereby you could blow up the scenery and use it to your advantage for finding a different path to the end. However, since this is the new-generation of hardware, Fracture will do it on a much grander scale, with a much grander engine to do it with.

‘Terrain Deformation’ is the technology behind the game that allows such exciting things as the following to happen:

When Briggs throws a tectonic grenade on a level battlefield, the ground blasts upward to provide access to an otherwise unreachable area. Moving on, when he comes across what appears to be an impenetrable structure, Briggs utilizes the alt-fire functionality on his rocket launcher to create enormous craters to burrow underneath the wall. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, Briggs heaves a vortex grenade, creating a swirling tornado-like mass of boulder, dirt and debris to dispatch his foes.

More screenshots are available at the official site

The game will see you play as Mason Briggs in a world where ecological and seismological disasters have torn it apart. As if that wasn’t bad enough, ideology rears its ugly head and throws that into the mix too, placing society at war. Briggs is a demolition expert who is fighting for the Atlantic Alliance that are fighting the genetically enhanced soldiers of the Pacifican army.

Other features of the game include:

• Truly next-generation gameplay — Groundbreaking terrain deformation allows players to reshape the battlefield on the fly with futuristic weaponry of the year 2161, allowing for unprecedented power, freedom and control.
• All new story and characters from the company that brought you Star Wars and Indiana Jones, as well as Mercenaries and Thrillville — Players assume the role of Mason Briggs, a demolitions expert in the mighty Atlantic Alliance army and the next great action hero.
• Plausible future conflict — As stem cell research continues to proliferate and spirals out of control, ideological differences over genetic enhancement place the player at the threshold of an epic battle of tomorrow between genetics vs. cybernetics as two powerful armies, with vastly differing tactics and advantages, square off. The battlefield will change forever.

The game is meant to be arriving in the Summer of 2008 for both the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.

Thanks to SneakySnake and nofear360 for submitting.