The new engine has a complete free-floating camera, providing both zoomed out overhead views as well as closer in 3D looks and even a camera lock that can be applied to any individual unit, creating a first-person point of view. The camera can move around in 360 degrees of freedom.

The game will play like most real-time strategy games, with a point and click interface to guide your troops onto the attack. The focus however is on tactics and combat, though, so there is no base-building or resource-gathering. There will be bases in the game that you'll need to either attack or defend, but these will be hand-built by the map designers and part of the terrain, more or less.

You start the game on the Imperial side and once you win you can go back and play as the Rebels. Single player gameplay is spread over 25 missions, while multiplayer (up to four players on a network or the Internet) has 40 missions, though some maps are duplicates from the single player game. The game will span many well-known Star Wars planets, including Yavin, Hoth, and Tatooine.

LucasArts has also added new units to round the combat vehicles of both sides--we saw both rebel tanks and the AT-AA, an Imperial antiaircraft device, in action.

And yes, the snow speeders can lasso the bad guys, twisting up the Walkers with cables and causing them to collapse. A Direct3D compliant 3D card is recommended but a software-only mode will also be available.

No firm release date has yet been set for what will probably be the last game from LucasArts covering Star Wars: Episodes IV-VI for some time.