Sneak Peek At Morning Star Alpha: A Graphic Novel That Ties Into Upcoming iPad FPS Game

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MorningStarAlpha_2b

The folks at Industrial Toys have been busy. Their upcoming scifi first-person-shooter game continues to garner advance praise and anticipation from everyone, with good reason. The CEO of Industrial Toys is none other than Bungie (Halo) co-founder, Alex Seropian, and the team is an all-star cast of amazing talent working together to bring a core gaming experience to iPads this summer (we hope).

With all of that work in progress, the team somehow found time to make a brand new, amazing interactive graphic novel that contains not only the backstory to the game, but a ton of choices to make and characters to meet. These choices, and which characters you befriend, will have lasting effects in the actual game when it comes out later this season.

Pretty slick stuff, but the best part? This graphic novel is written by none other than John Scalzi (Old Man’s War, Redshirts) and illustrated by Mike Choi (Marvel Comics). You really need to check this thing out.

Set 120 years into our future, Morning Star Alpha tells the story of a mysterious alien signal that the Earth receives, kicking off the Morningstar Protocol, a global initiative created to respond to any alien contact. The spaceship MSRV Joplin is sent off to investigate the signal, which is found to be coming from somewhere around Saturn.

Charlie Campbell is the character we follow in the graphic novel, as he’s also the dude with the big gun in the upcoming Morning Star game. You’ll get to explore the comic book-style storyline and environments, meeting other crew members and accruing various bits of cash and collectibles, which will all filter into your Morning Star account, ready for the game when it releases. Here’s a sneak peek at the latest story video, narrated by Seropian himself.

But isn’t this just a throwaway promotional app? Don’t those usually suck? Industrial Toys president Tim Harris (Seven Lights) says, basically, hell no. “This is one of the ways we’re creating experiences endemic to mobile,” he said, “and it’s been part of the plan for the universe from the get-go.”

Artist Choi and author Scalzi have been involved in the Morning Star game development from the beginning of the process, with Choi leading visual design and Scalzi building a plausible science fictional world in which to set the action of the game.

“The graphic novel app combines the strengths of sequential art storytelling with the presentation and connectivity allowed by a tablet,” said Harris. “The game and the graphic novel are part of the same fiction ecosystem we’re building for the Morning Star universe.”

So there.

Here are seven images ripped right from Morning Star Alpha, which should see a release soon (they refuse to tell us when, dangit). You’re welcome.

Source: Industrial Toys

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