Other highlights from the presentation:

•  Orbital bombardment beacon – Basically a satellite-based laser strike that wipes out enemies in the area and even sort of melts the terrain in the immediate area. A horrible splendor to behold indeed.
•  Hive Tyrants – The ultimate hive mind channeller. Controls an entire planet of Tyranids. Very hard to kill, hard to replace and if you manage it you deal a serious blow to the Tyranid invasion.
•  Better gear can be picked up along the way through each battle.
•  Unit level ups – As you invest points in certain areas you begin unlocking further skills that allow your units to do more damage in melee or ranged, more health or more energy. Examples include: Battle lust (gain 25 energy every time you hit a guy), Surge (like a rhino charge, knocks enemies back). Each unit has totally different skills and you will have to choose your own way to play. But you can always go back and play again a different way so it offers some replayability.
•  You are in charge – You decide the battles to fight, the planets to defend and where to go. Your course of action decides what other things get activated or unlocked and drives the story.

Having played the original and been disappointed I am happy to see them coming back for more with a bigger, better mentality.

Set for spring next year on the PC the game looks really good. There are numerous graphical improvements over the previous titles and even I was impressed.

The number of missions you see depends on what you do. Every campaign could be different based on missions chosen. The missions are far shorter than hour and a half like they were last time. Now they are making the missions more manageable and they are now quick range from 10 to 30 minutes allowing you to pick up and play, stop and save and come back and not be totally lost. Total number of missions and planets was not disclosed but it looks to be far bigger than anything previous and will most likely have future add-ons.

They are talking about multiplayer and factions coming back from the previous games but didn’t want to tell us anything except that there will be co-op in the campaign and the drop-in/drop-out is really mission based now so you can play 3 missions with one person and when they have to go you can have someone else drop in the next mission or next 5 and play.

They did not say anything about competitive multiplayer but they had that look on their faces like there might be some news coming in the near future on it. Overall this title has re-energized my flagging interest in the franchise and I will be keeping an eye on it as much as possible.