Bethesda has announced plans to publish Rogue Warrior, an “authentic, tactical” first-person shooter based on the best-selling book by Richard Marcinko, former U.S. Navy SEAL and founder of both SEAL Team Six and Red Cell. The game is being developed in conjunction with Zombie Studios for the PS3, PC and Xbox 360; it is scheduled for release during Fall 2007.

Rogue Warrior is a story-driven shooter that provides team-based tactical combat set in massive, contiguous levels using Unreal 3 streaming technology. Central to the game’s single and multiplayer experience is the idea of a freeform battlefield, where players are given the freedom to choose how to complete a given objective, allowing for creativity and surprises, rather than heavily scripted events and tightly contained spaces traditionally used in this genre.

An advanced AI system allows NPCs to react and fight realistically, see and hear others, and respond as a team. Rogue Warrior offers a new take on the multiplayer experience, with 10 gameplay modes and a system whereby maps are created using tiles that are selected by each team. Rogue Warrior’s tiling system allows users to experience over 200 maps in both day and nighttime settings. In addition, the campaign features solo and on-the-fly cooperative play for up to four players, where anyone can join or leave an existing campaign game at any time without having to go to menus or save progress.

In Rogue Warrior, you play Dick Marcinko, leader of an elite SEAL unit trapped behind enemy lines in North Korea on a covert mission to assess the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. When war breaks out between North and South Korea, you must try to lead your team back into South Korea while greatly outnumbered and with no support and limited resupply. Your journey will take you through a variety of never-before-seen environments inside of North Korea, including submarine pens, shipbreaker yards, prison camps, and more.

A 30-year veteran with the U.S. Navy, Dick Marcinko served in both the Underwater Demolitions Team and Navy SEAL programs, was a military attache in Cambodia, and conceived, founded, and commanded SEAL Team Six, the U.S. Navy’s first counterterrorism unit. He later created and ran Red Cell, a unit created to test the Navy’s anti-terrorist capabilities for highly-secured bases, nuclear submarines, ships, and other purported “secure areas”, including Air Force One. Dick’s experiences as a Navy SEAL were captured in his New York Times best-selling autobiography, Rogue Warrior, and his Rogue Warrior fiction series.

Three high-resolution screenshots: