29 Years Later, ‘Starship Troopers’ Will get An Immersive Resurrection

While Robert Heinlein’s authentic 1959 novel is a wildly influential (and wildly controversial) foundational textual content for up to date science fiction, it’s unimaginable to think about Starship Troopers and never take into consideration Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 satirical basic. Even although it was a business disappointment and was misrepresented on the time as endorsing the very fascism it was meant to be critiquing, that hasn’t stopped it from turning into a beloved cult basic and one of many director’s most pressing and prescient movies, rivaled solely by the unique Robocop. The film was chargeable for two live-action sequels, two animated movies, and a bunch of video video games, each impressed by the collection and immediately set within the universe, together with the upcoming retro-shooter Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War.

In an interview with Inverse, Anthony O’Neil and Jack Chapman — the producer and stage designer, respectively — mentioned what it was like attempting to make a recreation that match inside the legacy of Starship Troopers, and making one thing that honored the world crafted by the cinematic depiction. “I’ve always been a massive fan of Starship Troopers,” O’Neil explains. “It was one of those films that I was definitely too young to watch, but I took gleeful joy in going to my friend’s house with more relaxed parents and watching it without my parents’ permission. It’s always had a bit of a soft spot in my heart.”

It’s a sentiment that Chapman echoes: “It was actually one of the first DVDs I ever had.” The appreciation for the collection extends all through Auroch Digital’s growth workforce, whose earlier recreation, Boltgun was set on the planet of Warhammer 40K, and like Ultimate Bug War, was labored on by individuals who already had an attachment to the IP. “There tends to be a fairly small demographic of people who love Warhammer and love Starship Troopers as well,” says O’Neil.

Their love interprets right into a recreation that matches like a puzzle piece proper into the world of Starship Troopers, particularly the cinematic canon and most immediately from the primary movie. “I think it was very clear from the start that the most recognizable aspect of Starship Troopers is the first film,” O’Neil tells Inverse. “Our focus was on using the first film as our primary reference, and basically everything we’ve built has been taken from that.”

While utilizing Verhoeven’s 1997 authentic as the muse, Auroch additionally took inspiration from the sequels as nicely. “At the start of the project, one of the first things our lead designer did was watch through all three of the cinematic films and just point down every little thing we could possibly take,” O’Neil continues.

While issues just like the Warrior Bugs and the Morita Rifle are iconic pictures from the primary film that seem in-game, one of many huge inclusions from the sequels is the mech fits, an enormous a part of Heinlein’s novel that didn’t seem till the later movie installments. “Obviously, we steer clear from the books, but when they introduced the heavy mech suit from the original source material, that was a big thing,” says Chapman. “That was a really good challenge for the team, to present something that didn’t appear in the film, but we made something that, if you squint, definitely would belong in the film somewhere.”

Another problem for the workforce was establishing the place within the timeline the sport would happen, with O’Neil explaining that ultimately they determined to set it concurrently with the unique movie. The recreation’s lead, Sammy, is “doing her training around the same time Rico is. They both go to Klendathu and experience the Klendathu drop. And then whilst Rico is off in his healing tank, Sammy’s off having her experience of Zegema Beach.”

All of that is conveyed via the identical FMV-style propaganda vignettes as the unique movie, which embrace Rico’s authentic actor, Casper Van Dien, an inclusion that required accounting for his age. “We had to say, okay, we’re going to set the FMVs several years after, and it’s going to be them looking back at their experiences during that first Bug War.”

While the workforce at Auroch made certain to create a recreation that was aesthetically recognizable and firmly rooted within the worldbuilding of the movie, additionally they made certain to duplicate one other essential facet of its longevity: Verhoeven’s satire of jingoism and navy authoritarianism. In O’Neil’s phrases, “if the original film was created by the Federation as a recruitment tool, then our game was also going to be made by the Federation as a recruitment tool.”

That metatextual framing was essential, and so was preserving the self-seriousness that makes the satire so efficient. “The way we did it is saying, no, no, everything is completely straight. Our main character absolutely believes everything she’s doing is correct and that everything is being done the right way. But when you take a step back and realize, oh wait, no, I just threw a nuke at my own team and blew them up and nothing happens, for us, that’s when the satire comes in.”

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War releases on March sixteenth, 2026 for PC (Steam, GOG), PlayStation 5 (PS5), Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.