After scratching my Command and Conquer itch, Tempest Rising comes for Starcraft by making its 'secret' third faction suddenly playable

I was already looking forward to new Tempest Rising update Superior Firepower, which introduces highly requested superweapons to 2025's strongest Command and Conquer spiritual successor. But developer Slipgate Ironworks has gone one step further, sneaking in something even more exciting: a third playable faction. That's right, the Veti are finally in our hands courtesy of the public test branch for one of the best RTS games of the year, and we've got two full weeks to test them out and offer feedback.

The Veti are the 'secret' third Tempest Rising faction that makes an appearance midway through the campaign. In true Starcraft fashion, they're an ancient, technologically advanced alien civilization that previously wielded the Tempest to subjugate humanity, before seemingly vanishing underground thousands of years ago after an uprising. Slipgate made the decision to not include them as a playable option for launch to focus on "the highest quality possible" for day one, but now they're here.

Anyone who owns Tempest Rising is now able to test the Veti in skirmish, custom games, and quickplay multiplayer through the game's public test branch. They play very differently from the GDF and Tempest Dynasty, making use of enemy enthrallment and holy sacrifice to power their forces. Their current offering includes nine buildings, seven vehicles, six infantry units, five air units, five defensive structures, and five specialists.

Rather than hacking up the Tempest and leaving dead ground in its wake, the Veti use Refinement Altars, which are built directly onto it to harvest credits without needing to directly consume it. Enemies that are weakened can be dominated and turned into 'Enlightened' thralls that can then be sacrificed to empower the Veti's troops and abilities.

Construction, upgrades, and expansion are handled by a flying unit called the Caretaker. This can enable a build radius underneath its current location, and then place down Ascension Anchors that will consume Enlightened to upgrade and buff nearby structures. As such, you'll have to decide whether you sacrifice your captured minions to grant immediate buffs in battle, or send them back to the base to be fed to the Anchors.

Naturally, the Veti also get their own superweapon to compete with those given to the GDF and Dynasty. The Sanctifier Portal "is not a weapon of conquest, but of erasure - a declaration that the ground upon which the unworthy stand is so tainted it must be scoured back to its base elements."

This is manifested by calling in the eponymous Sanctifier to a spot on the map. This "unstable avatar of pure energy" spreads a swirling field that deals AoE damage in a wide radius. Any enemies hit are immediately subjugated, preventing them from activating positive status effects, and will become Enlightened should they die under the Sanctifier's glare.

On the defensive side, the Sanctifier unit can activate an ability called 'Consume' that instantly kills all ground units (friendly or hostile) in a target area. 30% of their combined health is transmuted into healing for your glowing death orb, giving it even more sustain. All told, the Veti promise to act as a totally transformative twist to your Tempest Rising tactics, and I'm eager to get my hands on them.

The Tempest Rising Veti multiplayer test is live on the public test branch right now and ends on Monday December 15. You can access it from a multiplayer test branch enabled via the betas section of the game's Steam properties menu.

Of course, that's far from everything; the Tempest Rising Superior Firepower update is also live in the full game now and has both of the previously teased superweapons, a new global production queue, an extensive in-game codex, and a range of balance updates. The GDF are getting a boost to early-game aggression with slightly lowered power later on, while the Dynasty gets adjustments in the opposite direction, including the ability for its Salvage Aura to generate credits based on damage dealt to opponents.