Unreal II

The game begins with a small shuttle dropping out of the hold of a big ship. The smaller shuttle flies down to an Earth-like world, complete with a moving cloud layer. Passing through the atmosphere, it flies over an alien ocean before touching down on an island. The craft is carrying Marshal John Dalton to a meeting with Commander Hawkins.

Dalton, your character in the game, is ticked off that he's been drummed out of the marines and has come to ask for reinstatement. Hawkins still can't make any headway along those lines and tells Dalton to resign himself to his new role in the Terran Colonial Authority, Hawkins' euphemism for "babysitting the ass-end of nowhere." The job of the TCA is patrolling between the planets of the frontier where numerous terraforming, mining and even vacationing operations are running. At this point, you can control of Dalton and can proceed to training or straight to your first mission.

Through the course of the story the various subplots of characters are brought together and resolved (at least somewhat) within the context of the missions. Not much actually takes place during the missions and the player has almost no control over the shape of the story, but it's still very well integrated into the overall presentation. It's too bad for the preview that so much has to be kept under wraps in order to preserve the full impact of some of the stories.