Blizzard's console game centres the action on a single hero. You play as Nova, a female Ghost with psionic abilities. She is psionically and physically trained, giving her a range of abilities to use strategically. The combination of her abilities gives her more information about her surroundings and more weapons to use. The areas are large finding everything in a level involves a lot of exploration. There are multiple goals and several paths you can take to complete a level, with different rewards depending on how you choose to progress and how deeply you explore.

One important feature is a visibility meter that shows how easily you can be seen. The amount of movement and noise you make increases your visibility while cloaking and crouching, and environmental conditions such as standing in a waterfall decreases it. The cloaking ability uses up energy, which is limited. Energy and life meters are also visible on-screen and can be refilled.

Enemy units have different alert states; if they notice a disturbance, they will march and look around the area more carefully. The unit will return to its normal pattern after a while if you stay hidden.

Other units will also be introduced, such as the Vindicator, a Protoss unit that can throw psi energy. The units have different levels of Ghost, such as a Terran security officer, with less armour and weapons than a Terran Marine, who is more equipped. The units have some weak points, and sniping at these from a distance is usually the best way to kill them.

There are several enemy terrains to traverse. Early on is Mar-sara Infestation. This is the area where the Zerg, the main biological terrorists, first landed. It is an industrial area made up of large metal structures that you can climb. Aiur Siege is the home world of the Protoss. This area is grassy and has rocks and water. Then, Char Harvest is set inside the planet, with caves and rock areas submerged in lava.

The game does not use a keycard system to access areas, but requires you to play mini-games to complete. These begin as simple “hacking” type games where a digit in a stream of falling 1s and 0s has to be changed to correct the access code, becoming more difficult later on.

The finished game will have over thirty levels, with different environments for multiplayer. Online capabilities are expected to be the same for each console and will be used at least for updates.