The game is set in the 22nd Century. The player is Marcus Cromwell, a famed
spacecraft captain whose father, Richard Cromwell, the first spaceborn human,
captained the colony ship Noah's Ark through a wormhole near Mars that was
presumed destroyed when the wormhole collapsed. Cromwell sets out on the
SpaceTech heavy corvette, the Stiletto, for Jupiter.

In each of the game's missions, the player is given a small number of large
space ships (always less than ten, and sometimes just one or two), along with
accompanying fighters and bombers. The ships are large and cumbersome, and the
battles between fleets protracted, giving the game a noted cinematic feel.[1]
Nexus uses the Blacksun Engine, made specifically for the game. Based on
DirectX 9, it makes extensive use of vertex and pixel shaders, a parametric
particle system, and other visual effects.