How much of a role will John Patrick Lowrie play

He had a powerful voice inbetween missions with his narrative on TA. So if there is no singleplayer, will his voice acting be limited just for a cinematic trailer? Or will he be your personal secretary, issuing statements like "Your enemy is attacking your base", and "An asteroid is on a collision course, consider login out before its too late"

his voice really would fit quite nice for things like "commander under attack" imho.

I wonder if they'll add a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour into the game as well.

Similar to Dungeon Keeper 2, you would have John say random things from time to time such as
"The inferior tribal natives of this planet worship the commander as a God"

Love it.

Yeah. John has always been "the Total Annihilation narrator guy" to me. I think it's awesome that he's participating in Planetary Annihilation. Hopefully there's an awesome starting cinematic narrated by him, that Cavedog flag will live on in my memories forever.

"Commander under attack" and "strategic launch detected", and maybe "incoming asteroid"?

He should just constantly be reading I, Robot aloud in the background.

His voice alone made me want to destroy planets! You gotta love that guy!