Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Preview

I don't know about you, but it usually takes like three or four tantalizing facts about a video game to get me excited about it. Normally, it only takes one or possibly two important facts to get me excited about a woman - one is that she is a woman, and the other that she actually willingly agrees to do it with me. Although the second fact can be deceptively relative sometimes... (But that's an entirely different argument, and one that might land me in jail (Again -Mo)). So you see that's why I'm a lot pickier about games than I am about women. That's also why I'm married to a life-sized cardboard cutout of Shakira. Hey, I never said that being a *live* woman was one of the prerequisites. (Ew. I just figured out why you insisted on moving to that apartment near the cemetery -Mo)

Back to the point though, there are several key facts about Dark Messiah of Might & Magic that make me as giddy as Smapdey standing in a poppy field.

The game is under development at Arkane Studios. Based in Lyon - France, Arkane released its first game, Arx Fatalis, in 2002. Though rough around the edges and powered by a relatively sub par technology, Arx Fatalis showed tremendous potential and was hailed by gamers as being a highly immersive RPG experience.

This brings me to the second key fact about this game: Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is powered by the Source Engine. You may have heard of it - it's the 3D code developed by Valve Software that powers Half-Life 2... Ring any bells? Yeah, I thought so. Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is a first-person RPG title, which aims to utilize to its full extent the power of the Source code and of the heavily modified Havok physics engine to create a game world, which takes the concept of immersion to a whole new level.

How does this work exactly?

Well, from what we know at this point, Dark Messiah will sacrifice some of the visual detail evident in the design of the Half-Life 2 maps in order to create a lot more open-ended environment. The key point that the developers are stressing out is that they want to give the player several ways of solving a particular problem. Not only that, they also aim to make the maps themselves a lot less linear, thus allowing more freedom in deciding how you want to approach any given situation. So where does the technology fit in? If you had played Half-Life 2, you'd know that one of the key selling points of that game (and indeed the technology behind it) was the unparalleled interactivity of the environment. You could literally hurl any rock or break any plank of wood you wanted, and this same interactivity will be applied to the world of Dark Messiah. Again, this closely ties in to the way that the character system is conceived. Essentially, there are three major classes in the game that the player can specialize in: there's the combat mage class, warrior class and the rogue class. The beauty of this system is that the way you decide to develop your character is highly flexible - through your in game actions, you can turn your character into a warrior mage, or a straight up brawler. This all depends on how you choose to handle certain in game situations. For example, you can decide to use the sanctuary of shadows and secret passages in order to silently lower yourself behind your enemy and mercilessly slit his throat with your two daggers - playing rogue style. Or you can decide to be an all-out brawler and just smash your way through a location. Finally, you can wield powerful magic, shrinking your opponents to the size of a small rodent subsequently stomping them to death, or you can create an icy surface right before their feet so that they slip and fall off the ledge and into their doom. The neat thing about this is that the highly interactive environment, courtesy of the Source engine, will allow you to hurl objects or indeed use them to your advantage to achieve your goal. In a manner of speaking, the technology is in the function of character progression.

As far as the models are concerned, all we know at this point is that you'll be fighting some really hideous looking orcs (the developers promise a lot more friends and foes from the Might & Magic universe). The ability of the Source Engine to render highly believable facial features promises NPCs with some kind of emotional depth to them, which is a must if you plan to make a first-person RPG that is truly immersive for the player. Although the environments might not be as detailed as in Half-Life 2, the use of high-dynamic-range lighting (one of the visual features Valve is using in the upcoming Lost Coast and Aftermath Half-Life 2 episodes) will successfully compensate for this lack of more visual fidelity and even go beyond the Half-Life 2 graphics in certain regards.

Finally, the technology has been put to good use in the creation of the game's combat system. As I have explained, the combat itself will depend greatly on your class. Still, even though they are tackling the problem of making melee combat look good in first-person, Arkane feels confident they are up to the task. They plan to make the combat involving by making it more tactical with a number of stances available to the player. In addition, the player will be able to choose between power swings (by holding down the mouse button), or faster swings (by simply tapping it), in addition to the kicks. At some point during the demonstration of the game at the Leipzig Games Convention, our hero thrust his sword into the orc's body and then pressed his boot into his chest to pull the blade out - pretty damn cool if you ask me (And should offer more engaging combat that Oblivion's simple click and swing system -Mo). Again, there is the aspect of wielding powerful magic. As it is evident in the movie and the screenshots that come with this preview, the players hand will glow with powerful magic as he casts it on his enemies. You will even be able to use telekinetic powers. If you prefer the melee combat, however, you'll be happy to hear that the Source engine allows such cool effects like sparks flying off the weapons as they crash into one another. Nothing major, but it certainly adds a bit of "oomph" to the clashes.

The third and final fact that makes me excited about this game is the Might & Magic universe itself. As some of you are aware, Nival is currently working on Heroes of Might & Magic 5, the long-awaited sequel to the famous turn-based strategy series (the good news is they are making the gameplay mechanics more like the ones in the legendary third game in the series). Anyway, since Dark Messiah is tentatively dated as a Summer 2006 release, it doesn't come as a huge surprise that story-wise, the game will be a continuation of the events we'll bear witness to in Heroes of Might & Magic 5. Ubisoft is the publisher behind both of the titles, so it's only logical that things play out in this manner.

Dark Messiah will feature 12 large levels and over 40 weapons and dozens of devastating spells. In the words of Arkane's Creative Director Raphael Colantonio: "It's very important that we expand and re-invent the Might and Magic universe and this is what we want to do with Dark Messiah. We aim for maximum immersion and focus on a heavily simulated game world which will generate some very cool, emergent gameplay."

Hell, this sure sounds like plenty of reasons to be excited about Dark Messiah. All I get from my wife is this blank stare that seems to follow me wherever I am in the room - come to think of it having a cardboard wife is not that different from having a real one, with the exception of the cardboard one probably bearing smarter children. Or so my daddy says.