Sacrifice Preview

OK, I know, you don't want to hear about E3 any more... Well, that's all fine and grand, but I feel I really need to dish out a couple of comments that have been lingering in my head for quite a while.

Fire, fire!

Same skies, but no fire!

First of all, I couldn't believe the relatively low amount of publicity Sacrifice got from the media at E3 (personal opinion here, based on personal observations). Everybody was talking about Halo and Black and White, and as I waited and waited to hear some words of recognition for Sacrifice, to my surprise, no awards were mentioned... The reasons are definitely something I cannot ponder on, because quite frankly, I do not know all the facts, but from a pure gamer's standpoint of view I must say that I found myself revisiting the Interplay's private demo booth very often...

So Messiah wasn't the grand success, everybody expected it to be... It was a little to late to save the world, or at least add to Shiny's rising, and steady game developing reputation. Why? Manny reasons, mostly because it was so late in development. The technology that was promised as revolutionary turned out to be only slightly revolutionary with a whole slew of bugs and errors that almost made the game unplayable (talking about the out of the box experience). Many gamers felt that Dave Perry and the gang didn't deliver on this one. Shiny's reputation took a blow, especially in the eyes of the younger crowd that wasn't familiar with some of their earlier achievements. Shiny will be Shiny though... They are going to keep dishing out their unique art style concepts, and they're going to keep producing games with their unique signature. Eventually, if the schedules don't kill the production, they are going to launch another hit game.

Just about at the time Messiah was released Dave Perry made the big announcement --- an RTS/RPG hybrid simply known as "Sacrifice". The game was supposed to have its big promotion at E3 2000, showing all the innovation the team has made since Messiah. It was announced as an RTS/RPG hybrid, and although that is partially true, after seeing the game I got the impression that it was in its essence a heavily action-oriented title with a 3D RTS strategy interface, and some RPG elements... The RPG elements are a nice addition (i.e. 50 or more spells), but they certainly don't represent the focal point of the gameplay. Maybe the best way to describe Sacrifice came from the lead man himself --- Dave Perry explained it as "...playing a 3D RTS from Caesars standpoint of view..." The question is how did the whole Caesar idea come about.

We All Need To Make A Few Sacrifices!

It has been known from the dawn of times that human race is nothing more, but a mere tool for (the many?) Gods that exist out there. The common way for mortals to communicate with Gods, and show their everlasting appreciation is to make Sacrifices. It's just like your local boot camp. You make Sacrifices and you improve in rank, get more spells and all that stuff...

In Sacrifice, players control a wizard and battles up to 4 other wizards in various landscapes ruled by Five Gods. These landscapes are vast, floating islands, whose composition and architecture are defined by the Gods themselves (Ed. note - Shiny made a fantastic and intuitive level editor that will let player play God). The wizards can cast spells to summon creatures to fight for them or simply opt to destroy their opponents and their creatures using attack magic in the form of over 50 different spells. It is even possible to cast spells that harness the elements to alter the landscape or the weather system, plunging your opponents into a newly created canyon, or blasting them with a bolt of highly charged lightning. The only rule is that if your Altar (i.e. home base) is destroyed, then your game is over.

So, what you have are fantastic special effects in the form of many incredible landscape-deforming and weather-altering spells. You also have your classical chess setting where the wizard is the queen, able to strike at the foe vigorously, and the Altar is the passive, but pivotal piece of the match (i.e. the king). Just like in Black and White, the concept of pleasing your Gods and acquiring more energy plays an important role in the gameplay.

Wizards falling from the sky...

What the hell is this anyway?

The Art of Sacrifice...

You've probably read all about how Sacrifice will feature several different categories of creatures, unique in their appearance and (magical) abilities. Not only will it feature many different creatures, the amazing thing is you will be able to have a huge number of them on-screen at one time. Because of Sacrifice's full-3D world, and an efficient dynamic level of detail engine feature, the player will be able to lead large numbers of units, creating epical scenes of battles with decent frame rates. The engine intelligently renders simpler models depending on the unit's position relative to the player's viewpoint. Add to that your wizard's ability to cast weather and terrain altering spells, and what you get are truly massive scenes of chaos and destruction with relatively high framerate. I particularly remember looking at the sky while the large pieces of hot magma were flying all around the landscape, killing units and wrecking havoc across the battleground. I know the game was running on a big screen/NV15 setup, but it truly looked like something out of Gladiator (the scene in Germania) or Ben Hur (naval battles)... Joby Otero --- Shiny's art director has done an amazing job in creating a fairly abstract world, that is still enormously fun to gaze at during gameplay. The creatures are unlike your "usual, steel-plated RTS units", and after seeing the first screenshots; I must say I was a bit skeptical about the actual in-game implementation. After getting to play the game for a while I realized that the whole experience is much more personal, and that the game almost seems like a 3rd person action with strategy elements. Therefore, the player can see the units in much more detail, see all the neat stuff the artists have added to the design, and fully appreciate the fantasy theme of the game. Besides the usual role-playing elements, the art style, in a sense ads a lot of RPG feeling to the game...

I remember asking Joby, a single question about his work - how in the hell do you come up with all this stuff? He just said that people do not realize what he's trying to do until the pieces come together. Then they go - oh yeah, now I get it! It's "all in the head", but once it becomes "alive" on the screen, it sure as hell looks stunning and it borders with the "comic book-bizarre" style we would expect from Shiny. It's pointless to talk about the eye-candy... The best way to get "the big picture" is to gaze at our 10 exclusive

What About The Gameplay?

As I said earlier, Sacrifice is a true mix, and a unique approach to what is essentially an action-strategy with RPG elements. The thing I was worried about, just looking at the game, was the fact that the game is in full 3D, and that it seems to require a lot of button pushing before you can get comfortable with the controls. Dave, was trying to emphasize that that certainly wasn't the case, and that the team has been playing Sacrifice in multiplayer with fun and ease for quite some time. It seemed unlikely until I finally set down to play it for myself. There are many spells, and the interface has some elements that require a certain time to adjust to, but the basic unit command works excellent. An on-screen pop-up window in which the player controls the unit formations is so intuitive that after a while of playing you won't even see it there. The player will learn the basic mouse moves for all the formations, and the unit control will become a breeze. Combined with the excellent tactical maps, even the units that are out of sight or far away will be easily accessible. The view of the action doesn't follow the bird's eye model that the RTS players are accustomed to. Due to the "Caesar factor" of the gameplay the player will feel like a commander leading his army into the battle; much more a part of the action than your conventional RTS commander. Steady frame rates largely affect the gameplay, making the unit formations option an invaluable part of success. The more units you have the more important the strategy elements of the game become. The terrain of course plays an important role, providing strategic locations for unit placement.

After having a few goes at Sacrifice, I'm sure the gameplay will be fluent and addictive. The interface passed the test, and the usual problems of 3D implementation in RTS-like games seem to be taken care of. The engine is powerful enough, and combined with a truly exceptional artwork, Sacrifice is by all accounts set to be one of my favorites...

I'm now kind of curious to know, what will Shiny's next project, that hard-core action game going to be like... I'm expecting good things from the fellas in the future...