The Temple of Elemental Evil Preview

How long has it been since you've played a good old-fashioned CRPG? Fortunately for all you computer game role-players, there are a few solid projects on the horizon. One of these games is The Temple of Elemental Evil - A Classic Greyhawk Adventure. This is an RPG title, coming to you straight from Troika Games - a team of creative designers and programmers who were responsible for the excellent and widely acclaimed RPG Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. You should also know that certain members of Troika have worked on the popular Fallout series. With such a reputable developer behind the project, and judging from the playable demo we've tried out at the E3, there's no doubt that we'll soon have a first-rate RPG on our hands.

The whole project is, in fact, based on the long-standing classic pen-and-paper adventure, The Temple of Elemental Evil module, created by Gary Gygax back in the 80's. Tim Cain, Project Leader and Lead Designer of The Temple of Elemental Evil - the game, claims he is a great fan of Gary's work. He also said that he was playing the game when Infogrames (now known as Atari) offered him to work on a PC RPG. Tim emphasized many times over that the development team worked hard to combine standard CRPG features with essential D&D 3rd Edition rules. As it happens, The Temple of Elemental Evil is the first PC game that utilizes the new Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition rule set. Essentially, this recently launched rule set includes classic D&D regulations; except this time they were slightly simplified and re-designed to work better in CRPG's.

Set in the world of Greyhawk, your characters begin their journey outside a village called, Hommlet. The people of this humble little place have been intimidated for a long time by pillagers and bandits, who are rumored to be connected with a terrifying evil. These rumors would seem futile if the plundering and terror didn't arise in a region that already has an ancient mystery tied to it. Hommlet is actually located in a shire called Nulb, where a ruthless cult once held sway over the unfortunate populace. The cult was lead by a pitiless demoness, who was obsessed with exploring elemental forms of pure evil. Eventually, many a warrior rose to fight this oppression and the cult was defeated and cast into oblivion... It is up to you and your group of adventurers to discover if the bandits have somehow stirred up this ancient evil and its minions.

Obviously, the tumultuous history of the Realm of Greyhawk is a perfect setting for a fantasy-themed RPG. The amount of characters, classes, skills, spells, feats, dialogues, NPC's, and quests is staggering, and will surely appeal to hardcore role-players. Since the game incorporates the complexity of the D&D 3.5 edition rule set into a CRPG, the whole interface was designed with simplicity and intuitiveness in mind, to make the transition as smooth as possible. Judging from what we've played, this works pretty well. All the spells, special combat abilities, and other features are easily accessible and right at your finger tips. Spells and special abilities are stretched out in a circular-shaped pop-up menu and all laid out in text descriptions (as opposed to having to memorize countless tiny icons). In addition to that, the game also allows players to view the precise range of a particular spell they intend to cast and which enemies the spell can have effect on. Initially, it was revealed that your characters will have over 250 spells available by the time they reach level 10; which, incidentally, is the top level in the game - you cannot level up beyond that. This was a rather commendable idea since it would be almost impossible to handle more than 250 spells in a single game. Wait, did I say impossible? Guess again. It might interest you to know that the game now features more than 300 different spells for players to cast! In the end, such a huge number of spells is understandable, in view of the fact that you'll come up against 90 unique monsters, all of which were endowed with specific abilities and magic immunities.

Players will have a lot to do throughout the entire game, as they head out on various quests. The best part is that all quests have multiple starting points and multiple endings. Designing games with multiple non-linear paths and alternative quest endings has always been a distinguishing trademark of Troika's work - next to thorough dialogs and an in-depth overall design. Besides the regular challenges and events that are tied into the main story, The Temple of Elemental Evil will have over 50 sidequests to complete. That sounds like a lot, now doesn't it? According to the developers, the game is estimated to offer players somewhere between 30 and 60 hours of gameplay - depending, of course, on your style of play and how fast you progress through the game.

Well, now that we've gotten some of the key features out of the way, it's time to get deeper into the gameplay. To begin with, gamers will be presented with a huge choice of characters to head into battle with. As in any RPG, the choice of character class significantly influences the way your group handles itself in combat. During your ventures throughout the Realms of Greyhawk, you'll find that your characters react differently to the environment, NPC's, and foes they encounter. In accordance with their nature, characters might respond or refuse orders. Also, mixing characters can sometimes prove difficult if the classes are not within the same alignment (you know, lawful good, lawful evil, chaotic good, chaotic evil, true neutral, etc.). Seeing as the gameplay is group-oriented, it's necessary to keep a constant eye on such issues. Another positive side of this game is that your alignment depends greatly on the choices you make. You might begin playing with the best intentions, leading a group of characters that are all good or neutral in essence. Later on, something might occur in the game that changes the orientation of your company, which in turn may cause conflict between the characters or with some of the NPC's. By taking the right course of action or dialogue you can often avoid conflict altogether. And yet, if you prefer a more aggressive approach, it will be possible to pick a fight every step of the way. The choice is yours.

Controls are very simple. Your characters move about in real-time and have the freedom to roam around the environment in all directions. Dispersing characters and setting up formations will be carried out through a 5x6 grid. This comes out as very effective and intuitive way to simultaneously handle multiple characters. A most welcomed feature is that characters remain in a specific formation you have outlined, which makes movement easier, and can give you a tactical advantage in certain combat situations. The game pauses once in battle mode, so you'll have plenty of time to issue commands and act according to the intricate set of the D&D rules. The developers have included an interface feature that makes combat a lot easier. There's a bar on the left side of the screen, which helps you determine whether the action you take is a full round action or a partial action, allowing you to do more with your turn. Green means you can still do something else, like make an additional move, yellow means that you can do no more for that round, and red means that you can't complete that action in a round. (Thanks for the heads-up, Franko!)

It's no surprise that the game uses isometric graphics. This is, by all accounts, a great advantage, considering Troika's experience with that kind of technique (i.e. their involvement with the Fallout series and Arcanum). Although slightly outdated, the isometric view always proves ideal for complex and intricate gameplay mechanics of RPG's. In any case, we were pleased to have seen such a huge variety of colorful visual effects that are achieved through dynamic lighting, solid particle effects, and realistic fog and smoke. The game will be taking us through an amazing variety of unique-looking environments (check out the trailer and screenshot gallery). Also, I think you'll agree that character art and model design is a very important aspect of any RPG. From what we've seen, characters were precisely drawn, well-animated, and then transferred into the game with meticulousness and great skill (courtesy of lead artist Mike McCarthy and lead designer Tim Cain, and of course the rest of the creative team at Troika).

As Troika Games showed in the past, they are quite capable of crafting a game that's agreeable to both CRPG fans and hardcore D&D role-players. In general, The Temple of Elemental Evil is a title all gamers should look forward to. This is Troika's first party-based game, but given their repute, it's safe to say they are up to the challenge.

On a further note, this game may not be the only project in the pipeline for Troika Games. Recent reports have indicated that if all goes well with The Temple of Elemental Evil, Troika may begin work on a remake of another Dungeons & Dragons classic - Against the Giants. Still, we'll have to wait a bit longer to find out more about that one. For the time being we turn our eyes to TToEE, which is due out this October.