Gods, Assassins, and Dragons

I'm not really one to link to reviews or previews, but 1up is running pieces looking at three really, really interesting titles slated for next year. On the theory that at least one of these is going to interest you, I direct you to Matt Leone's look at God of War 2, Shawn Elliot's piece on Assassin's Creed, and the first preview, anywhere, of BioWare's Dragon Age. From that article: "Large-scale combat is also on the top of Greig's mind--no surprise for a game where here, one naturally assumes, there be dragons. 'Remember the cave troll fight in The Fellowship of the Ring? That's what our large creature combat is going to be like. You've got the party guys running out, one guy jumping up on the back and stabbing, the other guy ducking between the legs.' Objects in the environment can be manipulated in your bid for tactical supremacy: Knock over a table to fire arrows or shoot fireballs from behind cover, but only where it makes sense--emergence be damned, in BioWare's reckoning. 'There will be a lot of ways of going through combat, and lots of different ways to interact with the environment...but our philosophy is that handcrafted is always better than random stuff.'"

Comments

Assassins

[miscz]

I like the part where developer talks about how little we know about assassins and that they are sort of the good guys in the game. To my knowledge they were bunch of fanatical hashish addicts controlled by muslim fundamentalists that were so powerful that even Saladin was scared of them.

Re:Interesting sounding...

[Fozzyuw]

That description of combat sounds very interesting. I would really enjoy more interactive combat in combination with more manipulation of environments... but I'm going to take this hype with a grain or two of salt for now.

I agree with you. It's always a 'fantasy' to have such 'real' combat. However, I distinguish the difference between a fantasy and a dream, by that we want dreams to come true. At least that's what I tell my girlfriend. =p I kid.. I kid..

but our philosophy is that handcrafted is always better than random stuff.

As they said, games that are often 'on rails' to some extent (meaning, have direction) are often more enjoyable to gamers than just 'open ended' games. Sure, you can toss tables over to shoot fireballs, or run through legs, or whatever. But, it's an option. Instead, most people will just run to a corner to shoot and not bother. However, if the games cut-screen showed your character tossing tables for defense, it gives the gamer more excitement of action. I imagine it's also not particularly easy to design AI to fight multiple people in open-ended environments.

Cheers,
Fozzy