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Magic in the Hyborian World

Part Two of Two

To me, I can’t imagine how cool it will be to be sent straight to hell and have to fight my way back up again in order to continue living. Jorgen was tight-lipped about the whole scenario.

“We’re not releasing any screenshots or much info about that part of the game,” Jorgen said. “This is one of those areas that we want to keep secret from the public. When they experience hell for the first time, we want them to really feel the emotion of the place.”

Even with the threat (or temptation) of hell set before them, many characters will feel a draw to the spellcasters. These men and women can summon demons, raise the dead, heal the living, and call thunder from the sky. But do the spell effects live up to the threatening menace of these characters?

While I didn’t see any spellcasters being played (Jorgen was playing a Cimmerian melee-combatant), there were a few spellcasters among the enemies he was fighting. Even though these mobs were very low in level, there spells looked amazing and took full advantage of DirectX 10. There weren’t many effects, so I can’t report how they might look as a whole…but nothing in the Conan game has been hard on the eye.

Finally, I put a question before Jorgen that had been burning in my mind: Would spellcasters get the same sort of bonuses from a formation that melee combatants would logically receive.

The answer was a resounding yes.

“These formation are not just for squad warfare on the PvP battlefield and therefore are not simply for melee-based combatants,” Jorgen said. “Characters in formation might receive stat buffs and using formations in PvE dungeons is almost essential. You want your casters in the back of the pack, yes?”

I agreed with that logic and tied that to another question. “The press has seen a lot of content and video focusing on the cool animations and highly active melee combat you’ve programmed into the game,” I said. “Will magic and ranged combatants have the same sort of active play style and accessible action that the sword-swingers will?”

“Of course,” Jorgen said. “The ranged combat will function similar to an FPS in style, with a need to point-and-click at their targets in order to hit them. Magic users will need to think tactically as well…do they need to weave these spells together for the extra damage/healing, or will that backfire and end up hurting them in the end? It’s certainly not a click-and-wait approach.”

While magic is a necessary part of the Conan world, melee combat is almost essential. Continue reading to see what Funcom has in store for the melee combatant.

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