by John Hoskin on Jul 12, 2007
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Daily Column New MMOG Articles at TenTonHammer Today Hot Content Real World News - You Can't Make This UpGameCock and their flamboyant ways excluded, E3 is a flaccid version of its former self. Props go to the Age of Conan crew for the dancers clad in chainmail thongs at their party, but the extravagance of yesteryear is gone. Santa Monica seems the perfect place for this nonchalant shadow of what was once the greatest gaming circus on Earth. The quiet city where streets roll up at 11pm and the good folk go to bed is a cozy home to this new, uninspiring event.
621 editions of this column. 6+2+1=9 and 9/10 is the anticipation level I have for two of the games I was able to see yesterday. Gods and Heroes continues to impress with its new take on MMO gameplay mechanics. I was also able to give Fury a hands-on test (see "beating" in the dictionary) where three of the devs took me out behind the shed and gave me a good thrashing up and down one of the battlegrounds.
Luckily for me, my first stop of the day was with SOE. It is always a pleasure to talk to Chris McKibbin, Co-Chairman and President of Perpetual Entertainment about Gods and Heroes. Chris gave us nearly 45 minutes of his time and we came away even more enthusiastic about this game that we already believe to be a winner. If you are new to GnH then pop over to our community site to get a handle on the basics. Most of my deluge below is regarding minions and not the classes and other basic aspects of the title.
In most MMOs the player connects and invests with his character because it is for all intents and purposes him in the game. Gods and Heroes throws a twist on this well worn mechanic by giving the player minions to control. Would the addition of minions detract from the players investment in the character itself? I asked Chris if he was concerned about a disconnect between the player and their investment in their character.
"A) It's a really good question and B) it's something that we thought a lot about. We thought about that a lot in the design of the game and we always want you to be associated with the hero character. The minions are things that you earn and that will then follow your commands. Minions have abilities that are additive to your player's abilities. As your character grows you can command more soldiers. As your minions level up they unlock new features, kind of like Pokemon. "
Chris pointed out that players would be much more than just "minion masters". Casual players would be able to jump in and play with the default setup, but min-maxers would be able to tweak the abilities of their minions to maximize their efficiency based on the hero being played. The addition of minions adds an almost real-time-strategy like aspect to the game that I find incredibly attractive.
The game appeared easy enough for any gamer to pick up and play, yet complex enough that a hard-core player could tweak until both their brain and their fingertips were numb. The title has been built from the start as a squad based game. It wasn't a single player game that as an afterthought had "henchmen"added to improve solo play and it shows.
"You cannot jump in and play a minion like in Dungeon Siege where you could basically be any of the characters in your troupe because you disconnect from the player that they are the hero character. Most people who played Dungeon Siege and I played a lot of Dungeon Siege got rid of their starting hero character at some point in time and just played the guys that they picked up. In Gods and Heroes you can only ever be your character."
I hadn't thought of this while playing Dungeon Siege, but it was exactly what I had done. My original character did not continue through the game with me. Sometimes it is extraordinary what simple clues you miss while playing a game. This revelation brought forward the question of whether the social mechanic of grouping was going to be affected by the minion system. Would tanks and healers still be the key to any group?
"With the minion system we have the ability to allow you to build balanced, strong characters that are really fun to play throughout all of the adventures, classes and stories of the game."
In other words, you won't be waiting for a group unless you wish to be. Much like the path that World of Warcraft has taken, players will be able to solo through enough content to keep them busy while building up to the "Elder Game" as Chris calls it or end-game where they will receive more specialized minions that allow them to create more efficient groups to tackle the really tough creatures.
Templating or the ability to layout custom minion setups and recall them is a feature that the team has now internally and that they hope will be part of the game at launch. Given the number of ways that you can setup not only your group of minions, but each minion's actions (for instance you can have a minion heal you at a specified percent of your total health) this will be a feature that nearly every player will find useful.
Graphically, Gods and Heroes is a deep dish of eye-candy with sugar on the side. The art direction is excellent and the mobs look staggering. Many of the mobs that I have witnessed in my numerous meetings with the Gods and Heroes team have been huge in size, which makes perfect sense given the mythological background and the fact that you are sending multiple minions and yourself against them. The fights feel epic.
Perhaps the most important piece of information to really grasp about GnH is that it provides the parts of a MMO that many of us enjoy, the leveling, the story, the epic quests, the social interaction, etc., but it provides us with a different, yet compelling gameplay mechanic to explore these aspects of the game. Remarkably, it does this while still allowing accessibility to casual players while giving hard-core gamers more options and tweaks than Planters has peanuts.
Thanks again to Chris and the team at SOE for having us over. Tomorrow or maybe even later today I'll do my write-ups on Fury and Froghop (a company that wants to make your MMO mobile)
Vin DiE3el Fact: Vin DiE3el can not only walk on water, he can climb up fog.
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John "Boomjack" Hoskin