Dark Messiah of M&M Preview
Gorath, 2005-11-08

In mid 2003 French publisher Ubisoft bought the Might & Magic franchise from the remnants of 3DO. Since then there has been lots of speculations about Ubi´s intentions with one of the oldest RPG brands. It was quite obvious Might & Magic had been sliding downhill in 3DO´s final years, although the classic RPG series and its spin-off had suffered in different ways. While Heroes of Might & Magic IV wasn´t as good as Heroes III, it was still an entertaining game, which at least didn´t scare away its customer base. The RPG series on the other hand was more or less dead after an uninspired 8th installment and the abysmal Might & Magic IX.

Almost two years later Ubisoft dropped the bomb: they appointed a task force to reinvent the franchise - to take the key ingredients of 3DO´s M&M universe and create a new foundation for all M&M games to come. Heroes would be continued with a 5th game - but there's no RPG in the pipeline! The new Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is marketed as an action game with an "RPG-layer" - does this mean it's an action-RPG or is it just a shooter with a few stats?

Straight after seeing Heroes of Might & Magic V, Ubisoft gave us an exclusive presentation of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Obviously Dark Messiah has nothing in common with the classic RPG series, which had a gigantic world and open-ended gameplay with an almost innumerable amount of options for character development. Quite the contrary, Ubisoft describes Dark Messiah as "never-ending action" with "a subtle layer of RPG" and "a revolutionary, addictive multiplayer mode" in "12 immense levels". The release is planned in summer 2006.

Let's first get the namedropping out of the way. Ubisoft contracted Arkane Studios to develop Dark Messiah, which came as a shock to Arkane's fan base who expected to see a sequel to their 2002 surprise hit Arx Fatalis. Also involved is Floodgate Entertainment, the new home to several developers from Looking Glass, and Randy Smith (Thief series) as a consultant. Producer Romain de Waubert de Genlis, who was kind enough to talk to us about the game, is credited by MobyGames as lead designer of Battlefield 1942. Top talent, without a doubt.

Dark Messiah offers the three typical fantasy archetypes - fighter, mage and rogue. Although you have to pick one at the beginning you can build up your own character from there, so hybrid characters are possible. Naturally, this allows more flexibility than a specialized character. There are neither quests from NPCs nor level upgrades; instead you unlock new skills and find better weapons in order to improve your stats or gain new or better combat abilities like special combos or critical hits and so on.

The new Might & Magic high fantasy world both games will take place in is called Ashan. It's a grim place full of danger, strange creatures and adventure. What makes Dark Messiah's interpretation of Ashan stand out is interactivity - Arkane wants to make full use of all the technical gadgets coming with Valve's Source engine: the included physics engine makes sure enemies and the environment behave correctly when hit with a weapon or spell, as an example. In addition, walls can be destroyed, items moved, crushed or knocked over, surfaces freeze when hit with an ice spell, bridges collapse and so on. This offers endless opportunities for the player to get tactical advantages over his enemies - do you want to fight the dragon with magic or do you want to lure him into a trap? Both can be done. Of course, it remains to be seen how much difference the interactive world makes for the different character classes. Will most situations offer multiple solutions for players preferring combat, magic or stealth? De Genlis explained freedom as one of the game's main targets. They want to offer the player a wide variety of possibilities and let him decide how to solve the problems ahead of him. Sounds good in theory - and looks great in the movies released so far.

Arkane and Ubisoft opted to get the player one step closer to the action than is often seen in games featuring melee combat. Dark Messiah uses the same perspective known from hundreds of First Person Shooters and where you usually only see the protagonist's hands or a weapon. In Dark Messiah, you'll get to see a bit more in some situations; for instance you see the character's leg and foot when you kick an enemy. Kicking doesn't do much harm but it buys you some time by pushing the opponent back.

The action is shown in a direct and brutal way: you can sneak up to somebody, pull his head back and ram a dagger into his chest, you can target specific body areas and cut off limbs and when you kick somebody into an abyss the camera switches to a stylized slow-motion mode.

Dark Messiah's multi-player capabilites are largely unknown so far. It's only clear that there will be a team mode for up to 32 players and at least one mode will have character development. We'll bring you more on that as the information comes to hand.

Dark Messiah will be a spectacular game. The only question is - which genre? I certainly hope the answer includes the three letters RPG but we'll need to see more to know for certain.

Arkane Studios