Our former host GameSpy was able to see Heroes of Might and Magic V in action before the end of the E3, and they posted their preview article: "Seeing the game on the show floor, it was an amazing experience to see how stunning the Inferno faction's city looked (think Mordor) or how detailed a fully developed Knight city looked. It's a Heroes fan's dream come true, at least aesthetically. The combat actually reminds you of Etherlords, only it looks a whole lot better. In the combat demo we saw, a Knight Hero battled an Inferno Hero and it was a spectacle of light, spells, and fantastic unit animation. To see the Griffin unit vanish from the screen for a turn in preparation of its dive attack, and then to rapidly swoop down unexpectedly on a stack of enemy Nightmares … it's just something that fans of the series will have to see to believe."

The article also mentions the hero trail feature, hints at some new skills being worked on and reveals that players will only control one hero per faction. (You can recruit more than one hero but there is only one archetype per faction.) That hero will however be fully customizable. Read it all here. Notice the ranking system on the GameSpy site for all games that were shown at E3. Heroes V ranks at 587, which is quite good if you check out the position of some future blockbusters on the list. There's no doubt the new Heroes made a good impression at the show. Good work, Ubisoft and Nival!