David Mullich Preview

[protecyon]

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1116646921

[grimogre]

I think that Inferno provides the best enemy for Castle.The hellish legions are the perfect foil for Castle.Both pics of Inferno and Castle towns are impressive.A+++

[King Imp]

I really enjoyed this preview the most as it's coming from basically a Heroes expert so to speak. If anyone would know what's good and what's not, it would be him. That and it's basically given us the most info to date.



I still am a little leery about this whole Bone Dragon thing.

"However, the demo ended with a nice visual treat of a smoking bone dragon suddenly fly out of nowhere and land in the battlefield and blowing everyone away."



Granted we don't know exactly how this works, but the whole idea of winning a battle only to have the remaining creatures in your army decimated seems unfair to me.

Like I said though, we still have to hear how it fully works, but if it turns out you go into a battle with 20 Archangels vs 2 Imps and at the end this Bone Dragon kills all your Archangels, then a lot of people will not be happy.

[King Imp]

Ignore the tags.

I thought they would work in these posts.

[Vitirr]

I hope the close camera movement in combat is optional because that may be fun a few times, but soooo boring after you've played some games.

Overall it still looks good to me except perhaps the camera movements and position, and the scalable battle map.

Good to read it from Mullich, he certainly knows what he's talking about. Best preview so far.

[Monastor]

It's a great review... It gives much info...



Most of things seem to go well but I'm also worried for the oversized weapons and armour It's kitschy

[JSE]

The general lack of interfaces David mentions is truly a reason for concern. In a strategy game, keeping track of things is definitely more important than marvelling at full-screen graphics.

[Vitirr]

I hope the lack of interface is just because it's still in alpha state or that they don't want to show much yet, (because frankly, we don't know much more about the game now than before the E3).

[Dragon Angel]

A cluttered interface does not help a 3D game. I hope all the interface fuctions are still there. But I also hope they are accesed by summonable sub-menus, and not all time on-screen.

[Donsta]

I'm hoping the Bone Dragon was there just to provide a spectacular end to the demo and not a regular feature of battlefiled mechanics.

[hatifnat]

"the best turn-based strategy game of all time"

LOL he forgot about Age of Wonders series...

[CloudRiderX]

That was a very informative review. Thanks Mullich! But I'd also like to address the topics you are discussing.

1. "The Bone Dragon thing" - I agree with King Imp. That would be totally inconvienencing, and an all around pain-in-the-butt. Why should you have to wait for the end of every battle with a sick stomach to see if you get obliterated? We'll also have to find out if this will happen to COM players as well if they are using the idea. ( I've played games where I swear the computer could control 'when' you got hit with something bad.)

2."Camera Movement" - Once again, I agree with Vtirr, close camera may be cool in the start, but it gets old fast. If they made it optional, that would be great for those who do or don't want it. But I don't want this game to be a replica of Heroes: The Dragonbone Staff. (That game wasn't very good, let alone original.)

3."Cluttered interface"- I do think that a cluttered or nonexistent interface would be a major dent in the gameplay. It would be neat if they had a button that would allow you to Show/Hide the interface or sections of it, this way, you could see more of the field screen.

[dragonn]

I didn't see the Bone Dragon attack yet, but I think it has nothing to do with the real battles in Heroes V. It is only a presentation of the games engine and probably it's some kind of fireworks to entertain the watchers...

[Continuity]

I think it's awesome that David Mullich did this little report for us. Feels nice to have some NWC people still watching over our little world even when they've moved on.

[Dragon Angel]

Of, course CloudRiderX, when I'm saying a cluttered interface, I'm talking about a cluttered, unhidable interface. (Said this, one of the things that break more the "feeling" on a 3D game, I've to say, it's an interface that covers the screen borders).



As I commented, I hope the "most basic" interface will be similar to the one shown in the screenshots... and from there you could be calling more interface "parts" to show up in screen. They could stay, if you like to have them, or be closed when they are of no use, if you want to have a wider view of the game screen.

[Marelt Ekiran]

Some comments by Fabrice cleared things up. The close animations can be toggled on or off. There will be more interface in the actual game than seen in the Demo's.



As for the Bone Dragon... It's probably an option in the editor to allow for better story scripting, to be used for campaigns (my own opinion). There's probably at least an option to turn random events off.

[Crusard]

In my point of view, the Bone Dragon attack was just a demonstration of the capabilities of the battle engine. So far, up to Heroes III there wasn't a possibility to script events, then in Heroes IV the scripts were very powerful, yet they were only appliable to the adventure map. Now, if Heroes V has the possibility to use in-battle scripting, just imagine the whole new gamma of possibilities map makers (Like me)will benefit from, not to mention the impressive, unpredictable effects for players.

[HMMFan]

Starngely enough, I appreciate the factual reporting, but I am not too concerned with Mr. Mullich's opinions. As i found H4 to be execrable (just played it again and it is awful), I really don't think his opinion is worth that much. Why he chose that awful color palette for H4, I will never know...

[Biggles Final Flight]

'I really don't think his opinion is worth that much'



Pretty harsh, don't you think, considering the circumstances surrounding the development of HOMMIV? Besides that, David Mullich (and the rest of the NWC team) should be remembered for one of the best TBS's to date: HOMMIII.

[CloudRiderX]

Yeah HMMFan, ease up! You shouldn't shoot Mullich down like that, especially when you don't realize how complicated and long-winded a job it is to make a video game these days. Yeah, I didn't think IV was as good as III or II, but you have to look at it the way he said it.

It's about finding a balance between adding new ideas to make the sequel appealing, and keeping the old ideas that made the original game great. Hey, maybe Mullich thought some of IV's ideas were good, some don't seem great as first, but you get used to them. Heroes IV will always be in a category of its own. Don't judge so rashly, and his opinion is the best thing we've gotten so far. And what's with the "awful color pallette" complaints? I sure hope you don't judge games by the color of the paneling...