Additional E3 Previews

[protecyon]

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1116535544

[Sir Charles]

Well, this explains why some of the combat screenshots looked so out of place in a heroes game. Looks like after you select an opponent to attack, the camera zooms in on the action and starts an animated-movie combat sequence. I'm all for it if it doesn't slow down the game play too much. If this is true it completely explains why we kept seeing one-on-one combat screenshots. *whew* These reviews lately are easing a LOT of my earlier worries. :O)

[Aspiriins]

I knew it, I knew it - there will be a possibility to turn "dynamic battle", which will be the same as in Civilization3 the "fast mode" ...

[Starbatron]

I'm just glad the "dynamic battle" mode is optional. I always prefer perfection when I'm battling and thinking through things, even if they do take longer. Perfection takes time. On a brighter note, everything seems to look great. I like the zoom in action sequence, and I'm relieved to see so much Heroes tradition remaining in the game.

[Ryder]

The trailer path sounds a bit of alright. Makes some sense too.

[tetsumonkai]

quote from picture of the (day?):

The E3 is about to open its doors. Registration is under way, and our representative will meet Fabrice Cambounet in a couple of hours. Stay tuned for some exclusive info!



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Have you met him yet or was that just a commercial teaser?

[Biggles Final Flight]

I like the idea of the 'trailer path' a lot - Imagine sending a scout into new territory and spotting a really deep and wide track (a large and powerful army). Your gameplay would become far more tentative at that point. I wonder if the trailer path will also indicate how recent the track was made?

[Vitirr]

The trail idea looks great, but it should be influenced by skills. By the way I posted somethink about including that in the game in the round table a lot time ago, (though the idea wasn't mine but from the Pole HOMM site). Perhaps they've used fans ideas more than we thought?.

[Camay]

Vitirr => if it come from your idea... thanks dude !

[Vitirr]

By the way:

"We will have pictures up soon, and a transcript of the discussion in a few days."



I thought we would be getting some info yesterday or today . I hope the few days are the less possible because right now he haven't got all that much info we were supposed to have in E3. I can't wait to read the interview.

[Angelspit]

I cannot tell for sure at the moment: working with an audio transcript is definitely not easy (especially in a noisy environment such as the E3).

[Vitirr]

Well take your time Angelspit, I hope you understand we're a bit inpatient but we can wait a bit more .



Thanks for your work.

[Sir Charles]

As for the trailer path...a friend of mine was at the ubi-booth and he said that the path is really deep when the army is really large, smaller with a smaller army. And the trail that is left behind fades with time. Hope that clears that up a bit. :O)

[Vitirr]

Sounds good. Any other interesting info from your friend? .

[Ryder]

Sir Charles, that sounds great.

[Sir Charles]

Well, if you really want to know.....(from Platypotamus)



Ok, words of caution, this review kind of sucks. There was a small crowd, and the speaker wasn't nearly loud enough, but I watched him play through the demo, and here's what I thought:



The trail from armies is actually kind of cool. From what I heard, it sounds as if bigger armies leave longer trails (or trails that stick around longer), so their passing is a bit easier to follow. Makes sense, and seems like a neat and logical addition, as large armies SHOULD leave some sort of trail behind.



The adventure map does zoom out pretty far. I'm not sure if he zoomed out as far as humanly possible or not, but he zoomed out far enough to appease me.



On the other hand, you can zoom in ludicrously far, if you're into the pretties. You can zoom such that an artifact on the ground fills the entire screen.



Speaking of the pretties, I don't like the new city designs. It's kinda like when games first went 3D, and everyone made 3D shit just to make 3D shit. There's a lot of graphics technology at work on the cities, not a lot of art.



Also, going into city view took a huge load time. I hope there's some way to manipulate city stuff without loading that up, or it's pretty shitty.



I was disappointed that the demo didn't include any look at hero stats screens or city stats screens. No buildings were built. No artifact manipulation occurred (he picked one up, but I never saw what it did, looked like the old Shackles of War).



There's a lot less numbers on screen overall (or were in the demo). Totals for the stacks were the only numbers I saw ever (with a +X during a res spell and a -X during an attack). No damage numbers at the bottom of the screen. I didn't see any helpful sub windows with attack/defense ratings, speeds, etc.



On the other hand, that was likely (hopefully) for demo-prettiness purposes, or for UI-incompleteness reasons.



The thing that scared me most, was it looked like the battle may have been resolving itself. He was talking, and occasionally he would click, and stuff happened. I didn't see any movement shadows anywhere, and the cursor was never changing in a context sensitive manner. The cursor was always along the bottom of the screen, and he just would ocassionally click as he talked, and suddenly the archers fired or the demons attacked or whatever. Having demoed before, it wouldn't surprise me if it was all rigged like hell so that the demo would work exactly the same every time, but I was still a little scared.



Battle stuff:



Gryphons have what appears to be a harpy-like attack, but kinda more like Kaine from FF4... they skip a turn as they fly off screen before divebombing the enemy.



Angels can res.



The archer thing seemed to hit multiple targets.



Heroes have various abilities they can use, but seem to once more be at the sidelines rather than have hitpoints and such.



I think that's everything. Only saw creatures from castle/inferno whatever.

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The only interface I recall seeing at all was the treasure-chest pick up and level up UI and in the bottom right hand corner of city view there were various buttons with Icons, one was obviously for choosing a building to build, and one was for leaving city view, not sure about the rest.



I tried to remain optimistic that this was to maximize prettiness for demoing or simply due to unfinished UI.



As far as the 3D motion sickness goes... I doubt it would be an issue. Possibly in city view (when entering the camera kinda swings around showing off the castle, but I think I heard him say that it was skippable). On the adventure map and battlefield, the camera remains pretty much overhead looking down (though you can probably move it around a lot if you want to).

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That's the extent of what he's said so far. He's not too impressed, but then again, we're talking about an early demo version here...so there's tons of time to add things and tweak things.