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IGF 2002: Hands-on: Asheron's Call 2

Microsoft and Turbine's next online role-playing game already looks stunning and sounds promising too. Details inside.

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We had a chance to see a build of Asheron's Call 2 in action at Microsoft's International Games Festival event, and we were impressed to find that the game already seemed far along in its development--though certainly there's much left to be done on this ambitious project. Nevertheless, Asheron's Call 2 should be finished and in stores before the end of the year, according to a Microsoft representative.

Like its predecessor, Asheron's Call 2 takes place in the fantasy world of Dereth, only the sequel begins several hundred years after the time period of the original Asheron's Call. You'll once again be able to create an adventurer with whom you'll be able to explore a huge, constantly evolving world. Like other online role-playing games, Asheron's Call 2 will focus heavily on combat and exploration, inviting players to join forces with each other to take on increasingly powerful foes in an effort to gain experience and treasure. The game is being designed to appeal both to veteran players of massively multiplayer role-playing games, as well as players new to this unique genre of gaming. New players should appreciate how accessible and how good looking Asheron's Call 2 is intended to be.

The first Asheron's Call game let you play only as human characters. The sequel will let you choose from humans, burly apelike creatures called lugians, or lanky mystical creatures called tumeroks. Rather than be jacks-of-all-trades, humans will actually excel at ranged combat. Lugians will make powerful melee fighters, while tumeroks will be inclined toward using magic. Like its predecessor, Asheron's Call 2 has no character class system, but rather a skill system that lets you customize your character's abilities. And while the three character races do have their various proficiencies, Turbine emphasized that all character combinations should be viable and distinct. So while a lugian may not make a better overall spellcaster than a similarly experienced tumerok, it may have access to unique powers that the tumerok does not and bring its own unique benefits to adventurer groups.

The game's skill system starts out very limited but branches off as you gain experience. As you win battles, not only will you be able to use skill points to improve the abilities you already know, but you'll also gain points that can be used to unlock entirely new skills. Again, how you apply these is up to you. It will be Turbine's challenge to play-balance all the different character-advancement paths properly. Actually, if you find that you don't like your character's skills, Asheron's Call 2 will effectively let you sell them back. You'll have to "work off" the experience you already applied to a particular skill, but in the end you'll gain your points back and be able to reapply them toward different abilities.

Asheron's Call runs on Turbine's powerful new G2 engine, which is designed to be scalable with current cutting-edge technology as well as even faster technology that isn't available yet. The long and the short of it is that the game looks great. There's tremendous detail in the environments. You'll quickly notice how trees and tall grass sway in the breeze or how subtle changes in the weather gradually set in.

The combat in Asheron's Call 2 will be fairly complex--you'll have to use your characters' various skills to succeed. The monsters we saw all looked excellent, and some of them were positively huge, towering several times higher than nearby trees. We could see the monsters sporting cuts and bruises as the combat played out--this sort of visual feedback will make it so that you can effectively play the game with message windows toggled off to heighten your sense of immersion. The game's interface graphics are clean and minimal and customizable, affording you the ability to see the action without any interference. Asheron's Call 2 will be fully playable from either a first-person or third-person perspective, and both views are already looking good.

Combat of course won't be all that Asheron's Call 2 has to offer. The game's complex trade skill system will enable you to transmute literally just about any item into its base elements to create other items using those same materials. So even if you happened on a mighty weapon of some sort that your character didn't know how to use, you could always just melt it down and use it to make something better suited to you.

Turbine admits that the world of Dereth will be somewhat smaller in Asheron's Call 2 as compared with the original but that it will be more densely packed and more interesting in general. The game will have no discrete "zones," but rather just the one huge, seamless landmass. Turbine was also quick to point out that it will continue to host dramatic in-game events frequently during the life of Asheron's Call 2, as it did with the original game.

One interesting feature that Asheron's Call 2 will offer is a dynamic music system, which will generate music on the fly based specifically on what's going on around your character. Turbine likened this to the Stravinsky piece Peter and the Wolf, which is famous for how it associates musical cues and particular orchestra instruments with individual characters from the back story. Asheron's Call 2 seeks to emulate this same principle to create a completely dynamic soundtrack that keeps the experience sounding as impressive as it looks.

Asheron's Call 2 looks as though it has a clear shot at becoming one of the dominant massively multiplayer online role-playing games out there, despite the fierce competition in the genre. If only from a technical standpoint, the game appears very advanced. But coming from the experienced designers at Turbine, whose previous game still continues to grow its customer base, Asheron's Call 2 definitely looks worth waiting for.

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