Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends E3 2005 Preshow First Look

Yes, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed and popular real-time strategy game Rise of Nations, which was GameSpot's best PC game of 2003. But, no, this isn't Rise of Nations as you remember it. Just as lead designer Brian Reynolds followed up the historically themed Civilization II with the science fiction-themed Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Reynolds is now following the historically themed Rise of Nations with the fantasy-themed Rise of Legends. Yes, that's right. Apparently, Reynolds has been itching to make a fantasy game for a while now, and he doesn't want to do the traditional elves-versus-orcs-versus-humans thing that's been done to death. And when the lead designer of some of the greatest strategy games ever made tells you he's excited, you better listen.

In Rise of Legends, you'll take control of one of four fantasy nations vying for supremacy of a fictional world in what Reynolds describes as "a war between magic and technology." Of course, this leads to the obvious question as to why brand the game with the Rise of Nations name, since the original was set on Earth and it dealt with both ancient and modern-day nations. The reason is because while Rise of Legends seems a far cry from Rise of Nations, it still takes advantage of many innovations from that game, such as streamlined gameplay, an excellent interface, a color-coded tech system, and a turn-based conquer-the-world system. So it's safe to think of Rise of Legends as Rise of Nations set in an alternate world.

Rise of Legends won't recycle the Rise of Nations graphics engine, though, and this is the first thing you notice. In fact, it's pretty hard to ignore, because the visuals, even at this stage, look excellent. While the first game had a 2D graphics engine that caused some to complain that it looked too much like the Age of Empires games, Rise of Legends has a brand-new 3D graphics engine that was written from scratch and is stuffed full of eye candy, such as huge clockwork cities powered by giant gears and dreamlike desert cities with glistening onion domes. Reynolds said they wanted "blistering white-hot graphics," and it looks like the programmers delivered. He added that the original Rise of Nations was Big Huge Game's debut offering, so they were more worried about getting the gameplay down right than the graphics. But with Rise of Nations being such a huge hit, they felt the gameplay was and is established. So now they can focus on delivering graphics to match.

While Rise of Nations shipped with 18 historically accurate nations, there are apparently only four fantasy nations in Rise of Legends. However, what we've seen so far indicates that each will be completely distinct and unique from the others, and each will play out in different ways. Reynolds only revealed two of the nations to us. One was the Vinci, which is in homage to the famed Renaissance inventor and artist Leonardo da Vinci. The Vinci are one of two technological nations in the game, and they have a style that's best described as a cross between steampunk (the genre of fantasy involving advanced Victorian Age technology) and some of da Vinci's drawings, including his schematics for an early helicopter, which appears in the game. Therefore, the Vinci have an industrial army consisting of massive tanks, infantry, and airpower. The second faction is the Alim, a desert-based, magical nation that's heavily influenced by the stories found in The Arabian Nights. The Alim don't have the fancy machines the Vinci have, but they do get supernatural units, such as genies and dragons, as well as giant scorpions that run around the battlefield.

Magic versus Technology

There will be resource gathering in the game similar to the kind found in Rise of Nations, only it's more streamlined. For instance, there's no need to model so many different resources, like in Rise of Nations, to represent human history. So there are two main resources in the game (that we know about). The first is a mysterious element known as Timonium, which is used by all nations for different purposes. (Timonium also happens to be the Maryland city where Big Huge Games is based.) The second resource is gold, which is generated automatically by cities and trade routes. Speaking of which, Rise of Legends will also have a better city-building mechanic than most real-time strategy games. Rather than presenting to you the standard city-building sprawl found in most real-time strategy offerings, the city building in Rise of Legends looks to be a bit different. You build a city core, and then you attach different districts to it (such as a military district) to create units. The cities then take on a monolithic appearance rather than taking on the appearance of spread-out urban sprawl, as seen in many games. In addition, the district system is similar to the research system in the original game, and you can affect your research depending on the type of buildings that you construct, ranging from military, economic, science, and civic. Build a marketplace, for example, and it enhances your commerce research.

Rise of Legends will feature a turn-based strategy component that's similar to the conquer the world mode featured in Rise of Nations. However, the global map in Rise of Legends looks much less like a board game and more like a beautiful photograph of the world taken from orbit. In the turn-based mode, you'll be able to move your armies around the map, and then you can resolve the possession of territories in real-time strategy mode. And when armies clash, it can be a pretty impressive sight. We saw a huge battle between the Vinci and the Alim. On the Vinci's side were a range of units, from floating airships and helicopters to huge, lumbering land leviathans, which are six-legged walking tanks that are each the size of a small village. The leviathan is absolutely bristling with firepower, and Reynolds indicated that they plan on adding more before they're done with the game. Meanwhile, the Alim had a more conventional, fantasy-based army, with lots of magic users casting colorful and powerful spells. Each nation is actually a hodgepodge of different races, so you'll see a wide variety of units in the game. And each nation will have its own unique superunits, as well as two unique technology tracks it can research.

In addition to gorgeous graphics, Big Huge Games is licensing the Novadex physics engine. This will translate into realistic physics, of course, but to appreciate what this means to Rise of Legends, all you have to do is watch the chaos erupt when a towering city comes under siege. Towers collapse realistically, knocking down their neighbors, while huge pieces come crashing to Earth, smashing anything below. We even saw a humongous cannon get destroyed, and the heavy barrel fell and began rolling downhill, crushing everything in its path. It'll also be possible to both destroy bridges and create choke points on the map.

Multiplayer is an area where the original Rise of Nations faltered a bit. It had excellent multiplayer gameplay, but it needed a better interface for matchmaking, which ended up hurting the game because the multiplayer community never took off like it should have. The good news is that Reynolds says they've really concentrated on improving multiplayer. However, the bad news is that's about all he'll say at this point. He did mention that one of the themes of Rise of Nations was that you could conquer the world during your lunch hour, because a multiplayer game could play out that quickly. For Rise of Legends, he envisions you can wage several multiplayer battles during your coffee break. We'll have to wait a bit longer for more details on that, though.

We'll also have to wait a while for the game itself. Reynolds said they started development on it shortly after Rise of Nations shipped, and they worked on it alongside the Thrones & Patriots expansion. So the game has been in gestation for a while now, but the team is currently aiming to ship it next year. That should give Big Huge Games the time needed to finish, and it also lets publisher Microsoft stagger the release of two of the biggest strategy games on the horizon: Age of Empires III, which should ship later this year, and now Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, which should ship sometime in the first half of 2006.