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Engine Enhancements
Starting out at the most basic level, Myth II improves upon the original by utilizing a tighter terrain mesh (four times finer, according to Bungie). This allows the game to look better, with smoother, more detailed terrain, but it also lends itself to improved gameplay, as the finer mesh allows for more flexible unit pathing. While we only saw marginal improvement in pathing in the beta, the improved terrain quality was unmistakable. Bungie's tremendous attention to detail is especially evident on The Graveyard, Landing, and Prison levels.
Unit animation has been dramatically enhanced in Myth II, so that most units now feature twice as many frames of animation as their Myth counterparts. Well-implemented rain, snow, and water effects (complete with very impressive reflections) help round out the environments, as does the addition of ambient life (flying birds and wandering chickens). Of course, most of us will just blow up those chickens, which is probably why they were added in the first place.
The use of animated and interactive scenery marks another dramatic improvement in the Myth II graphics engine. You'll make your way past a working windmill, sneak a pathfinder dwarf into a keep to open a fully functional drawbridge, and blow a hole through a city wall with your new Mortar-Dwarves. On one of the more hectic missions, you'll lead a small group of good guys over a wooden bridge, then blow it up to prevent pursuit (that one sort of reminded me of Saving Private Ryan).
The addition of indoor settings and large structures, another major enhancement, helps break up the monotony of outdoor fighting (though Bungie's excellent level design in Myth II seems strong enough to ward off monotony in any case). The one indoor level in the beta challenges you to enter the fortress of a renegade baron and hunt him down through narrow corridors and highly detailed, well-defended rooms. A few of the other levels involve assaults upon very large, well-rendered structures (a keep in Into the Breach, a heavily armed fortress in Landing).
Myth II will add Direct3D acceleration to the native 3Dfx and Rendition support included in the original game. In the beta, the 3Dfx support was rock-solid, though the Direct3D support was incredibly slow. Hopefully, all performance issues will be hammered out by the time the game ships.
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