Myth III: The Wolf Age Updated Preview

Fortunately, as a part of Microsoft's purchase of Bungie, Take-Two Interactive acquired the rights to Myth, a real-time strategy series that removed the elements of resource management as well as structure and unit construction. Seven months after that announcement, Gathering of Developers unveiled Myth III: The Wolf Age, and announced Mumbo Jumbo--a relatively new studio made up of industry veterans whose previous work includes Fallout, Sin, and Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2--as the developer. It was also revealed that Myth III would be a prequel to the two previous Myth games, giving the development team an opportunity to explore and expand upon events that transpire 1000 years before the original Myth.

Heroes play an important role in Myth III, giving boost in skills to units surrounding them.

One of the benefits of creating a prequel in the Myth universe is that it shedslight on the background of certain characters that appeared in the original Myth and Myth II. "The world of Myth is basically divided into thousand-year cycles, and at the end of each [cycle], the hero of that age becomes the dark horse in the next age," said Mike Donges, executive producer at Mumbo Jumbo. "So, in our game, the heroes were the fallen lords of Myth and Myth II." Some of the characters making return appearances as heroes in Myth III are Balor, Soulblighter, and Shiver, all of which have different names to accommodate their new roles. These characters also serve as more than just a tool to advance the storyline or to make connections with previous Myth games, and in fact, you can actually play as the heroes at various points in the game. "In the first two games, most of your energy was focused on playing as foot soldiers," Donges said. "You still play as those characters, but we've also added the hero element so it should be interesting for people to play as characters that they had to fight against in the first games."

The affect that the heroes have on gameplay is immediately visible when confronting the hoards of enemies in Myth III. In one level, Connacht (who is known as Balor in the previous games), a few foot soldiers, and a warlock come across a river infested with ghols. After a few minutes of fighting between the foot soldiers and the ghols, the warlock moves to the top of a nearby hill and bombards the pack with a few fireballs, causing clouds of red mist and body parts to fly through the air and litter the surrounding area. A second wave of ghols moves up through the river to confront the foot soldiers, and at the same time, Connacht moves up to the front so he can engage the enemy, and not surprisingly, he almost single-handedly obliterates them. There are plenty of instances such as this where it's certainly tempting to throw a hero into the battle to eliminate enemies quickly, but if proper caution isn't taken, the situation can quickly turn sour and put the hero in serious danger.