Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor Updated Preview
Mattel has undergone some changes in the last few months--we find out if they've affected the game at all.
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor promises to not only resurrect the gold box series of Dungeons & Dragons games but also to be the first D&D game based on the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. Baldur's Gate II is already the high standard for all D&D role-playing games, as well as RPGs in general. Can Pool of Radiance II follow up BioWare's effort and deliver as successful a D&D role-playing experience? Developer Stormfront Studios and publisher Ubi Soft definitely think so.
GameSpot has brought you several Pool of Radiance II previews in the past year, but recently we visited the offices of publisher Ubi Soft to check on the status of Pool II and see how the game has progressed so far. At this point, the team is fairly confident of a June 2001 release date. In fact, much of the game is finished, and we saw the final battle and endgame cutscene. All the movies are finished, all the quests have been completed, and at this point, what remain to be done are game balance and optimization. We won't spoil the story, but the game definitely has an epic ending.
According to Chuck Yager, the associate producer for Pool of Radiance, the game is huge. We detailed the more than half dozen different areas in the game in our previous previews, and they are indeed large. However, because the entire game takes place in a fairly compact, ruined city, there won't be as much walking around, as in Baldur's Gate--although within this city there are many spacious areas and dungeons. The effect results in more jam-packed areas to explore, but less dead space to walk through. Yager has played through the entire game at least once and says that the game has at least 60 to 70 hours of gameplay. If you rush through the game, playing only the major quests and ignoring the side quests, you should have around 60 hours of gameplay to satisfy you. However, if you choose to hunt for every side quest and there are more than 50, the projected gameplay shoots up to 100 hours or more. If anything, the designers are looking to make Pool II the most densely packed of all D&D RPGs and should give Baldur's Gate II some competition in the length and value department.
As we reported previously, Pool of Radiance's multiplayer mode will be a hack-and-slash dungeon crawl through randomly generated dungeons, although the actual tile sets of the random dungeons are the same ones used to build the single-player game. You'll still adventure through Myth Drannor, but the particulars of the ruined city will be randomly generated to give you a feel that is different from the single-player game. As for the size of these randomly generated dungeons, Yager says that each tile is two screens by two screens and that there will be at least six tiles per dungeon, resulting in some rather large environments. Yager also says that in multiplayer, there will be 90 or so unique items that you won't find in single-player. In addition, there will be new creatures in multiplayer--ones that you won't fight in single-player. These creatures are based on the single-player models but have enhanced stats and perhaps a few tweaks in terms of graphics. Yager refers to them as minibosses, and they will often be the final obstacle to obtaining those many unique items.
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor Quick Links
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- Ubisoft
- Stormfront Studios
- Computer Role-Playing
- Release: Sep 28, 2001
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