Black & White II Preview
We visit Black & White Studios in the UK for an exclusive first look at the sequel to Lionhead's innovative god game.
To a god looking down from the heavens, the land could hardly look more beautiful. Fields of wheat and grass sway gently in the breeze, and the clear blue waters of the ocean caress the sun-drenched shoreline. As the camera moves closer, though, it becomes obvious that all is not as idyllic as it first seems. This green and pleasant land is in fact a battlefield on which entire civilizations are at war with one another, fighting for their beliefs in a bloodthirsty conflict that will ultimately see the gods themselves entering the fray.
That is Peter Molyneux's vision for the sequel to Black & White, a vision we were afforded a brief glimpse of on a recent visit to the UK offices of Lionhead and Black & White studios. Of course the game is still a long way from completion--long enough, in fact, that even Molyneux himself couldn't be persuaded to give us any indication of when he hopes to have it finished.
"One of the big things is that originally we thought with Black & White II that we'd do a sequel and it would take us about a year to 18 months--well, now it's going to take us a lot longer than that," said Molyneux. "Now we've decided to go for the full monty--you know, we're rewriting the engine from scratch, almost every piece of code in fact."
As we've reported previously, Molyneux's intention for Black & White games one through five is that with each game, the technology levels within the world will get a little closer to those of the modern world. In Black & White II the technological advances mean that the villagers are now able to build more advanced structures and have learned to go to war equipped with swords, bows and arrows, and the like. The distinctions between good and evil from the first game have also moved with the times for the sequel, and while the difference between good and evil actions in the first game was more or less black and white, there will be numerous shades of gray in Black & White II as civilizations do their best to prosper either through war or peace. According to Molyneux, players who actively prepare for war and seek to expand their empire through the use of force will be considered evil, while those who concentrate on making advances within their own city walls and only fight in self defense will be deemed good.
Taking the evil route to success in Black & White II will mean playing the game in much the same way as a conventional real-time strategy game and defeating enemies in conflict. Attempting to beat the game while remaining righteous will be a totally different experience, though--one that Molyneux likens to playing SimCity, since the only way to "defeat" enemies will be to build a city so wondrous that people from other civilizations will become envious and eventually ask to be admitted. In the words of Molyneux, "Black & White II is about building huge armies or huge cities, that's the distinction." This is a choice that you will be forced to make early on, since the mined ore resource used to construct buildings and city walls is the same used to make weapons for troops.
Despite the fact that the new engine is being written from scratch, most of the game's new features that we got to see in action on our visit were actually running in the original Black & White engine. At the time of our visit, in fact, each of the new features was effectively running on a different machine within the studio, and the first thing we were shown upon arriving at Black & White Studios was, as we'd hoped, one of the new game's creatures.
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- EA Games
- Lionhead Studios
- Real-Time Strategy
- Release: Oct 4, 2005 »
- ESRB: Teen
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