Wizards & Warriors Impressions

Activision stopped by with an early build of Wizards and Warriors, an impressive-looking first-person RPG that's been four long years in the making. Veteran designer D.W. Bradley described the game as something of a return to the epic role-playing games of old; all told, the game will include about 120 hours of solid, single-player gameplay. And though the game will embrace the tenets of the classics, it looks entirely modern. Wizards and Warriors runs on its own proprietary 3D engine and looks excellent; the game's character and monster models seem large, detailed, and well animated. Though the game seems colorful, it's not bright enough to be gaudy or dull enough to be drab.

Wizards and Warriors takes place in the wake of a terrible catastrophe. Two thousand years before the game takes place, a mad pharaoh had unleashed an evil god on the world - one that could only be contained by the magical fire of an angel's sword. The slumbering god has been awakened, and it's up to your party of adventurers to track down the sword to save yourselves and the world you live in.

Wizards and Warriors has all the trappings of a traditional RPG. You can build a party of up to six adventurers from a pool of ten different races, five of which are humanoid (such as humans and elves) and five of which are bestial (such as tiger-warriors and lizardmen). Each of your characters begins his life as one of four cardinal professions: fighter, mage, priest, or thief. As your characters progress, gain experience levels, and perform specific quests for character guilds, they may class-change into one of 11 other classes, like the samurai, the warlock, and other powerful character classes with additional combat and magic-spell abilities. The game's magic spells in turn belong to one of six different disciplines, including healing, fire magic, life magic, and the dark arts of mind control and necromancy. You'll need all the game's magic spells, skills, and special talents to successfully locate and communicate with Wizards and Warriors' 100 nonplayer characters and to do battle with any of the game's 300 monsters.

Wizards and Warriors is currently in an early alpha phase and is due for release this fall. In the meantime, have a look at these screenshots of the current build.