Spring Legends
New information from 3DO about "Legends of Might & Magic"
One of the more interesting "Might & Magic" games currently under development at New World Computing is "Legends of Might & Magic", an online-focused action game featuring all your favourite monsters, characters and spells from the long-running series of role-playing and strategy games, all rendered in glorious real-time 3D for the very first time thanks to the Lithtech engine. Now publisher 3DO have given us an update on the game, which has moved from a vague "first quarter" release date to a slightly firmer April arrival.
Although there will be a single player mode, the real juice is the 16 player online and LAN support with a variety of goal-based teamplay modes to indulge in. "Players can choose to fight on the side of Good or Evil and must work together with their team-mates to complete their objective before the other team completes theirs", according to the press release. "In most cases the objectives directly oppose each other (Evil has captured the Princess and must stop a rescue attempt by Good, while Good must either rescue the Princess or eliminate the forces of Evil), but some scenarios have both teams pursuing the same goal (such as recovering the Holy Grail)."
In an interesting twist Legends will feature neutral AI monsters alongside the human teams in many of the multiplayer scenarios. These "will attempt to stand in the way of opposing forces, or ally their strength with a losing team to further challenge the stronger team". Exactly how this will work remains to be seen, but the game is certainly like a change of fortunes for the Might & Magic franchise, which has been weighed down by a string of mediocre and/or dated releases in recent months. Hopefully we should know more soon...