Might & Magic X Legacy Debuts Via Unexpectedly Pretty Trailer

[Earnest Cavalli]

Might & Magic X Legacy Debuts Via Unexpectedly Pretty Trailer


Ubisoft is returning to the Might & Magic series, and seemingly melding the series' classic gameplay with modern aesthetics.

At right you'll find a newly-released trailer clocking in at just under a minute-and-a-half. It serves as Ubisoft's first official revelation of the upcoming Might & Magic X Legacy, and based on what we're seeing here, fans of the series' ancient incarnations should be very excited.

While the first half of that clip is largely a series of neat video editing tricks, the important stuff kicks in at the 0:57 mark. That only leaves about 30 seconds of useful footage, but in that time we can discern that Legacy apparently utilizes the classic, series-standard, tile-based movement system. Aesthetically the game is a drastic improvement over its predecessors, with both monsters and attack animations featuring all the whiz-bang shiny eye candy we've come to expect from modern videogames. The end result is footage that resembles the phenomenal Legend of Grimrock, a recent game designed specifically as an homage to classic PC adventures like the earlier Might & Magic games, though with decidedly brighter colors -- or perhaps the footage we're shown simply doesn't feature many underground dungeon locales.

Scant information is currently available on Might & Magic X Legacy, though we do know that the title is being published by Ubisoft and developed by the relatively unknown Limbic Entertainment (a company most notable for its work on downloadable additions to Might & Magic: Heroes VI). According to Ubisoft, this weekend's PAX East conference will feature the first opportunity for anyone to play Might & Magic X Legacy, so if you're planning to attend, please have a look a the game. If it's a terrible, sacrilegious departure from previous entries in the series, we expect you to rush right back to the below comments section to decry any and everyone involved in this game's creation.


Permalink

 

[MrBaskerville]

Damn, so it´s actually a game made for the fans? That´s amazing!

I might actually be interested in this game after all, i love the old turnbased style and i´m amazed that they kept the team based system, instead of turning it into another TES clone. I´m not too psyched about the artstyle though, but maybe it gets better when they show more.

 

[Bullfrog1983]

For me it looks like they have chosen the worst aspects of the entire series in this trailer.

I really liked how well they designed the system with 6 party members through the first five games and although they might design a decent alternative to it with 4 party members I find it unlikely. It is more likely they will design some bastardized version of an MMO system including traits and special skills instead of just using stats and magic to flesh out characters. They didn't include the real-time/turn based system that was great in the later games (6-9), possibly the best innovation in the series and the graphics don't look very good in the video. I guess people who are looking for this sort of thing will be happy about it though.

 

[craddoke]

The influence of Grimrock on this is so great that I almost expect an announcement that the same developers are being subcontracted to work on M&MX. Not that that is in any way a bad thing.

 

[sdfasdfhfgfgjtyisdgdfdfj]

This looks pretty good =)

 

[Zeckt]

They should call it Might and Magic 9 and pretend that OTHER game never existed and do everyone a favor!

 

[MrBaskerville]

The influence of Grimrock on this is so great that I almost expect an announcement that the same developers are being subcontracted to work on M&MX. Not that that is in any way a bad thing.

I think it´s just a throwback to MM 1-5. But then on the other hand, they probably wouldn´t have gone in this direction if Grimrock hadn´t been such a succes. Hmm

 

[meatloaf231]

The influence of Grimrock on this is so great that I almost expect an announcement that the same developers are being subcontracted to work on M&MX. Not that that is in any way a bad thing.

I think it´s just a throwback to MM 1-5. But then on the other hand, they probably wouldn´t have gone in this direction if Grimrock hadn´t been such a succes. Hmm

Absolutely. It's really impressive to see the kind of sway that small studios can have in the greater scheme of the industry these days.

 

[Doom972]

Grimrock introduced me to this genre and I've been craving for more since I finished it. The only other game of this genre that I liked was Lands of Lore.

What little there is in this trailer looks good.

 

[piinyouri]

Hmm, not much to go on there, though the little I saw looked interesting.
I've been playing Grimrock for the first time and I'm enjoying that very much so I'd be happy with some more old school-ish dungeon crawlers.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Wow. THIS is what we need ("we" being the true RPG fans). I'm excited. I only hope it's a success and we return to a golden age of turn-based, tile-based RPGing, vanquishing the real-time action pseudo-RPG dragon forever.

Might and Magic IX kind of sucked so I thought that was the end of the series.

 

[Strazdas]

They should call it Might and Magic 9 and pretend that OTHER game never existed and do everyone a favor!

In this case they should calld it Migth and Magic 4 and pretend other gamess never existed and do everyone a favour.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Grimrock introduced me to this genre and I've been craving for more since I finished it. The only other game of this genre that I liked was Lands of Lore.

What little there is in this trailer looks good.

You should try Dungeon Master 2, that game is amazing. One of the few in the genre that takes place outside for the most part (just like Lands of Lore).

 

[Doom972]

Grimrock introduced me to this genre and I've been craving for more since I finished it. The only other game of this genre that I liked was Lands of Lore.

What little there is in this trailer looks good.

You should try Dungeon Master 2, that game is amazing. One of the few in the genre that takes place outside for the most part (just like Lands of Lore).

It looks good, but are there any more of these games that feature a lot of voice acting? One thing I liked a lot about Lands of Lore were the characters (especially Baccata).

 

[Therumancer]

The influence of Grimrock on this is so great that I almost expect an announcement that the same developers are being subcontracted to work on M&MX. Not that that is in any way a bad thing.

I think it´s just a throwback to MM 1-5. But then on the other hand, they probably wouldn´t have gone in this direction if Grimrock hadn´t been such a succes. Hmm

Actually I have differant suspicians. Big companies like Ubisoft don't generally react that quickly to trends, and while Grimrock was a big success, I don't think it was THAT big.

I think what we're seeing here, and in a few other places (back to classic JRPGs, etc..) is an industry as a whole that has been getting burned by the casual market, reporting losses, and suffering massive backlash to the simplication and casualizationo of games, the real gamers who were their safety net gradually leaving the hobby as well, in noticible numbers. Grimrock was an interesting success, but the sheer amount of people responding to plop down money on kickstarts simply for the idea of games like "Wasteland 2" or a "Toement" sequel got attention, and were what was largely keeping the remaining real gamers going, while a lot of bigger, more casual titles, envisioned largely off of a marketing checklist continued to under perform.

I'd imagine the planning for this started a bit before Grimrock, though I could be wrong.

I'll also say that Grimrock was mostly a homage to the "Dungeon Master" series with a focus on puzzles and pixel hunting for hidden triggers and the like. A definate "classic" game, but as the remaining real gamers can tell you, it's a somewhat differant beast from "Might And Magic" which had it's puzzles (and some doozies) especially for the first two chapters, but evolved to actually be one of the most simple versions of the real classics. Puzzles were always present, but in a lot of respects Might and Magic mostly involved moving over the maps one square at a time, murdering everything that got in your way. I kind of suspect Ubisoft hoped the game would be one that could straddle the line between casuals and hopefully also get the now-much needed "real gamers" that the industry is hoping will be their salvation on board. I suspect sticking with the "4 man party" instead of going with a classic "6 man party" is an effort at simplification. I also very much suspect the end result won't wind up featuring puzzles anywhere near on the level of Grimrock, and I'll even be surprised if we see any "Crossword Puzzle" dungeons or anything like that. Never mind gimmicks like expecting someone to map out an entire dungeon on graph paper (no automap) in order to see how the walls spell out a name which happens to be the word you need to exit (to mention some classic Might and Magic moments from when the game was a bit nastier).

 

[Therumancer]

Grimrock introduced me to this genre and I've been craving for more since I finished it. The only other game of this genre that I liked was Lands of Lore.

What little there is in this trailer looks good.

You should try Dungeon Master 2, that game is amazing. One of the few in the genre that takes place outside for the most part (just like Lands of Lore).

It looks good, but are there any more of these games that feature a lot of voice acting? One thing I liked a lot about Lands of Lore were the characters (especially Baccata).

Not really, voice acting was a new, innovative, and very expensive thing. You didn't start to see a lot of it until the CD Rom era, and then mostly it came along with the fad for digitizing real actors to play roles in games, oftentimes with some truely horrible costumes and surrounding FX (but the fact that it was a video game was supposed to cover that). When you go back to classic DOS games voice acting is going to be rare.

That said, Might and Magic "World Of Xeen" involved some (it was on CD), Ultima 7 (and 7 part 2) involved a little, namely "The Voice Of The Guardian" which was a big gimmick for the game. "Lands Of Lore" had two sequels (the third one was decent, the second one I didn't care for) which involved voice acting. Mostly for the era voice acting was in adventure games like "Gabriel Knight" (one of it's big selling points, it had Tim Curry as Gabriel, and Michael Dorn as the main evil henchman), Tia Carerra did "Daedalus Encounter", and I believe Phantasmagoria (both games) had live actors and voice, but that won't sate an RPG fixation... of course if your mostly interested in puzzles that is what those games were all about.

Wizardry 8 featured some decent voice acting, and a thing where you'd pick the personalities for your characters as part of generation (it was a bit more than just each portrait having a voice like with some later Might and Magic games). It didn't have a ton of it, but key NPCs were voice, especially ones that could join your party, and your PCs would chime in at various points, a bit more so than in Might and Magic, and have some oddly appropriate things to say.