Heroes VI - An Archmage in Budapest

The arrival

¡Switzerland wihout passport!

It's already been more than a couple of months since I came back from the testing session of the press show version of Heroes VI, where I had the pleasure of experiencing, for better or worse, my first feelings with this new Might and Magic game. Before anything else, I have to say that the state of the game back then was practically alpha, and so a lot of features were not functional yet, as well as some elements that were still placeholders, such as the interface or the general game balance: stats, costs, etc. It is for this reason, perhaps, that it was a good idea to impose a news blackout on everything that took place in Black Hole's studios, not to mention the testing session itself, as this allowed us to reconsider with calmness all the factors in play, and give a better-built opinion of such a brief visit.

Lepas' arrival in last place

The odyssey started on Thursday. I was the last one to arrive at the Hungarian capital circa eight o'clock p.m. Immediately after leaving luggage at the hotel I headed for the meeting with the rest of the guests, and Ubisoft's and Black Hole's staff (Ubihole from this point forth), who were already at the Lancelot restaurant. Luckily enough, I counted on the invaluable help of the local community webmaster, Vologya, who shared his arrival time with mine, and despite his loss of voice fulfilled beyond expectations his role as guide and host - we reached our destination in record time. Once there, we enjoyed a medieval ambiance (in case you haven't guessed already by the name), very suitable for the welcoming presents, and - most importantly - an exchange of heroic confidences while we enjoyed a sumptuous dinner, and watched a series of fencing and dancing shows...

While the table was long, Ubihole's members were gentle enough to rotate positions, so all of us had the chance to chat with them, though in that respect I was specially lucky, as I was right next to Gabor Szabo (Bocika), the game's Lead Designer, and other members of the Hungarian developer in charge of testing and map design. These circumstances allowed this humble Archmage to scratch the surface of matters such as the versatility and potential of the Map Editor, and the structure of the hero skills - some details of which some of you may already know or suspect from the screenshots and statements from the press that we have published on the forum and in our news already.

¿Are they playing some HoMM music piece?	What a great welcome!

A pretty dancer girl showed an awesome belly dancing in order to distract us from our  informative target...  And she succeeded!

On the first point - the Editor - the most interesting thing worth mentioning is that it will come with tools for the configuration of events linked to some pre-established conditions, but I will go into details later, as this belongs to a different moment of the trip. However, the consequences of this are clear: we have assurance that designing important elements, such as reward missions, should now be possible, making use of intuitive menus (unlike Heroes V). Another thing worth remarking on is that the new hero reputation system will have an influence in the different scenarios that will compound the campaign, making it possible to alter its course, guiding its resolution in one way or another, both in the scenario's internal goals (direct conquest - Blood - or mission accomplishment - Tears), and the elements at your disposal (be they artifacts focused on combat - Blood - or the development of a kingdom - Tears), as well as characters aligned one way or the other, who may be of help depending on the situation. This reminds me of the legendary campaigns from Heroes II, in which, for example, depending on your decisions you could secure the help of certain kinds of creatures in the future.

With regards to the second point - hero abilities - the first thing I checked with Boci was the reason for taking apart the Skill Wheel system, which gave quite a unique dimension to Heroes V's gameplay. He answered that this was due to several reasons. Summing up, the first was merely conceptual, as the hero duality in Heroes VI (dividing them into Might Heroes and Magic Heroes) made it necessary to balance both hero types, allowing them to have the same number of active tactical resources. In this sense, Might heroes in Heroes V lacked these tactical resources, considering the number of spells available to Magic heroes, for example, but we will go into this further later on, too. Secondly, there were more global factors, such as the desire to maintain a sense of order in the power of each skill and spell, limiting access to them depending on hero level, and avoiding the imbalances Heroes V could present if you got high-level spells too soon. All of this demanded a less chaotic and more structured system.

After the dinner, it was time to shift from words to facts. We had to take our first decision - similar to the game - as to whether we chose the path of Tears, and went back to the Hotel for rest and preparation for the next day, or the Blood path, going out to rock the city (even though this was complicated due to the snowy mantle covering the streets). I did not need to think on it much: I had to choose Blood. Yet I was surprised to find the vast majority concluded by following the opposite path, some of them maybe conditioned by indecision, cold, and the number of seats available on the taxis that were arriving. At length, only Znork and I were brave enough to join the ship helmed by Max and Erwan, with some other Ubisoft employees and guests also in the crew. Unfortunately, this time, laughs and refreshments yielded little opportunity to glean any more information about the game. Nevertheless, this excursion was very interesting: we got to know them all as people, which, in the end, was the objective many of us had planned - to make the time with them worth remembering, and to continue learning all that it means and implies to develop a videogame. On top of all this, it was worth going just to see "Erwanel Jackson" rocking the dance floor. Really a master, I swear.