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Chris Taylor's Next Game Announced: Demigod
The next game from Chris Taylor's Gas Powered Games (makers of Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander) has just been announced, and it's another one of those new-fangled "cross genre" games – an action/RPG/RTS hybrid to be precise. Demigod takes inspiration from Warcraft III and its mod Defense of the Ancients, and attempts to put you right in the thick of an epic RTS battle.
For those not familiar with Defense of the Ancients it concentrated on hero units while taking out base construction and resource management entirely. Instead players controlled a single Hero unit with a variety of powers, and by killing AI units scattered around the map your hero would become stronger and level up until you were eventually strong enough to take out the other player's base.
Demigod seems to have taken this idea and expanded upon it even further. According to the scoop on 1up:
"You control one of 12 'demigod' heroes – some of which survive solely on the strength of their own powers, others of which thrive on building smaller units and structures of their own for support. The guy on the left in the screenshot below is one such hero, 'The Rook,' a former king whose spirit now animates an anthropomorphic castle. Demigod is, as you'd expect, a multiplayer game at heart, with an emphasis on co-op play. There's a single-player mode, too, though Gas Powered Games says it will serve mainly as a 'training ground' for the multiplayer."
Being that I actually love the multiplayer FPS/RTS hybrid Command and Conquer: Renegade, this piques my interest. Demigod appears to be more RPG centric, but with Chris Taylor at the helm, I'm sure they can pull off a solid game. I only worry that by making it mainly a multiplayer game (single player is mostly for training) that this title might be doomed from the start. Games which tried this in the past haven't exactly seen great sales (or reviews) and it's the rare gem of a game that can get away with solely a multiplayer experience.
Maybe I'm only interested because of my fond memories of playing Renegade's multiplayer with my friends, but does this game interest anyone else?
It reminds me of Black and White, I've already emailed Chris seeing if he'll share any secrets with me. Which being secrets I wouldn't be able to share, but still. I told him it looks sexy, which it does. I'm excited.
Posted by Interitus at January 3, 2008 9:48 PMI thought he was working on a space version of Dungeon Siege. Also the whole of idea of mixing rts/rpg just does not seem like a very pleasant mix.
Posted by killerboy85 at January 3, 2008 11:25 PMMultiplayer only games generally don't do well? Are you making an exception for MMO's? :D
Posted by UndeadScottsman at January 4, 2008 12:36 AMSound interesting. We played the heck out of Tides of Blood, a probably somewhat similar Warcraft 3 mod. I always liked RTS/Action games. Reminds me of Battlezone and I also liked Renegade a lot. I am actually looking forward to the new C&C shooter, if it becomes anything close to Renegade. Multiplayer was so much fun in Renegade.
Anyways, playing giant ...erm giants is fun anyways and honestly, if the Multiplayer is superb, I don't care about the singleplayer. I'd buy Halo just with Multiplayer in it and the way Halo 3 is set-up, one might even argue that it really has no singleplayer as even the campaign is actually supposed to be multiplayer ;)
There's a Warcraft 3 mod!? Man, the older I get the more out of the loop I become. This game sounds promising. To me, Warcraft 3 was a nod to Warlords Battlecry. Mods notwithstanding, I think many elements of Demigod will be similar to it. I can't help but think about another multiplayer game after reading this article -- Savage. I get the feeling that the gameplay will be quite similar to that game.
Posted by n10sity at January 4, 2008 4:00 PMPlease keep your comments relevant to this entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.