Disciples III: Renaissance Impressions - Graphics, Campaign, and Expansion Details
We get an updated look at this fantasy-themed turn-based strategy sequel and get new details on the first expansion pack.
It wouldn't be E3 2009 without hundreds of games crammed into the cavernous halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center, but one game that's quietly making precious few appearances is Disciples III: Renaissance. It is the sequel to Strategy First's dark, fantasy-themed turn-based strategy series in development at Russian studio Akella, which now officially owns the Disciples intellectual property. We had a chance to watch both the opening cinematic sequence and an early part of the first of the game's three campaigns and have some new details to share.
Disciples III will apparently be a very story-driven game, and each hero character will have his or her own motivations. The game's opening cinematic sequence (which resembles the cinematic cutscenes of the previous games, featuring camera zooms and pans past detailed 2D portrait art, similar to the work of filmmaker Ken Burns) sets the stage for the game's story. The troubled fantasy world of Nevendar has witnessed a miracle in the form of a shooting star that has brought with it a mysterious angel. No one knows who the angel is or what her motivations are, but each of the game's three races must escort this character throughout each of the game's three campaigns; first through the campaign of the empire faction (humans), then through the legions of the damned (demons), and finally, through the elven alliance (elves and humans). Disciples fans may be wondering about the series' other evil faction, the undead. As it turns out, it'll rejoin the world of Nevendar as a playable race in the first Disciples III add-on, which is already in production and which Akella suggests will be released shortly after Disciples III.
We then jumped into the first single-player campaign as the human empire to begin our journey. Like in previous games, you can choose one of three hero character types to be the leader of your first army--the warrior, the mage, or the guildmaster. Again, your primary objective in each campaign will be to escort the mysterious angel character, but you'll also have plenty of secondary objectives. These include exploring and conquering 3D overland maps that house treasure caches, resource nodes that provide magical crystals to power your magic spells, and additional settlements that may be controlled by enemy forces. We're told that the game's art is now more or less final, and it looks great. The overland maps are highly detailed, but they're stylized with muted, faded colors that seem to fit well with the Disciples series' dark fantasy theme.
We tried out a handful of the standard activities you'd expect from a Disciples game, such as upgrading our town by purchasing a new structure to unlock upgrades for a certain unit type. Hometowns in Disciples III will also have item stores that will grow in size later in the campaign and let you purchase a great variety of different items beyond just healing potions. Every location in a Disciples III town is rendered in full 3D with a swooping camera that circles past a waterfall around your mage guild, for instance. We also dived into a basic battle against a couple of goblins, whom we dispatched without difficulty. Disciples III is a turn-based game, just like its predecessors, and so is the combat, which, as usual, begins with your war party on the left side of the field and the enemy off to the right. However, combat now takes place on a 3D positional map where you must move your melee units within range of your foes in order to attack them, similar to something like the Heroes of Might & Magic series. Battlefields may also have special nodes on the ground between both armies that grant combat bonuses to any unit that stands on them. So it's important to make sure you occupy them with your most powerful units to make sure your foes can't get to them first.
Disciples III has been a long time coming, but the game looks better and more complete than ever before. Akella suggests that the Russian version of the game could be ready to ship as soon as this August, but the studio is hoping to finalize its localization plans in time for a worldwide release, which could mean a later worldwide date of this winter.
Related Game
Disciples III: Renaissance
- Publisher:
- Akella
- Category:
- Fantasy Turn-Based Strategy
- Release:
- TBA
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