Вот новости о самой мной ожидаемой игре 2006 года. Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
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Warhammer: Mark of Chaos Exclusive Impressions - Campaign and Multiplayer Details
The brutal, visceral battles of Warhammer promise to come to life like never before in this beautiful real-time strategy game.
Developer Interview
Senior producer Chris Wren tells us all about Warhammer: Mark of Chaos in this exclusive interview.
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While the sci-fi Warhammer 40,000 franchise has had a sudden renaissance thanks to 2004's excellent real-time strategy game Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, the original Warhammer franchise, the fantasy-based one, has remained relatively obscure in recent years. It looks like that will change in a big way with Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, the upcoming real-time strategy game from Namco Bandai Games America and developer Black Hole Games. We got an updated look at Mark of Chaos recently, and this is a real-time strategy game to definitely keep an eye on.
The key thing to keep in mind is that Mark of Chaos isn't a traditional real-time strategy game by any means. As Namco Bandai senior producer Chris Wren explained to us, most real-time strategy games are about 75 percent resource gathering and base building and about 25 percent combat. Mark of Chaos looks to switch those numbers around, and the focus is very much on the battlefield, where you'll maneuver battalions in different formations and try to break the enemy's will to fight by killing enemy units as efficiently (and as ruthlessly) as possible.
In fact, you can't help looking at Mark of Chaos and thinking of Creative Assembly's acclaimed Total War historical battle games, and in many ways, there are similarities between the two. Mark of Chaos looks a lot like Total War, only with fantasy units such as giants, eagles, ratlike skaven, and more. However, Mark of Chaos will feature a much smaller scale than Total War. While the battles in Total War could involve tens of thousands of soldiers, Mark of Chaos will support only about 1,000 units per side, maximum. That's partly because of the nature of the Warhammer miniatures game. Due to all the dice rolls involved, the largest Warhammer miniatures battles rarely had more than a couple of hundred combatants. Of course, a PC can pretty much instantly calculate thousands of dice rolls, which means that battles can be larger, but to stay true to the spirit of the game, you'll usually battle with less than a thousand troops onscreen.
A chaos spawn rears its nightmarish head. Expect lots of intense combat in this strategy game.
Mark of Chaos will feature four of the approximately 11 races that are in the miniatures game: the human empire, armed mainly with gunpowder weapons and cannons; the high elves, a fantasy-heavy race; the scaven, ratlike creatures that swarm you with sheer numbers; and the chaos, a dark race of humans who have pretty much sold their souls to the darkness. In addition to regular units, each faction has its own heroes and superunits, which you can recruit. Heroes are a big part of the miniatures game, and they have the same sort of abilities in Mark of Chaos. You can equip heroes with all sorts of weapons and equipment to make them even more powerful, and you can assign them to lead battalions into combat. Doing so can give a battalion bonuses, like morale bonuses, which ensure they'll fight to the death rather than run if things look bad.
The single-player campaign will have you playing as the chaos or the empire at the beginning of the game. Those familiar with Warhammer history know that there are always wars raging back and forth between the factions. In the game, the chaos are once again pushing south, into a northern part of the empire. The campaign takes place in real time (albeit a very slow real time), which means that you'll be able to move forces on the map to respond to enemy moves. If you're on defense, you may try to intercept an invading army so that you meet it on an open battlefield, or you may let the army penetrate further and concentrate your forces at a castle, which provides defensive bonuses. When two armies meet, you'll battle it out on the battlefield. There isn't any resource gathering in the game, but you're rewarded resource points for achieving objectives, such as recapturing a farm or successfully defending a town. You can use these points to purchase new and more-powerful units.
The battlefields in the game will certainly be beautiful. You'll fight among pastoral lands filled with villages and fields and rock outcroppings that can serve as defensive barriers. In the one battle we saw, we watched as the empire's riflemen picked off waves of incoming skaven. The traditional line-of-sight rules will apply in battle, so you'll see only those enemy units that are in detection range of one of your units. This means that you can use the terrain to your advantage by hiding units behind ridges and hills. Of course, this also means that the enemy can do the same thing to you.
As pretty as the battlefields are, the units and the combat look to be spectacular. Already, we're seeing incredible detail on the units, from the shiny armor on the soldiers in a human battalion to the nightmarish rendering of the chaos spawn. The game's physics engine will ensure that bodies fly through the air in an appropriate manner once enough force is applied, but it also means that you'll be able to watch as cavalry charges crash against massed formations of infantry and see the line bend under pressure. Of course, Warhammer fans expect a certain level of visceral satisfaction to the combat, and, rest assured, we're told that Mark of Chaos will be as brutal as, if not more brutal than, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. The game will almost certainly get a Mature rating (indeed, that was one of the goals), and you'll be able to see units meet all sorts of grisly fates, such as being eaten in the maw of a giant.
The game looks beautiful, and you can expect it to come to life on your PC sometime this fall.
Of course, multiplayer will be a big part of Mark of Chaos. Warhammer fans who spend hours, if not weeks, painting and collecting their miniatures armies will be able to customize their own virtual armies in the game, thanks to the powerful editing tools. You can paint your units just how you'd like and even import your own sigils. The game will feature skirmish modes for one-versus-one, two-versus-two, three-versus-three, or four-versus-four gameplay, and players will be able to save the replay so that others can download and see how a battle turned out. There are also hints of some kind of online campaign, where you'll be able to play against your friends in multiplayer on the campaign map, which sounds like it could be an epic-length experience, considering that the single-player campaign is supposed to last 40 hours or more.
At this rate, Mark of Chaos is looking like a game that will appeal not only to devoted Warhammer fans out there, but to strategy gamers at large. It's got a beautiful graphical look, and the focus on tactical battles full of intense, visceral combat certainly sounds great. The game is currently on course for a release sometime this fall.
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By Jason Ocampo
Posted Mar 9, 2006 11:58 am PT