Black & White gold

Electronic Arts has announced that, after months of final testing and tweaking, Black & White is finally complete. The game is set to ship in North America on March 27 and should be widely available in stores later that week. In the announcement, Peter Molyneux commented, "'Black & White has gone gold'--everyone at Lionhead has been longing to see those words, and it is with a profound sense of relief that I am writing them. Black & White has been the most epic project I have ever worked on, and it feels as though these past few months have been the longest of my life."

Black & White is both more story-driven and more open-ended than strategy games like Populous, Syndicate, and Dungeon Keeper, which established Molyneux's reputation as a game designer. Black & White puts the player in the role of a god that will tend either toward good or evil powers depending on the player's actions in the game. Early in the game, an animated creature becomes the player's earthly avatar, and its autonomous behavior is largely learned from the way it interacts with the player and the other creatures in Black & White's world.

For more on Black & White, take a look at our in-depth previews of the game.