Dragonshard E3 2005 Preshow Impressions

We had a chance to take an updated look at Dragonshard, the upcoming real-time strategy game from developer Liquid Entertainment and publisher Atari, just in time for E3. We were able to take a look at some of the new content planned for E3, including the new "city grid" building system, as well as a fresh look at new underground dungeon areas, plus a new look at the game's different playable factions.

The city grid is the system that Dragonshard uses to let you build up a base. Like in most real-time strategy games, you'll build out this base to help you grow your armies and access top-level technologies. But unlike other strategy games, Dragonshard has no tech tree--you can build pretty much any building in any order you want. Also, buildings don't produce units. So, within a city grid (which includes a central keep), you can build up to 16 different buildings of any kind you choose. Liquid has apparently decided to change one aspect of cities we reported earlier--buildings will no longer give bonuses to other nearby buildings (apparently, some testers found it was too confusing). Instead, creating more buildings will let your captain units gain more and more experience levels. And overall, the open-ended nature of the city grid will still allow you to build out your armies in pretty much any way you wish.

When you're adventuring, you'll want to take along a well-rounded force that includes unique top-level units called champions (which do not gain experience levels but can pick up an entire armory's worth of weapons and armor over the course of the campaign), along with midlevel units known as captains. Captains can gain experience levels and they also recruit soldiers, which are bottom-tier units that will make up most of your armies, at least aboveground. As you may remember from our previous coverage, Dragonshard will take place in the Dungeons & Dragons world of Eberron, which has both an overland map and subterranean caves. In the overland, you'll want to explore and conquer as much territory as possible by claiming expansion points (which then free up a mini city grid with four slots for buildings), by taking control of power points that grant special bonuses, and by seizing deposits of crystal shards (one of the game's key resources). Interestingly, whenever crystals are fully depleted from the overland, the world of Eberron will experience a "shard storm," a spectacular storm in which new deposits of crystals come crashing to earth. You'll also be able to take on various quests in the single-player game that may be two-sided, like one in which you may choose to aid either a group of ettins (huge, two-headed monsters) or a group of duergar (a race of evil dwarves). But while aiding one group will earn you a new set of allies on the battlefield, it will also immediately make the other group hostile to you.

Underground, you'll be looking at a whole other story. For one thing, soldiers can't enter the underground adventure areas, so only a champion, your captains, and possibly a few top-level minions will join you. The underground areas, as you may have read from our previous coverage, will serve more as role-playing-game-style dungeon hacks, where you'll explore caverns in search of treasure, taking care to avoid powerful enemies and deadly traps, and even solve a logic puzzle or two. For instance, in one area we saw, a static stone golem stood guard over a room full of panels, and setting a captain unit on each panel caused the statuelike creature to come to life and join the adventuring party. We've already seen some enemies, like dark elves, beholders, and gelatinous cubes, in action; this time around, we were able to see a huge demon (preceded by his very own brief cinematic sequence that shows you'll need serious firepower to deal with him).

However, some of the most vicious monsters in the game will be under your control if you desire. In addition to the Order of the Silver Flame, the human-elf-dwarf faction we've covered previously, you'll also be able to play as the reptilian lizardfolk and the evil Umbragen factions, both of which we got to see up close. The lizardfolk faction consists entirely of reptilian creatures, including lizardmen infantry, chameleon rogues (these will be humanoid creatures with the heads, and camouflage abilities, of chameleons), giant turtles, and winged lizards. The lizardfolk's humongous top-level unit, the warfell drake, will be a huge, dinosaur-like landbeast with mounted seats for lizardfolk archers--a tough match against the Silver Flame's powerful flying phoenix top-level unit. Then again, you may opt to side with the Umbragen, an evil faction of dark elves that are adept at shadowy magics and whose forces will include such powerful allies as tainted priestesses, burning magi, and umbra lords.

While we weren't able to see much of the game's single-player campaign or its multiplayer, or what managing both an aboveground and a belowground army simultaneously will be like, Dragonshard seems to have plenty of very interesting stuff going for it. The game is scheduled for release later this year.