Juni 2001

W I Z A R D R Y   8   Preview @ Well Rounded Entertainment	Frank (26.6.2001)

Und wieder mal hat eine amerikanische Website eine Preview mit ein paar neuen Screenshots veröffentlicht:

The game's graphics have been updated, resulting in a beautiful 3-D fantasy world. Wizardry's still played in the first-person, but Sir-Tech has gone to great lengths to bring in a higher degree of tactical combat. The movement is very smooth, although a little slower than a FPS. 3-D models are fairly simple, which is a case of the designers going for immediately recognizable shapes over style. Monsters and architecture, though, are much more detailed, with a good range of movement animations for your foes and some strange and beautiful environments. The spell effects look just great, especially when your party is on the receiving end of the magic.

[...] You'll have six characters in your group as you explore the lands. Additionally, there seem to be two spaces to hold NPCs although we were unable to recruit anyone in the demo. The characters are pretty much standard fantasy characters, but in deference to the science fiction elements in Wizardry's plot, there's a new character called the gadgeteer. The demo shows its limitations, though, as you don't have any parts to assemble gadgets with. We'll have to wait until the game finds a home to see how this new class of character fits into the game. Meanwhile, Sir-Tech has promised to employ a character creation system that will allow you to pick your character's class. Gone are the days of rolling the virtual dice for hours to get that bishop or lord!

One of the hallmark features of the Jagged Alliance games (Sir-Tech's other claim to fame) has migrated over to Wizardry 8: Each character now has a large collection of expressions, which are brought into play based on the context of the game. The result is a game full of charismatic characters that engage you on an emotional level. One of the demo's characters mourned, "Damn, she was like a sister to me!" when a female character died, for example.

Insgesamt wertet man Wizardry 8 als würdigen Nachfolger (keeps the flavor of the previous two Wizardry games). Schade nur, dass es weiterhin keine Infos über einen Vertriebspartner und einen "wirklichen" Erscheinungstermin gibt. Es wird übrigens gemunkelt, dass Sir Tech nur bis nächstes Jahr warten will, weil dann 10 Jahre seit dem Teil 7 vergangen sind .... *g*. Die Screenshots haben übrigens keine besonders gute Qualität, so dass ich diese nicht kopieren werde.

News @ Well-Rounded.com   

W I Z A R D R Y   8   Aktuelles @ RPGVault	Frank (13.6.2001)

Diesmal ist es die amerikanische Website RPGVault, die mit neuen Informationen aufwarten kann. Linda Currie, Designerin, hat sich in verschiedenen Diskussionsforen zu Wort gemeldet, hier Ihr Kommentar im Wizardry 8 Forum @ RPG Vault:

on graphics: That what you are seeing is static. You don't get the true benefit of anything animating. And generally speaking, when you're playing the game you're moving about in the game world, vs. just standing still for, well, forever ; ).

I don't actually make this comment here as a "defense" to the comment that Wiz 8 is graphically outdated. I, obviously, think we did a great job ; ).

The only reason I point this out is that I can fall prey to "critiquing" other games but try to keep this in mind so that I don't bias myself too much against a product based on looks alone. It's usually not just the graphics that "make" a game.

Ausserdem hat Linda ein paar Beiträge im Software Specialties' Wizardry 8 Forum gepostet. Es geht dabei im das Thema, warum die Party nicht aufgeteilt werden kann:

When still in the early days of Wiz 8 design, we did consider party splitting and for a while it was something that we really wanted to incorporate. But we ran into issues with it from a host of areas that made it one of the earlier things that was dropped from our design goals for Wiz 8...

The more we looked at it, the more "complications" we found to come with it... from the game design itself, to the interface, but most importantly to technical considerations (we needed to be certain that we could support the large groups of creatures and the ability to see each member of your party would have really nailed our poly & texture "budget". Ultimately we decided that devoting a chunk of our budget to this would really detract from the Wiz 8 combat experience), and even art issues... (to properly represent so many races and classes, x 2 for gender, and then attire, well, we'd probably still be modeling ; )).
Anyway, this is not to say that this will never be a part of future Wizardry but merely a note about why it's not in Wiz 8.

Darüber hinaus gibt es einen interessanten Vermerk auf der Wizardry8-Website des russischen Publishers Buka: Dort steht nämlich, dass die russische Version im Oktober 2001 erscheinen soll, im RPG-Vault-Forum spricht jemand vom 21.Oktober 2001. Das würde bestätigen, dass die Originalversion wirklich kurz vor der Final-Version steht.

News @ RPG Vault   

A L L G E M E I N E S   Wizardry 8-Guide geht online	Frank (7.6.2001)

Es ist soweit, der Wizardry 8-Guide geht heute online. Warum gerade bei MM-World.com, meinem Fanpage-Projekt zur Might & Magic-Reihe?. Nun es paßt irgendwie zusammen. Beide Reihen sind bekannte und in Deutschland beliebte RPG's. Und nachdem ich von verschiedenen Seiten darum gebeten wurde, auch zu Wizardry 8 ein Webprojekt online zu stellen, konnte ich mich kaum wehren -);
Zur Zeit findet Ihr hier News der letzten Wochen, eine Übersicht zu den bekannten Gamefacts, Links zu Previews, 42 Screenshots, Infos zu den Charakteren sowie das offizielle Wallpaper zum Download. Ein Diskussionsforum darf natürlich auch nicht fehlen.
Natürlich würde ich mich freuen, von Euch ein Feedback zu bekommen. Wenn jemand Interesse an einer aktiven Zusammenarbeit hat, dann soll er / sie sich einfach bei mir melden !

E-Mail: webmaster@f-thies.de.