At a game design lecture held the morning of the first official day of GDC, Raphael Colantonio, creative director at Arkane Studios, explained many problems faced by designers in the realm of first-person hand-to-hand combat, a challenge it faced head-on in its Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
The team made the choice of going with a middleware engine, specifically Valve's Source engine, which helped define one of the main goals of the project: "We didn't want Half Life 2 with a sword instead of the crowbar." The other main challenges, as the team saw things at the start of the project, were working on an aiming system that made sense for close range moving targets, giving a strong sense of damage feedback, and gaging distance.
More After The Jump.
Although Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was let down in many facets, it also managed to show off one truly exceptional area of its design.
Dark Messiah Enhanced is basically a HD Texture Pack for Arkane's title that aims to overhaul most of its textures.
GE writes: Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is a spin-off of the well-known franchise by the same name, Might & Magic. Though I am not familiar with the main franchise, I have played most of the Heroes of Might & Magic games, and I love them. And then I heard of one of the many spin-offs called Dark Messiah. And unsurprisingly too many, it was a great game that I really enjoyed playing through.
Wow, it's been a LOOOOONG time since I heard anyone mention this game. I didn't care for it too much, thought it was pretty average. Nice bringing up a 9 year old game though, nice blast from the past can probably get it used for 2 bucks.
With a better story, it could have been
I don't think I've ever played an RPG with a better combat system
