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| Thread: A prespective from the Ubisoft generation |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV |
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 18, 2011 06:57 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 19:41, 18 Aug 2011.
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Maurice, if you bother researching the M&M lore a bit, you'll see that none of what you find illogical or out of place is really illogical or our of place. There are some exaggerations here and there but nothing extreme or too disturbing. The technology from the Forge belongs to the planet even more than the knights and the castles which are... later development.
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It can be completely alien, because alien things may come through those portals at any time.
That's not exactly true. These portals are local for the planet, the interstellar travel through the communication infrastructure of the Ancients is blocked after the Kreegans infiltrate the Web of the Worlds and only those who have Control Cubes can activate the said portals for travel between the solar systems. These Control Cubes on the other hand are very rare. Landing on the planet with ships is perfectly possible though.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 18, 2011 10:51 PM |
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You repeat yourself again  . You're assuming that technology is affected and acts differently and such. In other words, I - as the player - have to assume things about alien concepts and technologies, that not only deviate from the game world as we have known it, but also from those same items and technologies in our real world - items and technologies that are clearly shaped accordingly, so I can understand them, but then again it's supposedly different because it would be overpowered otherwise? It kills suspense, it kills believability in the world as a whole. It just doesn't blend in, period.
I repeat my question: would you still consider LOTR a good story, if Sauron's armies had incorporated Orcs carrying laser guns and Chainsaw Zombies? I seriously think that if he had done that, we would never have heard of the name Tolkien.
I do not consider LOTR a good story.
"It just doesn't blend in, period", is bull. You do not WANT it to blend in, while I have no problem imagining an environment where it DOES make a good story.
And spare myself "assuming" - the whole thing is "assuming", and it's assuming a lot. As said, I CAN imagine it very well, you don't, so THAT's a period.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 18, 2011 11:19 PM |
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I don't think it's a matter of "wanting" JJ. Almost anything can be made to blend in provided effort is expended to do it properly.
I mean, if someone can make millions of dollars selling a book entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , well I think it's safe to say that anything can be blended if it's done in the right way.
Taking Lord of the Rings as an example (with the understanding you don't think it's a great story) -> could space aliens have worked in Middle Earth? That depends. If at the climactic moment aliens had suddenly beamed down and done anal probe experiments on Frodo and then absconded with the Ring in tow, THE END, then no, I don't think that would be a successful blending of "High Fantasy" and "Science Fiction".
On the other hand, if the Sci-Fi elements had been introduced gradually, or even abruptly with a suitable explanation so that you get that, "Ah-HA!" moment - then sure it could work. I mean, wasn't it Mark Twain who wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court? Time Travel and Arthurian Legend in a sort of SciFi-Meets-Fantasy blend, written in the late 1800s.
Yes, anything CAN be blended, but the further apart the two genres are, the more skill it takes to do it well so that the reader will accept it. And not all readers will accept it with equal readiness.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted August 19, 2011 12:00 AM |
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Corribus hits the nail on the head. Like I wrote before, I am not against the concept - it can actually work quite well. I am, however, against its implementation. Somehow the idea of having a medieval town with knights in shiny armor and crossbowmen next to a town with a nuclear power plant and an air strip just doesn't sit well with me - unless, like Corribus already said, the developer did a great effort to blend it in and make it appear logical. Once again, I feel that that's pretty absent from the Forge Town implementation as they had it when it was scrapped.
I'll refer to two other fantasy games, which did make a succesful implementation of highly advanced technology, in one case even alien: World of Warcraft and Dungeon Siege.
To start with the former: when the Draenei arrived on Azeroth, they did so by steering a space ship in a collision course with the planet in an effort to make a crash landing (their vessel was damaged and beyond salvation). Furthermore, over in Draenor, the Blood Elves had gained access to several more of those ships, with the help of Demons. However, these ships weren't like those we know from Star Trek and Star Wars; the developers had gone to great length to merge them into the game. The technology was driven by magic for a large part, resulting in functional space ships, huge mechanic pumps and all sorts of golems and mechano-suits. They fit it fairly well, actually, and were readily accepted as elements in the Warcraft universe.
As for the second one, Dungeon Siege had the player travel through an underground Goblin factory at one point. The Goblins were displayed as being technologically driven, having developed robots to do a lot of their work for them. These robots were produced in their factories and consisted of robots armed with flamethrowers, robots with grenade launchers and robots with gattling guns. However, the materials used to bring them to life on the screen - as well as the factory as a whole - was stuff that would be easily available within the game world, in the fantasy setting. Because of this, the factories and the robots also blended in quite nicely with the rest of the game world. In Dungeon Siege 3, the Goblins had even developed advanced technological implementations in a town, giving the town electrical power, various technological contraptions such as automated gates as well as highly technologically advanced Golems to act as a police force. Here, too, the technology blended in quite well with the rest of the environment and the game world and made it "fit", without forcing the player to make exaggerating assumptions, to "make it work", so to speak.
I admit that I haven't played any M&M title, ever. What I do understand is that in one of the games, someone opened the Heavenly Forge (sounds more Divine to me, than Alien, by the way), which was then used to quickly warp stuff around with high(er) technology than was known in the (Ho)M&M universe at that point. To me, that sounds like the Forge Town would have sprung forth from "mundane" origins (like the other Towns) and then got technology slapped onto it. I don't see that back in the Forge Town picture, linked earlier in this thread.
As an aside, I consider myself both a Fantasy fan, as well as a Science Fiction fan. I like both genres and I am still not sure which one I like more. Both have their charms, I guess.
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted August 19, 2011 12:46 AM |
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Star Wars was basically sword & sorcery in spehhs, right?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 19, 2011 12:52 AM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 00:54, 19 Aug 2011.
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I admit that I haven't played any M&M title, ever. What I do understand is that in one of the games, someone opened the Heavenly Forge (sounds more Divine to me, than Alien, by the way), which was then used to quickly warp stuff around with high(er) technology than was known in the (Ho)M&M universe at that point. To me, that sounds like the Forge Town would have sprung forth from "mundane" origins (like the other Towns) and then got technology slapped onto it.
"Heavenly" is one of the many adjectives describing the obscurantism which reigns after the communications throughout the Web of the Worlds cease (although I'm not totally sure if they were not named "Heavenly" at the time when they were built but then again this is Ancients' technology and the Ancients are regarded as more or less supernaturals even during the peak of the society which they created). It has always been a factory for high-tech equipment so there is nothing "mundane" about its origins. In HoMM you also have demons which are not demons, angels which are not angels, magical artifacts which are not magical and so on and just because they seem "mundane" on the surface doesn't mean that they are.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 19, 2011 01:34 AM |
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In HoMM you also have demons which are not demons, angels which are not angels, magical artifacts which are not magical and so on and just because they seem "mundane" on the surface doesn't mean that they are.
Which of course the legions of HoMM fans who spent hundreds of hours with the franchise but have never played MM would never know because it's never been so much as hinted at in any HoMM game. So maybe you can understand why it seems out of place to so many ardent HoMM fans.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted August 19, 2011 01:48 AM |
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Well, they are within their right to ignore these things but not to claim that they don't exist or that they are something which they are not. Same thing which applies to the real world. 
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 19, 2011 08:09 AM |
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Warning: [rant mode]
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I don't think it's a matter of "wanting" JJ. Almost anything can be made to blend in provided effort is expended to do it properly.
Except that we are not talking about a finished product, but one that we will ever know how it would have "blended in". Which means, that you are generally right - at least in the sense, that "if the story is good, anything goes, while if not, it's a bad story first and foremost" -, but in this specific case it IS a matter of wanting, because we are projecting or assuming, how the finished product will have looked and felt, and, most importantly, PLAYED.
Now, cases, for which you can say beforehand, "that will suck", are actually pretty rare - it happens much more often, that things sound good on the surface, and when you see the finished product, you start realizing that it sounded better that it actually is (which is logical, considering that raising expectations is part of the market game).
So what we are talking about here is not, how it WAS made and how it DID blend in, but instead we are talking about how everyone IMAGINED or IMAGINES, how it would or would have blend(ed) in - and here it starts, that part of the HoMM-base of fans are and would not have been willing to wait, but were appalled when they heard the naked and sparse facts. And while you, Corribus, may now try to make it look like it was and is more behind that reaction, in reality it was a simple "Laser and Middle Ages, NAH!" that was - and is - sounding, and not, "yeah, well, depends on how it will be done, may be a good one, but maybe not, I'd be somewhat sceptical about it", which would have seemed to be a fairly reasonable reaction.
Then, people are not tiring to point to the fact that, "hey, HoMM is a STRATEGY game, and it is completely ok, when people don't know anything about the M&M games and the whole universe - the game must work in its own right".
Neither Zeno nor me are denying that, and Zeno has already made it clear a couple of times, that his point is that SF elements fit, since they were part of that universe from the beginning.
But what about the other way round? I mean, EXACTLY, we are talking about a STRATEGY game's EXPANSION pack, which would be akin to something like a bonus track or two on a music CD, or an intermission in a book. And strategy game means, if all is said and done, if you have watched the initial trailer movie, read the story - maybe with a headshake -, when the smoke clears, it's the GAME that is left, not the story. After a time - who cares about the story? It's not like anyone who've played HoMM 3 for a long time - 5 years continually, like me, others longer, still playing it - would have played the campaigns through and through and through (which was actually different, at least for me, with Homm 2, but again, not because the story was so great).
So what's left is the game, not the story, and the simple fact is, that no one has any idea about how things would have played half a year after the release. Not the slightest.
And then the whole, "they have lasers, eeek" nonsense. Yeah, well, they have a lot of stuff that defies imagination. Evil Eyes - what are they doing with their eyes to kill stuff? A force like Demise had it in the Wild Cards series? No, wait, that's the Gorgons and their Death Stare - how would that be explained? "Magic"? Or what is Petrification supposed to be? For a certain time changing to stone - and then switch back to warm, living matter... huh? That is supposed to be possible? How does it work? Must be "Magic". Giant Dragons flying around, coughing fire or acid ... hm. Sure, "Magic". Objects of stone or metal like statues are animated ... really? Gergoyles? Did you have a look at those Golems - that would seem to be robots, except that it's powered by who knows what - imagination I would think: "Nah, it's no robot, it's a GOLEM. It's MAGIC, for frig's sake, NOT TECHNOLOGY, OH NO!" Titans are of course bigger and cast Lightnings like they had a really big teaser or something ... nah, they are just powerful. Well, it's just POWERFUL MAGIC!!
And what about Priests - how exactly do they kill their opponents? Or Mages? Umm, let me guess: Magic? Some magic beam... Now, how can those Orcs fight those Mages with their ineffective primitive bows and also completely without magic? Since when can a primitive arrow, probably just a piece of wood with a point of stone or metal kann kill something like a Steel Golem? Because, if we would call the Steel Golem a Robot - IT COULDN'T: "Orcs with bow and arrow against ROBOTS? Are you KIDDING or something?" But, hey, it's M... No, wait, it's not. That bow and arrows are pretty mundane, actually, so how can they kill those R... err, Golems? Are they hitting something vital like elec... no, not that. Ah, well, it's reverse Magic or something, who cares?
Angels and Devils in quantities - pfft? Flamethrower "Gogs" ... Magic. Walking Trees, Flying horses, Unicorns blinding creatures ... Magic. Meteor Showers, burning or not, curses, blessings, berserk mode, Paralyzing, Hypnotizing, Cloning, Teleporting, Dimension Doors, Flying ... Magic. Actually it's everything modern armies would like to have, but just don't get their hands on, because, well, it's MAGIC, right? It just ... works, miraculously.
And WHY does it work? Well, that's clear, innit? Because it's the MIDDLE AGES, that's why. Whatwith all the superstition and miracles and belief - it could be true, could it? It COULD JUST be true. Who knows what might be or might have been in such a time, after all, it's long ago and all. No one can look and check. It's living mythology, stories of old, legends, myths, fairy tales... While our modern times, I mean, we KNOW them, right? No miracles, no magic, just dry technology and science, no surprise there. And if that no-surprise-there science&technology enters that It-Just-COULD-BE-Could-It?, suddenly it makes "poof", and everyone blinks, rubs their eyes and goes, ah, come on, fairies against lasers and jetpacks, that's not believable.
Which is the underlying reason, in my opinion: That Forge stuff is so dry-reality, it makes you doubt the reality of that pleasantly magical, wondrous and fairy-tale world of mythology and legend. You doubt that Magic could beat that technology stuff. You find it unbelievable. You suddenly find the whole thing unbelievable.
But that's just YOU and YOUR doubts. If that fairy-tale world is strong enough, it will beat the invaders and repel the attack on THEIR reality. It's their world, their reality, and in that world, MAGIC is dominating, not technology. Which means, the right army led by the right leader will blow them away, and if you cannot believe that, you cannot really believe in the power of your Might and Magic world.
It's not the story that is lacking - it's your imagination. You are just blaming the story of which you don't know anything more than, "eek, Lasers against thrown rocks, that destroys the illusion".
Get real. There are lots of people who would look at the game - and fantasy in general - and say, "that is complete nonsense! Who would believe in this fairy tale stuff? It's mindless, foolish stories, hopelessly romantic, with unreal people, unreal forces and ridiculous plots, most of the time. Who can waste their time with that?"[/rant mode]
If you read that, I'm sure, some of you won't like it. It IS true, that quality makes things more ... immersive. Not more believable. When all is said and done a fantasy book is still fantasy and not real, but if it was immersive, it let you forget reality, as long as you were reading. It makes the world come alive before your mind's eye. BELIEVABLE OR NOT.
And that's the whole point. Believable is nonsense anyway. The real question when it comes to elements of the MODERN REAL world or SF entering a fantasy world is: how can you dive down into the depth of a fantasy world, when elements of reality or science are pulling you back and raise doubts?
The answer is, that it's you and yozr imagination who makes the connection, not the element in question. Think Golems and Robots. Looks like Robot, feels like Robot - is a Golem. But LASER. If it was called differently, like, err, Lightthrower. But no, it's a Laser.
So it's a laser, so what? You either believe in the power of magic or not - what's a laser got to do with it?
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted August 19, 2011 09:12 AM |
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STRATEGY game's EXPANSION pack, which would be akin to something like a bonus track
You can't really compare free stuff to things you'd have to pay for.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted August 19, 2011 10:41 AM |
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Edited by MattII at 10:44, 19 Aug 2011.
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Neither Zeno nor me are denying that, and Zeno has already made it clear a couple of times, that his point is that SF elements fit, since they were part of that universe from the beginning.
Part of the series, yes, but it wasn't evident in the Heroes part of the series, not in Heroes 1, or Heroes 2, or indeed even in Heroes 3 Vanilla.
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And strategy game means, if all is said and done, if you have watched the initial trailer movie, read the story...
Yeah, but you can't expect to get any sense out of Predator 2 by watching any of the Alien films.
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After a time - who cares about the story? It's not like anyone who've played HoMM 3 for a long time - 5 years continually, like me, others longer, still playing it - would have played the campaigns through and through and through...
The only thing the Forge actually had going for it was the back-story, without the back-story it would probably have felt like a dystopian sci-fi shoehorned awkwardly into an otherwise pretty good fantasy game.
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And then the whole, "they have lasers, eeek" nonsense. Yeah, well, they have a lot of stuff that defies imagination. Evil Eyes - what are they doing with their eyes to kill stuff? A force like Demise had it in the Wild Cards series? No, wait, that's the Gorgons and their Death Stare - how would that be explained? "Magic"? Or what is Petrification supposed to be? For a certain time changing to stone - and then switch back to warm, living matter... huh? That is supposed to be possible? How does it work? Must be "Magic". Giant Dragons flying around, coughing fire or acid ... hm. Sure, "Magic".
When dealing with effects so obviously beyond current possibility there are two roads you can go down, 'magic' and 'technobabble'. 'Magic' may sound lazy when compared to 'technobabble' (and it probably is), but at least it's not going to sound nearly as ridiculous 10, 15, 20 years down the track.
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Titans are of course bigger and cast Lightnings like they had a really big teaser or something ... nah, they are just powerful.
Well you could come up with some half-believable explanation about using lasers to create an ionised path through the atmosphere which makes it the easiest path for the electrons, but two thirds of the people who play the game aren't going to care, and two thirds of the ones who do care are going to disbelieve it because "that wouldn't really work", and most of the rest would have been happy to accept 'magic' as an explanation anyway.
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While our modern times, I mean, we KNOW them, right? No miracles, no magic, just dry technology and science, no surprise there.
Except that most sci-fi is more-or-less magic anyway, it's just got metal bent around it (see Shields, Phasters/Blasters, Warp Drive/Hyperdrive, Artificial Gravity, etc.).
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Which is the underlying reason, in my opinion: That Forge stuff is so dry-reality, it makes you doubt the reality of that pleasantly magical, wondrous and fairy-tale world of mythology and legend.
Actually no, what got me more than anything was the ocean of anachronisms, I mean come on, lasers and chainsaws, handguns and cyborging? What the hell were they thinking of?
Next time, think before you start typing.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 19, 2011 01:40 PM |
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What the hell were they thinking of?
Next time, think before you start typing.
Well, thanks for the compliment, putting me into the same category like "them", which I really prefer to being in yours, thanks.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted August 19, 2011 01:44 PM |
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Edited by MattII at 13:55, 19 Aug 2011.
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You said yourself it was a rant. Besides, I found some of the insinuations in there to be rather insulting.
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted August 19, 2011 03:09 PM |
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Personally I think Forge could have worked, worked very well even, but the one they presented I find horrific.
Sci-fi in HoMM, fine with that, if it's eased into the narritive with skill.
It's sad but we're so conditioned now with certain rules we've come to expect from certain fantasy worlds that you either have to make it clear right off the bat it's not normal fantasy or have to slowsly and subtily reveal there is more going on, because just "in your face" ogres with missle launchers out of the blue, completely clashing with the setting as it was presented in HoMMIII... was a bad move.
It could have worked, possibly even the missle ogres or chainsaw zombies (though I hate them aesthetically with every fiber of my body) but by slowly introducing the concept and the backstory found in the other MM games.
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Mr.Dragon Factions in production.
Citadel: 7/7 creatures, 2/2 hero base classes. (complete, for now)
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted August 19, 2011 03:43 PM |
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JJ, all of the examples you mentioned in your long post (rant?) up above are all examples of stuff blended into the rest of the game world. Even the Golems. And yes, Magic as well as mythology are very strong themes underlying the world as a whole. This provides coherence between the elements within that world.
I've also given two examples of other games (and with regards to WoW, I didn't even mention Goblin and Gnomish Engineering, which actually provides flying machines and steam tanks!), where the advanced technology was blended in rather neatly with the rest of the world around it. People accepted that easily as being part of that world, of that fantasy setting. The world of those games is coherent, for the most part.
If you just look at the Forge Town as it was displayed in that one image, it has - in my opinion - fairly little coherence with the rest of the world. I'm not willing to stretch my imagination that far to "make it work". And based on the reactions, I know a lot of people thought the same.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 19, 2011 04:09 PM |
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But it wasn't supposed to be "part of that world". It's something ALIEN - that's the, err, challenge. It's like yoou play Civilization, and suddenly the Alpha Centaurians become playable - assuming they crash-landed sometime in the past. Christ.
It's just a GAME, actually.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted August 19, 2011 05:46 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 17:47, 19 Aug 2011.
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Part of that world in aesthetics. In design. It could be alien beyond belief and still "made to fit" in style and looks. I've liked it in WoW and in Dungeon Siege.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted August 19, 2011 08:17 PM |
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But it wasn't supposed to be "part of that world". It's something ALIEN - that's the, err, challenge. It's like yoou play Civilization, and suddenly the Alpha Centaurians become playable - assuming they crash-landed sometime in the past. Christ.
It's just a GAME, actually.
Somewhat different from the rest, a bit ... outworldly and unreal and a bit eerie, so this is exactly the opposite of the usual, since usually it's the known that comes solid, real and trustworthy and the supernatural has that unreal, eerie quality.
IT DOES NOT HAVE TO "FIT"!
It can be completely alien, because alien things may come through those portals at any time.
But what's the point? It was supposed to clash aesthetically. That's the twist that makes it so evil. It's an invader, something parasitical. Creeping through the portals is the cold metal of an alien thing called technology, and under the influence of magic something gruesome is created. It's not so different from Necromancy, this Technomancy, which fuses living flesh with dead machine.
The Forge would have been an episode. Somehow like the Alien coming down on a fairy world. Something that doesn't look cute, not in the least.
*BUMP*
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted August 19, 2011 08:28 PM |
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Xfing
Adventuring Hero
I like Forge
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posted September 08, 2014 03:48 PM |
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Hey there guys, a huge fan of the NWC lore here - and horribly depressed and haunted by the fact of its axing. I saw this thread and made my account specifically to reply to it, even though it's a 3-year necro. Please bear with me.
As for the Forge town, please allow me to address some of your mostly valid points with some explanations:
Q: "If the Forge units are so technologically advanced, why could medieval units still hold their own against them?"
A: They couldn't. Like it was said in the thread - an arm-mounted chainsaw does do greater damage than a sword. A laser blaster does do greater damage than a mere crossbow. The units from the Forge town would have been noticeably superior to their equivalents of respective tiers, but they would have been balanced with bigger per-unit costs and lower populations. This would have contrasted well with the Conflux, which has an increased population of Firebirds/Phoenixes. The Conflux is the Subversive faction, while the Forge would have been the Powerhouse faction. There is no such thing as the technology being weakened/nerfed due to the universe's setting, that's a horrible straw man explanation. It wouldn't have been weakened, it would have been overwhelmingly powerful, and that was the very point of it all. Besides, the Forge was not to be playable in multiplayer because it was too powerful.
Q: "The Forge could not have been satisfactorily implemented story-wise"
A: The story you would have seen with the Forge town would have been very, very similar to what you saw in the Armageddon's Blade campaign. The maps were mostly unchanged, it's only that the Forge towns were replaced by Infernos - so the missions would have looked very similar from a gameplay standpoint. Also, seeing as the Forge faction originates from Deyja (as Kastore succeeded Archibald as its ruler - another example of how events in MM shape story arcs in HoMM), we may have expected to also face several Necropolis towns supplementing the Forge troops. Kastore, however - as you might know from MMVII - was never quite keen on necromantic studies, in fact he neglected them completely in favor of his technocalyptic ambitions.
The plot of the Armageddon's blade campaign would have dealt with stopping the invasion of Antagarich by Kastore's forces and his allies from the Kingdom of Harmondale (the main town of the Contested Lands known from the original HoMM3, gaining independence from both Erathia and Avlee in the story of MMVII). The Deyjan forces would have all but conquered Antagarich - such was their power - and the only hope to put an end to them would have been the Armageddon's Blade. Like the preserved intro cinematic of AB showed, it would have been found by Catherine & Co in a cave, rather than forged by Xeron. It is also not impossible that the deposed and exiled Archibald would have played a role as an ally, mending his relations with his brother and reforming himself further.
To be perfectly honest, this plot would have been much better than what we got, and less inconsistent. It would have carried on and terminated the plot arc established in MMVII. The axing of the Forge actually created the first discrepancies in the story continuity - the Light Path ending of MMVII was declared canon, while originally it was the Dark Path ending. The Light ending, however, was luckily more or less self-contained, and the story could have picked up on it without the need to reference it - only the political changes to Antagarich had to be preserved (Archibald exiled, Roland freed, Harmondale allied with Bracada rather than Deyja). Anyway, it was first intended for the Kreegan arc to be ended as early as MMVII, where Xenofex, the King of Kreegans is slain - this was supposed to be the last bastion of the Kreegans and the destruction of Colony Zod was supposed to put an end to the Kreegans once and for all. The mission was received in MM7 both on the path of Light and Dark - in the latter case because Kastore thought that "It was no fun to rule a world full of dead people". Hence, the story we got for Armageddon's Blade felt forced to me - milking the Kreegans more and more was overdoing it, they had outstayed their welcome, having to deal with Kastore & Co. would have been much fresher and more interesting. Besides, the Conflux had also been planned, but for the second expansion. We would have gotten it anyway, and probably in a more polished form. So we basically got less, got it worse, all because of some butthurt fans who couldn't take sci-fi in their fantasy, even if it DID make for a better story.
Q: "Forge should have been more subtle in its sci-fi aspects".
Actually, from the point of the story, no. The technology of the Ancients is easily Star Trek-level. Complete, "weak" sci-fi ("weak" meaning a level of sci-fi so "out there" that it's not plausible in light of current scientific knowledge, the opposite is "strong" sci-fi). The Heavenly Forge was but a single, defunct piece of this technology - the last one preserved on Enroth, but still it had stopped working some decades to a hundred years or so after the Silence, so around 1k years before the stories of HoMMIII/MMVII took place. When it did work, it was used not only to create futuristic weaponry, but also "conventional" weaponry and armor of extraordinary quality - lasting a thousand years and "still looking as on the day they were made". But it could also duplicate anything, which Kastore planned to exploit by duplicating the ancient weaponry the visitors from Terra had brought to Enroth on their crash - namely blaster pistols and rifles. Therefore, it stands to reason that recreating the very wonders of the Ancients to the T with just a single operating Forge was impossible - that's why the Forge town looked more like something of the present day or close future rather than the far future akin to the Ancients. They had to improvise - while they could copy blaster pistols and rifles to arm the goblin armies of Deyja (yes, there are Goblins native in Deyja, not just Krewlod), they had to persuade some other factions and arm them in some way too. I feel this was done as well as it could possibly have been, seeing as the "highest tier" technology was still unaccessible. They still did a good job producing tanks, rocket launchers and all that.
So to summarize: both gameplay and storywise concerns regarding the Forge were unfounded - NWC had it all covered in a satisfying way. I believe their error was the lack of gradual introduction of sci-fi elements into the HoMM series to get the fans ready, but on the other hand, this might have been difficult to pull off. Scenes with Melian, the supercomputer guardian of Enroth, could have been incorporated into HoMM2, I think they just lacked the guts to do it in the end.
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Might & Magic is science fantasy.
Science fiction and high fantasy can be successfully combined.
"Peasants contra Tanks" all the way bro
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