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| Thread: Lore: Has magic ever been explained? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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Dave_Jame
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I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted January 16, 2012 09:46 PM |
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Well on the other hand, how many beastman do we know?
There are:
The Minotaurs, that have been enslaved by Dark elves later on.
The Harpies and Centaurs, that have allied with orcs.
The Lamasu, that were a failure until the necromancers used them as "plague bombers"
The Sharkman, that have been given as a gift to the Nagas
and finally
The Mermaids, that have managed to keep there freedom.
Are there any more? We do not know yet.
But if I look at the mermaids, they look like magically potent creatures to me.
Any I missed?
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Cepheus
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Far-flung Keeper
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posted January 16, 2012 10:00 PM |
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Quote:
@ Cepheus: That is not realy a fair comparison if you think of the ammount of games the "old world" has had to get to that point. The "new world"(Ashan) has had far fewer installations to delve into that kind of thing. It is like comparing Seaworld to a home aquarium.
I'm not sure it's all that unfair. For one thing, the oldest MM games were created back in the Pac-Man era when original, detailed settings and storylines were in (much) less demand than they are have been from 2005 to the present. For another, the first in-depth explanation as to where magic came from was given in Might and Magic III (third product). H6 is Ashan's seventh product.
It may be that there's a better or more in-depth explanation that just hasn't been told to us, but I'm more inclined towards the idea that the guys who devised Ashan simply didn't have any taste for, or understanding of, the "realism"-grounded science fantasy background of the franchise when they were putting things together.
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"Those who forget their history are inevitably doomed to repeat it." —Proverb, Might and Magic VIII
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blizzardboy
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Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
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posted January 16, 2012 10:20 PM |
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Quote:
@ Blizz:
Where have you read it?
I have no idea. I can't find it.
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War-overlord
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Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted January 16, 2012 10:24 PM |
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Quote:
For another, the first in-depth explanation as to where magic came from was given in Might and Magic III (third product). H6 is Ashan's seventh product.
I'm inclined to say that Heroes VI is Ashan's fourth product. Seeing Heroes V plus it's expansions as a single product and disregarding Heroes Kingdoms altogether.(Which, as far as I have been able to tell, is storyless) But that does but that still puts the old continuity ahead by one, since we've been slowly seeing how things are sticking together recently.
Not that anyone will bother to look it up, or cares for that matter, but I have been saying since Heroes V vanilla that that was how magic worked. But that was mostly my own deductions and I-believe-I've-read's as Blizz has put forth. So I can claim little to no credit for that.
Quote:
I have no idea. I can't find it.
Let's call it informed speculation then.
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Dave_Jame
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I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted January 16, 2012 10:44 PM |
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The fact is
We do not have an oficial statement. we just have a half a ton of texts from 4 different developers. It is true that the 4 games (I will stay with Overlords opinion) are 2x TBS, 1x action FPslah and a Puzzel game. Not really games that would be filled with lore style information like a proper RPG (but H. VI does well in this point).
And to be honest, what we do here is just picking up notes, clues and shards of infromation we have in an atempt to create something that gives them sence.
Atleast there are several people that came up with the same or similar result, that gives atleast me confidence, that I was not totaly wrong. But until we have a book or a proper RPG we will still be picking up bits and shards like archaeologists. On the other hand, this is more fun then if we had it all served on a silver plate
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blizzardboy
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posted January 16, 2012 11:01 PM |
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Yes and no. For a TBS like Heroes it doesn't really mean as much as an RPG where you are more directly submerged into the world.
An "explanation for magic" is kind of self-defeating though imo. You can come up with some bull*** explanation about how you're tapping into the plane of such and such to harness and manipulate energy though a series of incantations, blah blah blah, but ultimately, it still doesn't make a spit of sense that scribbling text down and chanting words can allow you to cause demons to materialize in front of you and to shoot lightning out of your ass. In a way, the more a person attempts to justify it, the dumber it sounds.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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Zenofex
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Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 16, 2012 11:15 PM |
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You can have an explanation worth of university degree with multiple layers of interconnected elements, its own "scientific" explanation, associated sub-plots and so on; and you can have "magic's magic, it just does its thing in a magical way". The difference is that the first shows that you care about the world that you are designing and you want to make it rich and distinguishable while the second shows that you are lazy, uninspired and prefer to fill the gaps in the lore with cliches.
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted January 16, 2012 11:17 PM |
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Isn't Dark Messiah in Ashan too?
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blizzardboy
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posted January 16, 2012 11:19 PM |
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Dungeons & Dragons, which is still and probably always will be my favorite universe, derives magic in many different ways, one of them being how you can harness energy from certain planes, which is a quasi-scientific explanation. It's a fun explanation, but it's just as fantasy-based as any other and not really any more believable than getting magic from dragon juice.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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Zenofex
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Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 16, 2012 11:26 PM |
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It doesn't have to be believable, you don't need a fantasy version of the quantum mechanics to get the job done. It just has to help the immersion.
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Cepheus
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posted January 16, 2012 11:41 PM |
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Edited by Cepheus at 23:43, 16 Jan 2012.
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Quote:
In a way, the more a person attempts to justify it, the dumber it sounds.
It depends more on the explanation and how skillfully it's told. Anything can be broken down to a few sentences which sound dumb when you hear them. I still think it's mostly a whole lot of clichéd, nonsensical bull**** to shape a setting around two lizards who hatched from a space-egg and then conveniently managed to spawn a world and various types of ape, but I realise that others might put exegesis to work and see some very redeeming Zen ideas and an intriguing sense of order to it which we aren't necessarily given, or might be enraptured by it for various other reasons. Likewise, you could take the stance that it's an idiotic idea that the Heroes series started out on planets belonging to the degenerate descendants of Starfleet.
If Ashan weren't specifically part of the Might and Magic series, or if JVC were the one who came up with it, I suspect I might like its basic lore, and/or be more willing to accept it in the way I do Tolkien's or whatever other fantasy. It just always annoyed me that its origin story was (at least ostensibly) just so mind-bogglingly contrary to the usual spirit and precedent in the series, for no good reason. Vague uninspired magic from the classical elements that just exists and that's that, versus the idea that magic is the product of dormant computer programs and devices left behind by a highly-advanced precursor civilisation or something we haven't already heard a thousand times - I know which one I like best.
It's like the midichlorians debate, but backwards, since Might and Magic originally included midichlorians and then got rid of them.
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"Those who forget their history are inevitably doomed to repeat it." —Proverb, Might and Magic VIII
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blizzardboy
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posted January 17, 2012 05:52 AM |
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Science fiction-fantasy isn't a concept that I dislike. I was the dungeon master in a 1-year-long D&D campaign where the game took place in a post-apocalyptic world in S. America several thousand years in the future, after an underground cult opened portals to another dimensional to bring in hosts fantasy creatures, namely demons & devils. But armies from the elves and other races were also able to make it through to help the humans out, since their technology was worthless against the stronger creatures that could only be harmed through magic. It was a lot of fun, but then again I'm also perfectly okay with more conventional fantasy. Ashan definitely isn't as lore-rich, and while I'm normally a sucker for a good story, it simply isn't a high priority to me in a TBS game.
Even so, I think the concepts they have going could theoretically become really cool if they were developed more. The setting isn't the problem so much as it is a lack of content. Even in the fan manual when you read about the different natures of the dragons and their individual behaviors it becomes kind of interesting; they just need more content like that to make the world its own individual. Without the extra goodies and having super-compressed background info, it leaves the game tasting too generic.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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ChaosDragon
Famous Hero
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posted January 17, 2012 06:19 PM |
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Regarding the wizards, i recall the greatest and probably the 1st wizard is using magic because he is guided by asha, i mean that sar elam guy (i forgot the name lol).
Plus, i think the present wizards are distant descendant of that sar elam guy.
Just as War-Overlord said, in the end they just use what the dragon gods created, it's just their method of harnessing it maybe different, yet the source is same.
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