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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 27, 2015 07:46 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
the same flavor, by the way, that was graphically captured very well by the initial Alpha of HoMM 5
As I remember, the early art got a lot of hate - people called it "cartoonish". I agree with them - what we ended up with was better.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 27, 2015 07:52 AM |
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Sleeping_Sun said:
verriker said:
so I've just been reading up on some stuff, and apparently Jassad in Might and Magic 10 is actually an old universe character making a sneaky cameo,
he was linked to the Ancients and advanced technology just like Corak and Sheltem, and his egg from the epilogue is actually a spaceship lol
how do the Asha worshippers among you guys here reconcile that with the new universe? do you try to ignore it like the UFOs in H5?
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted January 27, 2015 11:48 AM |
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Kimarous said:
In any case, I get the people who want Necropolis to be more grotesque, but I personally feel that there should be juuuust enough glamour to draw in "outsiders", both in and out of universe.
The answer is simple: power. Just like any other faction, the rulers should be appealed to rule it because of the power it gives them. What is different is the matter of corruption and the means they wish to employ to keep the general population in line. A certain philosophy might be enough (Elves want to protect nature, for instance), but others may need to resort to other measures (Humans can usually be held in check with gold). The appeal to Necromancy should be to simply skip all that and go for armies of mindless undead, performing to your every whim.
Mind you, I am not looking at the basic grunt units here, I am really looking at the leaders of a faction and their inner circle.
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Sandro400
Promising
Supreme Hero
Shadow of Death
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posted January 27, 2015 07:07 PM |
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Gryphs said:
Yes, but random shouts of "Griffin Eternal" are not the same as what they did in H6 where all factions gain a motto eerily similar in structure and use to the noble house mottos Of SoIaF.
That's not what I was talking about:
here you can see that the factions got mottos even before H5's release.
Gryphs said:
Of Heroes 3 yes but I prefer the systems of H4 and H5 so going back to the elemental system seems to me a downgrade.
While H4 system may be appealing, it had too many useless and copy-pasted spells.
H5 system is really L&D + Destructive (which contained Elemental spells) + Summoning (pretty much Prime). So actually to so much was changed 
Kimarous, while I don't agree about Empires in general (yes, Human Empire was the epicentre of everything, but we're moving away from this), I share your point about religion. Ashan is definitely over-religious. That said, it's medieval fantasy, and in medieval times religion mattered everything and had big power. Surely there were some who just used it to rule people for instance, and Ashan shows this (Liam Falcon, Miranda, Arniel). In past games (especially in Legacy) they did good job at decreasing the degree of religiousness in Ashan.
Speaking about Necro - the answer is simple: immortality. The cult boomed because many wizards are afraid to die, and Belketh offered immortality. Btw, originally Necro were just like any other Wizards - atheists, the things changed when MN arrived. Belketh and his followers weren't religious fanatics at all.
JJ, actually, they used many assets from Olivier in H6. Black Dragons having "eyed" wings, Human Might Heroes, spider legs in the back (actual spider legs, they were first shown on Vampire artwork; btw, if H5 hadn't Spider Necro, look at his artworks, its spiders all over!), Michael (nearly copy-pasted). Sooo...
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Let's play poker game, lich-style!
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 27, 2015 07:57 PM |
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It's the ATTITUDE!
You can do everything, provided you don't take things seriously. And "cartoony" is just that.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 27, 2015 08:36 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 20:38, 27 Jan 2015.
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There is nothing wrong with taking things seriously if you can deliver them to the public so they can actually believe they are serious and be engaged. Warhammer is hardly the most mature fantasy world there is but it manages to convince you to a good degree that it's actually dark and serious not just because some wise PR guy decided to label it that way. George Martin's and Andrzej Sapkowski's universes are both serious and mature but that doesn't make them any less interesting, on the contrary. Ashan, in comparison, is just what you get when you mix the idea of seriousness with the lack of talent, brain and imagination to actually implement it.
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Sandro400
Promising
Supreme Hero
Shadow of Death
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posted January 27, 2015 08:42 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
You can do everything, provided you don't take things seriously. And "cartoony" is just that.
But many people don't like cartoon style and prefer more realistic approach...
Zenofex, comparing Ashan to Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher is... it's... unfair!
Obviously it pales in comparison.
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Let's play poker game, lich-style!
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 27, 2015 08:45 PM |
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Of course it pales in comparison, to put it lightly, that's the point. On one hand you have an excellently executed idea of a "serious" fantasy universe with cleverly developed characters, story and lore, on the other you have... the sorry reason for this discussion. If you know quality, you can easily spot the lack of it.
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Sandro400
Promising
Supreme Hero
Shadow of Death
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posted January 27, 2015 09:00 PM |
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Zenofex said:
Of course it pales in comparison, to put it lightly, that's the point. On one hand you have an excellently executed idea of a "serious" fantasy universe with cleverly developed characters, story and lore, on the other you have... the sorry reason for this discussion. If you know quality, you can easily spot the lack of it.
Honestly, it's the matter of writers. Sapkowski is literally great and knows how to write the stuff. I hope writing in H7 will be good as well, but lets not forget that they "bend" the plot to suit the game. We don't know what might happen if somebody will someday publish summary of UbiHeroes campaigns as a novel(s) or simply some book set in Ashan. It might be successful if executed by talented writer.
And I definitely can see Witcher-style game set in Ashan. It might work and even become commercial success, though I doubt someone will invest money to make this project. The budget would be too bid I think.
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Let's play poker game, lich-style!
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 27, 2015 09:31 PM |
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The problem is that Ashan already is f***** up so no novel can redeem it enough, no matter how good it is. Even if we squeeze the stupid Dragon Gods concept and inject some thought in a mythology which is shallow by design, the universe will still be plagued by the Isabel-like characters, the overused "demons invade -> everybody unites to stop them" formula and the bloated religious crap that has swallowed every major faction and destroyed any chance to generate something really unique. Seriously, you virtually need to re-write everything from Heroes V on to get an Ashan that can and deserves to survive as a fantasy world. And even if successful, what good is it if the games never see such quality?
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cleglaw
Famous Hero
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posted January 28, 2015 03:47 AM |
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Regarding the latest lore-wise talk about h5 beign "not really ashan", i wonder if same applies for dark messiah events or not.
...
we still have that dark prophecy right?
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted January 28, 2015 08:28 AM |
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The DM was the first to make mention of liches' transformation into age-regressing vampires (to my knowledge) so it has to be canon.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 28, 2015 09:02 AM |
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@ Zenofex and Sandro
"Realistic" - which boils down to dark and dirty - HAS BEEN DONE. Also - "realistic" isn't so, if it's not a 15/16 age-tag AT LEAST. For a "realistic" example, look no further than language in Game of Thrones.
Which you won't see in Might & Magic - which is why "realistic" is just ... cheesy. Or fake.
So - this will NEVER be realistic, because realistic means, in a dialogue between, say an Orc Chieftain and a Haven Leader, they would say things I can't write here because of the CoC, you know what I mean, threaten what they will do with them, cut off this, do with their women that, promise that they will crap themselves and so on.
Secondly, "realistic" means - MORE SEX. Not because it's lurid and sells, but because a lot of stuff is simply about that. Sex, Power, Gold, Land, the whole array.
So.
It ISN'T realistic, and it will never be, that's why it's so bloodless.
And if you can't do it right, in the 21st century, don't do it all. The franchise has begun cartoony and iconic; HoMM 3 made things a tad "darker" and less cartoony, but what we have now is just, well, insipid.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 28, 2015 09:15 AM |
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Which is exactly my point.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 28, 2015 09:43 AM |
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Your point is, that it's a matter of quality. My point is that the segment this is supposed to happen in, has been occupied already, and with such a vengeance, that quality with regard to the limitations (this must work with an age rating 12+) was quite unlikely to happen and IS STILL so - so the correct decision would have been to make it ICONIC and SELF-IRONIC and go back to the roots of the game.
You just don't create an interesting universe every day.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 28, 2015 10:13 AM |
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The problem is not so much with the 12+ requirement, it's the fact that the result is 12-. Whatever they were planning to do, the result is terrible no matter to which category you want to assign the universe. In other words, Ashan sucks universally. It is still possible to create a "serious" universe with the 12+ requirement as long as make the lore, the story and the characters believable and interesting in a given context, for example the campaign of a particular game. Some of the Heroes IV campaigns (Gauldoth comes to mind) managed to achieve that to a fairly good extent no matter that the old universe was never supposed to be "serious" and the age limit was the same.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 28, 2015 10:41 AM |
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Yeah, but we are talking about a whole FRANCHISE here, with tons of games and online world and stuff. One good campaign just doesn't cut it. We are talking about a whole universe here. And even if a full game is well done - let's say, for example, Disciples 2 -, we are STILL talking about a FULL franchise, with a COUPLE of different games that all take place in that universe.
And THAT isn't possible. Or maybe it IS possible - but it's HIGHLY unlikely that the handful of guys who CAN or COULD create this would work for Ubisoft and not for Hollywood or as million-seller authors already.
Which is the reason, why I say, BAD mistake to even go that way. A very good comic artist was the right idea. In FRANCE? Come on!
Considering that Comics are mainstream and fusion stuff now (consider for example the Locke & Key stuff by Joe Hill (aka Stephen King's son) and Gabe Rodriguez), a more iconic, cartoony style might have create something, no matter what ignorant "fans" have said about it.
So: missed opportunity, from the get-go. Wrong decision, and now there is this MIGHT & MAGIC Leviathan that you cannot just scrap or even re-invent.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 28, 2015 11:23 AM |
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In order to make this work for a whole brand, you need a good background, lore. The old universe was built around mystery which was never fully revealed and that kept it interesting. You basically had a number of casual-looking stories placed in a universe where much bigger things happen and these stories are affected by these big events in one way or another - usually indirectly and in a very subtle way but realizing that something which looks fairly trivial at first is actually not what it seems at all keeps you intrigued. In the end, who or what are the Ancients? Who or what are the Creators? What is the purpose of the VARN/CRON experiments? Why the Kreegan invaded the Web of the Worlds? You get small pieces of information from most of the games, sometimes you don't even get anything and just observe the struggle of some ignorant inhabitants of some planet but whole concept keeps tickling you to learn more. And frankly you can easily transform it into a very "serious" and "realistic" universe without sacrificing one bit from the intrigue.
In contrast, Ashan reveals everything from its mythology from the very start and it turns out that not only there is nothing original or intriguing in it but also any chance for something interesting to happen in the sub-stories is dead on arrival. The dumb stubbornness from Ubisoft to admit that doesn't help at all. Admittedly there is a way to fix that by making some sudden revelation, for example that everything known about the Dragon Gods is some grand mystification or that they don't even exist and there are other forces at work. Heroes V and Heroes VI will remain poor as far as their individual plots and characters are concerned but the franchise will finally start breathing fresh air. What are the chances for something like that to happen though? Negligible.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 28, 2015 11:48 AM |
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In order to make this work for a whole brand you have to be ORIGINAL, more than anything else. You have to occupy a specific niche, big enough to attract a crowd, original enough to keep them.
The problem was and is that Ashan just isn't "cool". It has no WOW factor (as in Wow! Look at that! And now that I write that I realize how cool the World of Warcraft brand is named; WOW, indeed).
It might have acquired it via the Dark Messiah - a Demonic universe with HUMANS being the freaks might have been something.
It might have aquired it via the VOID as well: Reboot of everything starting completely differently.
However, still the same problem - games are still running or in development, taking place in that run-of-the-mill Ashan that hasn't got a lot going for it.
Now that the brand is established, you can't just dump it. Or even change it massively.
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Rakshasa92
Supreme Hero
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posted January 28, 2015 12:33 PM |
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This thread is pages long: 
