A play session with Molyneux and Millar

It doesn’t happen too often that you get the chance to sit down together with Ron Millar and Peter Molyneux during a play through session of Black&White 2, unless of course you’re a part of the team. While Phil and Scott make notes, they play the game and give continuous feedback and comments. This time (a couple of days ago) I was the one steering the wheel, i.e. I was the one playing Black&White 2 while Peter and Ron were watching my every move and reaction very closely. It was freaking awesome to be set free in the fourth land in the world of Eden…

While I’m not really going to spill the beans on what this land is all about, I will share some of my impressions and the stuff that Peter and Ron told me while playing the game. Just like my last diary I will mainly focus on the city building aspect, as there’s much more to it then what I wrote last time. The way you build your city for example can be done in several different but very intuitive ways; if you’re really lazy (like me) you just check out your town centre and drag off the building that’s displayed there. Or you can grab and drag any building you like in the world (within your influence) and build it. The brilliant thing about this is, is that you can do this with every building in the world. So while from the beginning you might not be able to build Japanese pagodas in your world, as soon as one of their villages comes under your influence, you will be able to build it within your own city walls! That is so freaking cool. Finally, if you’re more of a conventional type of player you can use the building menu which is very subtle, and while not everything was finished in the version I was playing, Ron and Peter gave feedback and made comments about the menu, how it should look and what it should do. The most remarkable thing I noticed while playing Black&White 2 and building up your city – was that there’s hardly any micromanagement. Your villagers will no longer endlessly demand food and wood, they’re smarter now; they’ll figure out how to fulfill their desires themselves. However if you feel like helping your tribe out, you can. Planting trees in fertile land will make forests grow; casting water miracles will make crops grow and being able to create roads however you want them to be, is just a gods’ gift.

With almost everything you do in your city, your impressiveness goes up, which is the main mechanic to take over the world as a good god. It is likely that other settlements on the land will eventually come to be impressed by a glorious city and wish to abandon their masters and migrate to yours. Be cautious though, as more people will mean that you need more resources and places for them to live, if you’re not paying attention your beautiful and impressive city will quickly turn in a dump with unhappy people and maybe even eventually a riot! As a player this is when you will most likely want to spend time building nice things like gardens, fountains and buildings that bring the people pleasure.

Lastly I’d like to raise the point of how you actually build your city. While its fun just placing buildings down in a random way, if you do explore and experiment around, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of depth to it. Placing a church near an altar for example, increases its mana capacity and regeneration rate but placing a factory near it would reduce the altars mana capacity and regeneration rate. It goes without saying that this allows for some very interesting features – with over sixty buildings available.

I’ve learned a lot of new things from my play sessions with the two M’s but there’s plenty more to learn. The Golden, Silver and Bronze Scrolls make reappearance and are a very important tool in acquiring new technology for your building pleasure. Then there’s the creature, armies, miracles, physting and some other (still) unannounced features in Black&White 2!

Community Update 4b: another play session with Molyneux and Millar

And then when this community update was about to be coming to a close, something happened. On Friday night; when there were still a lot of people going bananas in the studio, Peter and Ron decided to do another play through; this time Ron would be playing while Peter and I watched his every move. The programmers had implemented all the audio of the first four lands. I really laughed my ass of at times when the evil advisor made another off his random evil comments. Everything worked; and while not fully balanced or polished, it was really beautiful! It was even emotional at times, when the [CENSOR] tribe gets [CENSOR] and has to [CENSOR]; it’s just epic. When he got to the fourth land, Ron started building many abodes and fields so that his population would grow; after which he quickly built roads to connect his storage pit with the town centre and other houses. After some time his population had gone up a decent amount and it was time to expand the territory! The downside was that his forests were being plundered and that he needed to act like god quickly; so he planted some trees, threw some water at it and forests started to grow at an incredible phase. That’s what I call being an effective god! Ron gave me the impression of being a much more aggressive and war-like player; his villagers were quickly turned into small platoons of swordsmen or archers. His resources were just not up for it; but he took the chance and made a move on the first settlement that was the closest to his city. With sheer violence he took over their town centre, stole almost all their ore and food resources to add to the numbers in his home town, he started building more buildings, and created some breeder disciples as his population was a vital resource to feed his play style. The [CENSOR] tribe is your opposing force here and if you listen carefully you might hear their leader [CENSOR]’s thoughts at times.

Ron was now getting enraged; with his Lion creature being the centre piece of his armies! There were some really funny moments when the creature decided to do something with a random villager and when he ran away like a sissy for what seemed to me like no reason at all. He captured another two settlements and the opposing tribe started an attack on some of his smaller villages. As a war chief should do, Ron decided to stretch his resources to the limit and squeeze the ball while he was holding it. He made a couple of hundred extra soldiers which he sent to the [CENSOR] tribe’s capital city. The only thing he wasn’t aware of was the force that was building up behind the high hillside to the west of his capital! By the time all his platoons joined together and made a move for the [CENSOR] outer walls, his own town centre became the subject of a siege – and the few women that were left didn’t make for any army! And so it went on; battles were fought everywhere on the map and Ron’s last soldier managed to make a run back for his, what we thought to be, lost city which he very conveniently took back. It was so freaking awesome! We had a go at some of the little challenges for some extra tribute. Walls were built with gatehouses which also could be closed, and it was cool to hear and see the advisors make comments. I am amazed, and pretty confident, and I can’t wait to play some more…

Normally Jonty Barnes is also at these playthroughs - to make sure the work gets done and that Peter and Ron don't go too design mad!

That’s it for now – expect more information on our website and forums soon enough.

Sam, Community Manager Lionhead Studios