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Platform: Xbox
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B.C.
Peter Molyneux is often recognized as one of gaming’s biggest innovators. He captured our imagination with Black and White, and will soon capture our lives with Fable. One game hasn’t received the same glamour and attention as those games but is still one of the most anticipated games for Xbox. I’m of course speaking about BC. Being developed by Intrepid, a division of Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios, BC will take place during the prehistoric ages centering itself over a small village of Neanderthal-like people. Even though the game is played in the 3rd person perspective the overall feel of the game is that of a RTS (Real Time Strategy). This is because your village must survive based on a gathering and hunting system as well as maintaining peace among your people. You can assign your fellow villagers to gather water from a nearby lake, which is done very clearly |
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through a point-and-click system, or to have them climb up a tree and gather coconuts. If you want to try your luck at some meat. Keep in mind that in the prehistoric ages there were much more vicious creatures than sheep, you can set out hunting after a pack of raptors. All of these jobs can be done by the player although there are much more exciting and action filled missions to do than gathering water and fruit.
Not everything in BC is focused around upkeep of a settlement – there is a lot of exploration and action. The basic premise of the game is to move your villagers, |
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who start off at the bottom of the food chain, and take them all the way to the top of the food chain. This is done by expanding the territory of your people. Moving your people to someplace else is extremely hard to do because each village or group of creatures has their own habitat, which is seen on the world map. After you neutralize that area, which can be done in a number of ways, can you actually have peace there and keep expanding.
Each character in BC grows and ages in an RPG format. If there is a small child in your village you can assign a parental figure for that child. If the parent is an athlete, than the child will learn and grow up to become an athlete as well. The same goes for all the other types of jobs such as a warrior and gatherer. Your character never ages to a point of death, but if you don’t keep an eye over your villagers, they can die in various ways. BC is a very open-ended game that draws no lines. There isn’t a primary character in which you have to use meaning that almost every character in your village can be controlled by you directly. As your characters grow, so does their accuracy, strength, stamina, etc. As your characters level up, they earn tattoos and other marks to signify their experience. The world of BC is absolutely beautiful. The day/night cycles, water reflections, lighting and shadowing – all are done to an insane level of detail with little problem. BC is currently slated for a 2005 release (but that’s not written in stone). - Eric Lahiji (June 6, 2004) |
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