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Heroes Community > Heroes 6 - The New Beginning > Thread: ~ Heroes 6 - Discussion thread ~
Thread: ~ Heroes 6 - Discussion thread ~ This Super Thread is 525 pages long: 1 70 140 ... 147 148 149 150 151 ... 210 280 350 420 490 525 · «PREV / NEXT»
Aosaw
Aosaw


Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
posted February 05, 2011 10:14 PM

Quote:
But we are in the new heroes world so having mythology as a base is not that helpful


fixed.

I think having an asian-influenced faction is a nice change.  It allows them to justify having both eastern and western stereotypes coexisting, rather than assuming that this fantasy world has only one kind of culture.

I agree, though, some of the female units seem a bit forced - almost as though they're trying to meet a quota.

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Zenofex
Zenofex


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
posted February 05, 2011 10:21 PM

Quote:
I don't really want to see a Black Dragon with a smiley
Man, this brings memories.



Not exactly a smiley, but one hell of a good smile.

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Jabanoss
Jabanoss


Promising
Legendary Hero
Property of Nightterror™
posted February 05, 2011 10:27 PM
Edited by Jabanoss at 22:27, 05 Feb 2011.

That was a awesome read Aosaw!
But don't forget that Heroes more or less invented the H3 troglodytes

You really make some nice points, Personally I don't care if Ubihole is "creative" or not as long as they deliver us cool factions and units that make sense together and creates perfect gameplay.
I'm not saying Ashen and this new world is bad, I just want them to add even more creatures and beings, because that is one of the things that really make Heroes cool.

I also suggest you get a QP for that post.
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DarkOdyn
DarkOdyn

Tavern Dweller
posted February 05, 2011 10:30 PM
Edited by alcibiades at 23:00, 05 Feb 2011.

Yes that is right. I would hate to see Heroes turn into disciples ;/ my two favourite series and one met a tragic reinvention. The way HoMMVI is going is very promising. I'm waiting for a hero screen picture or a skills/spells tab something like that. The more rpg approach sounds good.



Mod > Sorry for hi-jacking post, but ...  happy 300th


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Meskyn
Meskyn


Adventuring Hero
posted February 05, 2011 10:38 PM

@Aosaw
Best post I ever read

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kodial79
kodial79


Promising
Supreme Hero
How'd Phi's Lov't
posted February 05, 2011 10:50 PM
Edited by kodial79 at 22:52, 05 Feb 2011.

@Aosaw

Sure, HoMM (at least, as I don't know about MM) has never been any original. Either generic or copying from others but rarely coming up with something of its own. However I do think there's an effort in the new game to find their own unique identity, at last. This should be noted.

By the way, some points of argument.

The Warlocks/Dungeon/Asylum was always about random beast put into a fight by an evil magician that brought them all under his commands. In H3 that they became the Dungeon, they made an effort of giving it an underground theme by introducing to the series the Troglodytes as a major race of the faction (both heroes and units).

I think you also underestimate the Barbarians. They weren't supposed to be goofy but rather a round up the famous evil humanoid warriors, well except for the wolf. As for the Cyclopes, it's the might aspect of the giant that makes them fit in. The Minotaur rather joined the Warlocks because he's more of a beast even though of a humanoid shape.

Although it's true. The first Wizard faction was partly inspired by Tolkien's works, the Rocs and Golems come from their own myths (not the Tin Man!). I do think that NWC got a bit mixed up about what did they want to do with that faction. It was very messy...

In H3, the four armed Naga is based on D&D's Marilith, I believe. As for the Lizardmen, they're identical to those of Warhammer. Besides the Behemoth, the Troglodytes are also being celebrated as one of H3's best unique monsters.

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Aosaw
Aosaw


Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
posted February 05, 2011 10:56 PM
Edited by Aosaw at 23:02, 05 Feb 2011.

Quote:
But don't forget that Heroes more or less invented the H3 troglodytes


Well, yes and no.  Troglodytes have been around for millennia - they're an order of animal classified by the loss of external eyes in an animal, particularly animals that live their entire lives in the dark.  Troglodyte, in the word's original context, refers to cave people (literally - "Troglos" is Greek for "cave"); and in Dungeons and Dragons, troglodytes are a race of cave-dwelling lizard-people, like a cross between goblins and lizardfolk.

Heroes just took the trope a step farther, turning the mythological troglodytes into literal, scientific troglodytes - cave-dwelling lizard-people, like a cross between goblins and lizardfolk, that have lost their external eyes.

But you're right, the H3 troglodyte was a completely original creature, and well-designed to boot.

EDIT:  A wikipedia check-up disagrees with me, so I'll amend what I said before.  The cave animals without eyes are "Troglobites"; which means that NWC, in designing the Troglodytes of H3, would have had to make an additional leap of logic.  Only adds to the uniqueness of the unit, I'd say.  But the Troglodyte and Behemoth remain the two unique units of Heroes 3.  ...unless I'm forgetting something again...

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DarkOdyn
DarkOdyn

Tavern Dweller
posted February 05, 2011 11:02 PM

Quote:
@Aosaw


In H3, the four armed Naga is based on D&D's Marilith, I believe.



In D&D monster handbook Maralith is a greater demon or creature. There are also Naga which IIRC have some variants such as aquatic(don't take my word my memory is foggy. I have not read that handbook in ages). But D&D is a source of it's own when it comes to creatures
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Aosaw
Aosaw


Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
posted February 05, 2011 11:04 PM

The naga does exist in D&D as its own creature, but it's literally a snake with a human head, and has no arms.  Not sure where that idea came from, since mythologically the naga is a four-armed human with a snake's tail instead of legs, but there it is.

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kodial79
kodial79


Promising
Supreme Hero
How'd Phi's Lov't
posted February 05, 2011 11:16 PM
Edited by kodial79 at 23:17, 05 Feb 2011.

Quote:
The naga does exist in D&D as its own creature, but it's literally a snake with a human head, and has no arms.  Not sure where that idea came from, since mythologically the naga is a four-armed human with a snake's tail instead of legs, but there it is.


Mythological Naga's appearance varies greatly but I haven't heard of any with multiple arms. Troglodyte were never a mythological creature. It was a name that was used to describe people who lived in caves. Both the Naga and the Troglodyte in H3 were taken from D&D. The Naga's appearance was based on that of the Marilith, however the Troglodyte was re-imagined and given a whole new appearance.

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted February 05, 2011 11:19 PM
Edited by alcibiades at 23:25, 05 Feb 2011.

Quote:
Nival wrote the series into a corner; now, instead of units being grouped thematically (which would offer the developers a lot more freedom in terms of what sources they can draw from), units are grouped according to their allegiance.  Which means that every unit has to be drawn from a known value within Ashan - a universe that, for the most part, fans don't know as well as their own.

Great analysis Aosaw, I agree with most of what you say. I'm not sure, however, that I quite agree that Nival/Ubisoft wrote the series into a corner - even if they did fit the factions into a much tighter scheme in terms of having one race per town, they still have the option of adding aligned magical beasts etc. to each faction.

In fact, if you look at the H5 Sylvan town, difference is not as great to H3 Rampart and H2 Sorceress as some people would have it. Most notable difference? Dwarves are gone. Apart from that, things actually pretty much stay the same. Dragons and Dendroids (Treants) are taken from H3, Unicorns are common to both, the Sprite and the Druid is taken from H2 (even if Druid is now not hooded celtic style but elven). The War Dancer sort of fills in for the Centaur, and one may like him or not - but on the bottom line, the difference is actually not very big.

And I think that is actually true for most of the towns. Sure, there are differences - the Naga has been substituted for the (in all essence) identical Rakshasa, obviously to open the lore for a Naga faction. The Death Knight is substituted for a Wraith (more the result of trying to add something new than restrictions from lore if you ask me), Dungeon and Stronhold perhaps is more severely struck than the others, but even here you can see obvious paralels between the different versions of the game (the fury substitutes for the Harpy, the Cyclops substitutes for the Behemoth, some Orcoids are now strictly speaking Orcs but remain essentially the same (as Ogre -> big Orc), Thunderbird is now Wyvern).

One might claim that the Fortress can be seen as an example of why UbiVal's scheme fails, but I don't think that's true (even if Fortress in essence *did* fail, based on overall fan reception). Point is UbiVal chose to make Fortress extremely mono-racial not because they *had* to, but because they *wanted* to. In fact, they explicitely did this because they wanted to make a *difference* between the factions, and this was Dwarves characteristic - they were solitary. There would have been nothing that prevented them, however, from making only 2 or 3 Dwarven units (or how many they wanted) and instead added some mythological creatures.

Bottom line is I think in all essence, either system allows you to do pretty much what you want - Nival/Ubisoft just chose to go a different way, for all that's worth (personally I like that way, but that's not the point here).


Quote:
The naga does exist in D&D as its own creature, but it's literally a snake with a human head, and has no arms.  Not sure where that idea came from, since mythologically the naga is a four-armed human with a snake's tail instead of legs, but there it is.

D&D seems to do some sort of weird mix-up there, the creature they depict as the Naga is what I would normally call a Lamia; they have a Lamia which is then something entirely different.
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kodial79
kodial79


Promising
Supreme Hero
How'd Phi's Lov't
posted February 05, 2011 11:22 PM
Edited by kodial79 at 23:24, 05 Feb 2011.

I kinda thought it was Ubisoft people who were coming up with the concepts and stories and not Nival. Nival just made the game as Ubisoft dictated. Although I'm not so sure...

The Lamia's appearance also varied greatly throughout myths and legeds. She's been both depicted as a snake with a woman's head or half a snake and half a woman, as well as half a lioness and half a woman in medieval bestiarios. Or a lioness with a woman's head sometimes.

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Aosaw
Aosaw


Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
posted February 05, 2011 11:27 PM
Edited by Aosaw at 23:29, 05 Feb 2011.

Well, I didn't say it was a bad corner.  But Nival's way of defining everything in terms of its place in a world that they created anew was restrictive, even if only because it eliminated the possibility of something else.

The Blade Dancers and the Blood Furies are the specific units I think of when I think about this.  The Dungeon would have been fine with a reimagined harpy that was still a harpy, but instead, in order to keep to the lore that Nival created, the Harpy was changed to the Fury, which homogenized the faction.  The Blade Dancer was created as an analogue to the Fury, which further homogenized elves in general and also homogenized the Sylvan faction in a way that they didn't need to.

There's plenty that they can still do, and we can see that they are.  But shifting to a world with a specific mythology out of a world with every mythology is limiting, even if it does (ostensibly) make for better storytelling in the long run*.

*That's assuming, of course, that the storyteller knows what he's doing - which, if you ask most people on this forum, Nival didn't.

EDIT:  Sub "UbiVal" for "Nival" as appropriate, pending a decision on the question of "Who Created Ashan?"

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kodial79
kodial79


Promising
Supreme Hero
How'd Phi's Lov't
posted February 05, 2011 11:34 PM

Only that the Blade Dancer and Blood Maiden were not 'created', but copied from Warhammer. Like many other units from H5.

I would rather have a Harpy than a Blood Maiden, but when I was ignorant of this copies, I liked the Blood Maiden much better than the Harpy. Besides as she was in H3, the Harpy was a copy too, from AD&D 2E. One could excuse for being a generic design but that's not the case. If you take a look at harpies from other games and sources, you'll see only those two are identical.


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Dexter
Dexter


Known Hero
posted February 05, 2011 11:38 PM

Quote:
I kinda thought it was Ubisoft people who were coming up with the concepts and stories and not Nival. Nival just made the game as Ubisoft dictated. Although I'm not so sure...


I can comment on that one. Ubisoft was responsible for the whole world creation process, and setting the overall factions' themes. Nival was responsible for the incarnation, or utilisation of their concepts, but it was still under Ubisoft's control at all time.

So, if you dislike the ideas behind a faction, the lineups and such, blame Ubisoft. If you don't like a specific design (i.e., you believe that a creature should look different) blame it on Nival, but have in mind, that it was approved by Ubisoft.

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Jabanoss
Jabanoss


Promising
Legendary Hero
Property of Nightterror™
posted February 05, 2011 11:42 PM
Edited by Jabanoss at 23:43, 05 Feb 2011.

Since this is the 300th page in the best thread in HC I'll like to say a few words.
First of I suggest that alcibiades get a QP for this thread, seeing how he both created it and how invaluable he is to this entire community. Great work alci!

When I joined this community this thread was far from a "lively" as it is now. But that didn't make it any less fun.
I can still remember those days with joy. All the despites and discussions that we used to have.
Ahh those were the days...
But most memorable of all was the day Nightterror joined.
From that day forth I knew that this place would forever be a wonderful paradise.

In any case, HAPPY 300 PAGES!!!
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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted February 05, 2011 11:44 PM

Quote:
Well, I didn't say it was a bad corner.  But Nival's way of defining everything in terms of its place in a world that they created anew was restrictive, even if only because it eliminated the possibility of something else (...) in order to keep to the lore that Nival created, the Harpy was changed to the Fury, which homogenized the faction.  The Blade Dancer was created as an analogue to the Fury, which further homogenized elves in general and also homogenized the Sylvan faction in a way that they didn't need to.

True at that. However, 'homogenizing' as you call it is not a bad thing - one could turn it around and say that UbiVal made the factions coherent. Either point of view is valid. Of course you have the liberty to create the world you like, but in terms of the standard mythological/fantasy frame set, many of the old Heroes factions simply didn't make sense (dwarves and elfs in the same faction, a faction entirely made up of beasts?). And like I said, I don't think the new system was more restrictive than they could themselves decide the number of racial units they wanted in each faction.
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kodial79
kodial79


Promising
Supreme Hero
How'd Phi's Lov't
posted February 05, 2011 11:51 PM

That's correct.
The Necropolis faction could as well go after the racial theme in H5, and instead of an Undead it would become an especially Vampire faction, with three or more types of vampires filling their ranks.
Same thing could have been made with Inferno. Melee Demon Unit, Range Demon Unit, Caster Demon Unit etc. Where Demon is just one race as Vampire is, for example.
So they were not restricting themselves in anyway, they just changed what they felt was random line-up's in the previous games to something more coherent according to their lore.
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Aosaw
Aosaw


Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
posted February 05, 2011 11:58 PM
Edited by Aosaw at 00:00, 06 Feb 2011.

That's true, and another way of putting it that has a much nicer association attached to it.  The H2 Necropolis was a bit all over the place, just like the H2 Wizard, and so homogenizing some aspects of each faction was a good way to "bring it all together".

And then I suppose it comes down to what Nival did, versus what Ubisoft did.  Because I do like the creature line-ups of H6, and I really didn't like the line-ups in H5, and that distinction is purely aesthetic.

EDIT:  Kodial, you make an excellent point.  However, the H6 Necropolis calls Liches and Vampires the same "race".  Taking it a step farther, the H6 Ghost is a vampire that failed in its transformation.  So, yeah, three creatures with the same racial template.  Better executed than other examples, though, in such a way as to make it both interesting and subtle.

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Dexter
Dexter


Known Hero
posted February 06, 2011 12:04 AM

Quote:
And then I suppose it comes down to what Nival did, versus what Ubisoft did.  Because I do like the creature line-ups of H6, and I really didn't like the line-ups in H5, and that distinction is purely aesthetic.


I would say it's more of the first part, than the latter. It's about what Nival did, that's true, but remember that Ubisoft sets the themes. Heroes V had a completely different approach than Heroes VI does. It was less realistic, more Warhammer like ( actually it was Ubisoft's instruction to make it "Warhammerish"). Nival had very little freedom over the designs. Even less with with Heroes VI... But I should keep my mouth shut.

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