During my visit to Lionhead last week Peter Molyneux and Ron Millar took time out to show me the latest build of Black & White 2. I also found out a little of what the company has planned for its ambitious God Game series – including three more instalments. They really don't do things by halves around here…
But first, Black & White 2. As in the 2001 original, you take on the role of a powerful god, watching over a tribe of deferential but independently-minded people. Through ten increasingly challenging levels your job is to subjugate all other tribes of the world – either by crushing them in battle, or by building such a beautiful civilisation that everyone else wants to become a part of it. So in a way, this is two games in one – a Sim City-style urban construction game, and a warmongering RTS – players can chose to follow one path, or swap between them at will. Whatever they go for, controls are kept minimal and intuitive, employing just the mouse and the left and right buttons. There are also no onscreen menus. Everything can be achieved by grabbing stuff and putting it somewhere else, or throwing it at the enemy, or at your own people if you're feeling evil.
The cities you build (by gathering wood and ore in sufficient amounts) are impressively varied and intricately detailed – right down to the mosaics at the bottom of the bath house pool. At one point Peter zooms the camera right into the grass, and you can see ants wandering around. And, of course the creature – a sort of giant animal manifestation of your power – is back, this time even more intelligent (apparently he'll be in next year's Guinness Book of Records as the most complex AI character in a videogame)
Anyway, you can check out many more of the details here, but what really interested me about the game was the way in which design duties seem to have been divided between Peter Molyneux who's guiding the city creation side of things and Ron Millar (once of Blizzard and co-creator of classics like Warcraft and Starcraft) who is overseeing the RTS element. Apparently when the two met they spent the first ten minutes complimenting each other's previous games and then the subsequent hours picking holes in everything they didn't like. Which sounds very much like the basis of a strong working relationship. What's clear is that neither has been willing to compromise their strand of Black & White 2 – these are, they say, two well formed genres, co-existing in a multifaceted environment.
Its also intriguing to see how contemporary politics have either consciously or unconsciously found their way into the game design. For example, if you chose to start a war you must build army units, and these aren't just conjured out of nowhere as in other RTS titles – tribesmen need to be recruited from civilian roles within the city. This has practical ramifications – less workers tilling the land means less food, and fewer shoppers wandering the streets (your cities can boast shops, taverns, markets, etc) presumably takes its toll on the local economy. There's also an emotional hit, the fear the rest of the villagers feel when the men are away fighting. You can't help but feel the influence of a certain conflict in the Middle East.
Another thing – if you start throwing your weight around, demolishing enemy towns, the chances are you'll start getting refugees turning up, camping outside your city walls looking for asylum. Allow too many in without the facilities to care for them, and they end up sleeping on the streets, affecting the mood of the whole town. Wonder where they got that idea from…
As for the future of the series, well, Peter Molyneux was pretty candid about his plans for an epic story cycle. Here's what he told me:
In Black and White II, you've increased the element of miracles – i.e. special powers like fireballs, floods, etc. Is that an attempt to increase the religious angle in the game? Well, yes, there is a plan with Black & White. This plan goes from Black & White 1 to Black & White 5. The idea with the first game was that world had no concept of gods, while in B&W2 the world knows about gods now and expects certain things from them - it is about making you as a player feel godly, and feel like you have this great power at your disposal. And when you play the game there are certain moments you'll think to yourself, "Well, I've read about that in some religious text", whether that's Hindu, Christianity, anywhere, and that's no surprise because every culture's view of gods is that they are hugely powerful. But here are no explicit references to any specific religions.
So you mentioned B&W5 – do you have a Star Wars-esque through line in mind? Absolutely. For Black & White and for Fable. You have to have that. Black & White will end up in the modern day, in today's world. And I would say, to give you a hint, probably B&W2, maybe B&W3, we're getting to the top of the curve in terms of the god's power. Then it goes down the other side, because you as a god get less powerful. Then it's more about proving yourself, than just being this omnipotent 'I can do anything' god.
So you have to cope with people's apathy? Yes, the people will say "well, you can throw a rock, but we can fire it a thousand times further with this cannon. You have a fireball miracle, well, so what, we have a nuclear bomb!"
How will the creature's role adapt? To give you a clue, I think the creatures are going to, be somewhere else after BW2, they're going to move into another realm. I don't know if you will have creatures as such. This is Black & White 3 so I don't want to give too much away, but there'll be a more human form to the creatures… if you see what I mean.
A lot of people couldn't marry the god game element with the creature element in B&W… Yeah, I know. That's why we want to let the creature have a place of its own, and not be a part of you being a god anymore. It started off because, as a god, you could use your power to inspire something, to grow something, so the creature became a star. In fact, the creatures in B&W2 are not as huge as they once were for that very reason – they got so enormous they were just out of proportion. They're now much more like the demons or deities from certain religions, certain Eastern religions – like Kali in Hinduism, for example.
That's how I always read it – that every God needs a manifestation of his power on earth… Yes, that's how they were designed. And originally, they were going to be human but the problem was that, as humans, you would have expected them to talk and that was a big problem. In B&W2 the creatures are either your pet or they're like a robot that will follow your commands. It's the difference between an attack dog and a puppy dog…
Black & White 2 is set for release on PC this autumn.
