Arcturus

Arcturus Interactive is publishing its title, Noctus. The game is a sequel to the successful Arcturus: An Overture in the World Series of 3D real-time strategy games, with the first game featuring the spirit of fantasy worlds such as the Land of Darks.

"The sequel to Noctus is a return to the franchise's tradition of refinement of the gameplay and sound, and I'm excited to provide players with a compelling experience while using Arcturus' innovative proprietary multi-million dollar, multi-million dollar, multi-million dollar technology," said Bruno Wolchford, creative director at Arcturus Interactive. "It is an important step for us to bring our distinctive gameplay elements to a 3D realm and give gamers the best of both worlds. As an individual player I am looking forward to experiencing a fully interactive and free-form gameplay experience. It's a truly exciting development."

The sequel features a number of improvements, such as the ability to customize troop formations, new units, and new abilities.

While the game has been in development for some time, Blizzard has been secretive about the final name of the game. Since early February, Blizzard has shared information on its production. As revealed in a series of preview trailers, the game will be a follow-up to Diablo II's much-loved multiplayer mode, which let up to four players team up for co-op missions. There will also be a wealth of new gameplay elements that haven't been seen in any of the Diablo II games.

From a development standpoint, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos will take a bold and new direction. As mentioned, Blizzard is keen to keep the game grounded in the same game engine as its popular online game, Warcraft III. "The way we approach the game is very much different," said Blizzard president Mike Morhaime. "It's going to be a three-way war between four factions, and you'll get to experience the story, but it's not going to have the dramatic ending of Warcraft III."

However, there will be new game mechanics introduced to characterize the series in the game. And in addition to a world map, the game will contain two brand-new gameplay systems: allegiance missions and player versus player. "A lot of these things [are] all found in the [Warcraft III] experience," said Morhaime. "It's all part of the strategy. There are also player versus player conflicts. But there's a bunch of other things that we are making game tweaks and other things that we're making game tweaks to in this new version."

To meet the demands of his own work, Morhaime said he's going to be gathering plenty of experience to help elevate the new game. It is a battle of attrition that you'll get to take out lots of enemies quickly in multiplayer games. If your character dies, it's back to the war camp for you to give it a try, so you'll be able to advance the story with points to gain new levels of experience, to get more experience and improve your character and better use of your skill points, and to get experience from your character. This means that when you die, you're going to lose your characters and your items and not gain experience from it, which will keep you from leveling up.

Speaking of skills, Morhaime said one of the biggest new additions is the level-based "magic" system. The ability to advance your character is one of the major new features in the game, so it's a logical progression. This is one of the ways you'll have to invest in your character, and to have the level-up ability available to you is important.

Morhaime said that you can create your character by picking up one of three core classes: fighter, priest, and ranger. The first class is an explorer, and the second class is a demolitions expert, and the third class is a specialist. Each class has different skill trees, and they have different paths to take when leveling up.

These classes can learn new skills and abilities at various points in the game, and once they have been learned, they can upgrade their equipment.

As you get further into the game, you'll have the option to switch classes, which adds some variety to the game. Morhaime said that you'll be able to move freely in a certain direction, and you'll have a limited amount of points at your disposal when upgrading your character.

As you level up, you'll be able to move at a much faster rate, which gives players a choice of how they want to play the game. There's a lot to master, so it will be very interesting to see how it all plays out.

The game is running on Unreal Engine 3, and the environments are stunning. It looks like a work-in-progress version of the Unreal Tournament 2004, and it looked stunning, but it wasn't running at a smooth frame rate.