Overlord II Preview

Overlord II is the sequel to Codemasters’ 2007 cult underground hit Overlord – a darkly funny third person action adventure game with RPG and RTS influences – with the player assuming the role of an evil ruler (the Overlord of the title) and his band of up to 30 mischievous but lovable Minions. The money shot of the original game was the ability to control the Overlord and his Minions separately whilst both were on-screen, sending the Minions off to do your bidding (usually breaking stuff, killing stuff, breaking more stuff, and killing more stuff) in their own comic fashion, while you got on with your own personal Smiting mission, joined in the fight or just stood back and watched the carnage. The RTS element came in with the introduction of four different Minion types (Browns, Reds, Greens and Blues), each with their own strengths and weaknesses which could be combined and used tactically against your enemies in increasingly inventive ways (posting a squad of projectile throwing Reds at a certain point on the map to stave off the enemy while the weaker Blues swum to far off objectives, for example). The objective in the original game was to oppress a country-sized area of villages and towns – either choosing the nasty bastard path by killing all who stood in your way (humans and magical creatures alike) or the evil-lite path of enslaving everyone instead. The game was developed by Netherlands based Triumph Studios, and Rhianna Pratchett (Discworld author Terry Pratchett’s daughter) came in about half way through development to write the story.

June 26^th sees the release of Overlord II, and I was lucky enough to hit the official Press Release in London, get hands on with the game before anyone else and speak to Lennart Sas, Triumph Studio’s Creative Director.

Penned once again by Rhianna Pratchett, the story this time round tells the tale of the Overlord’s son, from childhood to badass adult. Now three years old after his father was trapped in the Underworld after the events of Raising Hell (the last round of DLC for the original game), the young Overlord has been taken in by a family from the sleepy mountain town of Nordberg and raised amongst the humans as one of their own. Kicking off during one Midwinter’s Eve (kind of like Christmas) in the town, you begin to show your Overlordy tendencies to a group of similarly aged children who have been bullying you about your strange characteristics – such as glowing yellow eyes, and the ability to shoot lightning bolts from your fingers. We won’t spoil what follows, but needless to say you reap your revenge on the Children and wind up being sacrificed by the townspeople to your new enemy, The Glorious Empire. Hell-bent on ousting all magical creatures from the world, The Glorious Empire is a Roman Army inspired group of soldiers and politicians, led by a Julius Caesar style character – and as you’re the most magical creature around, equipped with a team of Gremlin-esque misfits at your disposal, this pretty much makes you Public Enemy Number One.

As per the original game, the trusty Minions are back (it wouldn’t be an Overlord game without them after all!) – but this time they’re smarter and more diverse, with the ability to operate a wide range of machinery, including a giant catapult in the early stages of the game. For those of you who’ve played the demo (currently available on Xbox Live), you may have noticed that the Minions can now also mount Wolves and ride them like horses, making them even more powerful and destructive. Later stages of the game will see your different Minion types mounting different steeds, all with varying strengths and weaknesses. Other new Minion features are increased co-operation between the four types and the ability to individually “resurrect” your Minions from the Minion Graveyard, which will be a welcomed feature for fans of the original, who may have grown attached to certain Minions over the course of the game and felt gutted once they’d gone to Minion Heaven (or Hell, depending on which way you look at it).

The control system will be instantly familiar to players of the original game too, as it uses the same left/right stick combination to control the Overlord and your Minions respectively and has the same, fluid feel as before. The camera control has been tightened up somewhat (it was one of the major issues from the first game), again allocated to the right stick but you can now take control of your Minions by pushing the right stick forward first before moving them.

Couple all this together with an even darker sense of humour, three new Mistresses for you to conquer, improved graphics (Lennart Sas is particularly pleased with the increased draw distance in the game and the performance of the beefed up game engine, designed in house) and an onscreen map that was sorely lacking in the original game and it looks like this instalment of the Overlord franchise will break through into the hearts of the gamer who may have missed it first time around…and let’s face it, who wouldn’t be excited by the prospect of having your own personal Gremlin demolition team at the ready to do your every bidding? Expect a full xboxer360.com run-down to follow shortly…