HOMM IV Interview

Not technically an RPG but that’s never stopped me from posting an informative bit on another genre. One that I feel supports a lot of the hidden closet-types of gamers, and which nevertheless is truly loved by many is the sit-down-and-relax type of genre, is the turned based strategy. For the last many years one of the Kings of turned based games has been the series Heroes of Might & Magic (also one of my favorite games of all time… HOMM2).

Not much is known about the 4th in the series yet with regard to improvements over Heroes 3, but Strategy Planet gave it the college try dishing out an interview with April Lee, graphic artist for New World Computing. Food for thought:

Angelspit: How do you manage to “enter” the Might and Magic universe, in other words, where do you get the information you need to create such a good-looking creature? Did Classic authors, mythology or the other Heroes games inspire you?

April: This is mostly left up to those doing the sketches. I’ve done some now and then. MM tends to be very “classic” fantasy/rpg–which means the images most people are familiar with–vaguely Northern European medieval-like society, with generic dwarves, halflings, elves, etc. We just use whatever visual inspiration we like to try not to make things mind-numbingly boring and repetitive. Hopefully, we are creative and interested enough to do this, at the same time, making sure we’re not doing something TOO out there so that it doesn’t fit into the general look of the game.