The Wheel of Time video game is available again for the first time in many years. Gaming service GoG has made the title available again at a low, low price.
Developed by Legend Entertainment and published by GT Interactive, the official tie-in Wheel of Time game was released on 11 November 1999 and was a cheerfully-greeted failure, selling less than 30,000 copies in its first three months on sale. The game attracted so-so reviews, with particular praise for its graphic and level design but criticism of the game's genre as a first-person shooter, rather than a roleplaying game. The game's position in the canon is ambiguous, with it appearing to take place in an alternate reality (one of the Portal Stone worlds) rather than main timeline where the books take place.
Despite the oddity of switching between different, weaponised ter'angreal instead of guns, there is fun to be had in fighting Trollocs in the White Tower, Whitecloaks on a remote highway and evading Mashadar on the superbly-realised streets of Shadar Logoth. The female protagonist (you play an Aes Sedai sister) was also unusual for an FPS at the time.
The game does occupy an interesting place in technical history: it was the second-ever game to be made in the Unreal Engine (after Unreal itself). The success of licencing the engine landed Legend the job of making Unreal II itself, and led to the creators of Unreal licencing the game to everyone under the sun. Twenty-three years later, the latest version of Unreal Engine is the most powerful and popular third-person engine in video gaming, being used for everything from Fortnite to the next Witcher game to helping with the vfx for the various Star Wars TV shows.
I have a fuller retrospective on the game here. It'll be interesting to see how well (or not) it has aged.
No comments:
Post a Comment