Heroes of Telara E3 Previews
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First in line is 1UP:
We saw demons attacking a town, and teams of players managed to fight them off without too much property damage. Low level characters rescued people and fetched water while the more experienced repelled a giant demon lord, and afterward shafts of sunlight pierced the clouds and citizens emerged to applaud the defenders. Failure is an option, however, and we're told that should the battle have gone differently, the town would have been destroyed and remained in that state for weeks.
The other aspect that piqued our interest was the game's class system, which superficially seemed simple. It begins with the four archetypical classes: warrior, mage, priest and rogue. What's novel here is that each character can switch between these classes on the fly, even in the middle of a battle, with their equipment and taskbar changing at the same time. Each class levels independently of the others, and possesses its own stats, with the exception of HP, which will remain the same as the highest level attained, allowing the player to switch from, say, a level 50 warrior to brush up on their level 6 rogue with enough HP to make the going easier.
Then we move to MMORPG.com:
The theme of heroism returns in the way combat happens in Talara. There are two major differences from the average MMO. First, the NPCs are rarely if never wandering around aimlessly, waiting to be killed. They have their own goals and motivations. Players tend to find bandits skirmishing with guards, not sitting around a camp fire. The second is that as each player wants to be a hero, they better damn well fight like it. The combat is one vs. many, as players take on many monsters at a time. In our demonstration, the warrior would knock back multiple enemies with a giant, stylized staff. Beyond this, though, the combat is intended to be very familiar to fans of MMOs. It uses special abilities and hotbars.
Artistically, the game makes a lot of nice strides forward. Humanoid enemies have expressions on their faces that actually change. No longer do they look like wax figures as they blindly smack players. The game's artistic style is stylized, but (realistically rendered.) The effect is a very detailed, high-fantasy world that looks full of life. When they say stylized, they don't mean cartoony or World of Warcraft. This is a much gritter artistic vision.
