Might & Magic X: Legacy Q&A and Blog Update

Ubisoft's official Might & Magic X: Legacy blog continues to see welcomed updates, with the latest two being another set of community-submitted questions and answers and an entry entitled "The Quest for Might & Magic X" that chronicles one designer's journey to make the game a reality. Here's a sampling from each:
(What i liked in Might&Magic and HoMM series is huge creature variety (50+ for certain). Can you tell us approximately how many do you plan in this sequel 10,50,100:)?)

I think it is safe to say, that we'll have about 50+ creatures in MMX, too!

(And will it include some epic ones from the past sequels like Titans , Minotaurs, Behemoths, Unicorns, Dendroids etc., or creatures from M&M Heroes 6 only?)

(Behemoths would be awesome. Don't know why they where left out from the Heroes franchise sice Heroes 4. Also Thunderbirds, Phoenix, Dragons, Gargoyles, Gryffins etc. Would be nice in mm10.)


Besides the fact that all the last M&M games have taken place in Ashan, enemies and creatures in general that you might meet in MMX will not only be consistent with the world of Ashan but also depend on the specific story of Might & Magic X, too.

So all I can say for now is that while MMX indeed reuses creatures from Heroes VI, there will also be creatures that were not in that game.

...

Why was Ubisoft not making a new Might & Magic RPG? Well as I learned, there had actually already been several attempts to create the long-awaited tenth installment...

One such attempt was actually completed, although the final game was not released as (Might & Magic X). Soon after Ubisoft acquired the franchise, they met a promising development team, with a love for first-person RPGs: Arkane Studios. Arkane and Ubisoft started working together on a project that was meant to be a new Might & Magic RPG.

But as the project progressed, it was becoming increasingly clear that it would be something very different from the old games. While thoroughly enjoyable in its own right, Arkane's project was more action-oriented, less open-ended. Eventually Ubisoft decided calling that project Might & Magic X would be doing the game a disservice by creating the wrong expectations among the fans, and so it became known as Might & Magic: Dark Messiah.

By the way, one of the early story pitches for the game that became Dark Messiah was not taking place in Stonehelm, the setting of the final game, but in another Free City of Ashan, Karthal. Arkane even produced some concept arts for the city, which we are still using as a basis for Karthal as it will finally appear in "MMXL".

In any case, these experiences left Ubisoft with the feeling that any new (AAA) Might & Magic RPG would necessarily be very different from the gameplay of the old games (for the reasons highlighted in my previous article about tile-based gameplay), and would therefore never be called Might & Magic X.