Overlord II Previews

New hands-on previews of Overlord II are available at 1UP and IGN, thanks to Codemasters’ San Francisco Gamers Day event. An excerpt from 1UP’s article:

In Overlord 2, you’ll actually be playing as the descendant of the “hero” from the first game. Having been smuggled into hiding to avoid the previous Overlord’s wrath, you’re actually raised by minions to become a brand new force of evil in the world. Speaking of evil, while the first game had some pretty devious moments (slaughtering sheep, hobbits and elves by the truckload), the developers felt that the evil could’ve been more pronounced. This time around you’ll still be making choices to determine how you complete each quest, but the choice is now between domination and annihilation.

And an excerpt from IGN’s article:

Unlike the first game’s Dark Tower, your Overlord’s keep is actually a sprawling underground cavern that grows and becomes more populated with the machinations of your evil as the game goes on. Because your dark influence spreads underneath the kingdom that’s cropped up with dear ol’ dad being imprisoned, all the tools for summoning enemies, teleporting and so on will actually punch up through the earth as you near them. Handy, no?

The subterranean digs also provide for another much-needed addition: your minion graveyard. After hearing that some players grew rather attached to their minions, only to watch them fall at the hands of a random enemy, never to return, Triumph added in a graveyard that will allow you to sacrifice “lesser” minions to bring back your beefier, cooler pal from beyond the veil of death. The idea is that it creates a deeper attachment to the minions, and when you factor in the idea that multiple minion types will attack a group of enemies differently — say with normal brown grunts charging them from the front while green minions will flank a group and whittle them away while they’re distracted — that attachment makes a little more sense this time.