Paradoxes In Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

Writer Tom Cross has provided a piece to Gamasutra that analyzes what Arkane Studios’ Dark Messiah of Might & Magic got right and what it got wrong.

Nothing in Dark Messiah moves lightly, nor does it move irrespective of its environment. It’s hard to stop from sprinting over a ledge, and it’s hard to walk backwards fast. Every spell and weapon has an effect on the environment: ice spells freeze enemies, who can then be broken. That’s not the only way to use a frost spell though. I can frost the ground near a ledge, fire, or wall of spikes (which are, unsurprisingly, everywhere in Dark Messiah) and kick enemies into and over the slick ground. I can dip my arrows in torches and create deadly fire arrows. I can pick up boxes and bodies (using magic or my mind) and throw them with deadly force at my enemies. Rope arrows turn every room and chasm into a playground of jumping and fighting, opening up new avenues of attack and retreat.

I could go on. Everything has more than one way of interacting with everything else. It doesn’t sound that impressive, but it definitely is. It creates the kind of (immersive) (emergent) moments that people clamor for in games, but it doesn’t do it with cartoonish exaggeration (like Just Cause 2 does) or single-mindedness (as Red Faction: Guerilla’s does with its limited focus on destructible buildings and cars). People talk a lot about the moments, the stories they’ve told in games. Dark Messiah is one of the few games that produces stories (always combat-based) that I’m actually interested in, despite the game’s proper (story) being such a wretched, drawn-out thing.

Part of this has nothing to do with how the game feels or how the physics work. While the world of Dark Messiah isn’t terribly original, what is here animates and moves beautifully. All enemies (especially orcs and spiders) have a way of moving and dying that looks great. These are the scariest, most disgusting, loudest-clicking spiders I’ve ever had the displeasure of fighting in a game.