Black & White 2 - You think these are pre-rendered images?

[Moogie]

...Because they\'re NOT! These are ingame images from the current development of the game.

I should explain a little about B&W first. You play the role of a God that has come to the world by the lonely prayers of suffering villagers. This game, although story-driven, gives you 100% freedom to do whatever you want.

Want to help the people build prosperous towns and cities? You go right ahead, you\'re a God, you can do whatever you want. But what if you don\'t want to be nice? What ever did these useless little people do for YOU? Nothing! Burn their houses down, destroy their crops, or better still...

Get your Creature to eat them.

That\'s right... every God has a Creature, an Avatar in the world that represents you. It acts independantly, but from it\'s birth it will watch your actions and develop it\'s own personality based on what you teach it.

If you\'re an evil, ruthless, merciless, greedy God, your Creature will be a blackened, scabby hulk of evil stomping around the world mimicing your favourite villager-throwing sports.

Now that the basic intro is out of the way, I\'ve picked a select best bunch of screenshots to show you guys:


Models of the Lion creature in all 3 alignments- good, neutral and evil.


Evil lion doing some heavy damage.


The casting of an \'Epic\' spell or miracle: Siren.


A good God\'s tower. Let me remind you, these are ingame images, not renders.


Same tower, nighttime.


A Greek city.


It looks so beautiful... the game\'s development is around halfway, as I understand it. For B&W1, the quality dropped somewhat in the finished product, so probably that will happen for it\'s sequel aswell. Still, it\'s a mouthwatering taster and I can\'t wait.

ETA for the game is apparently September 2004. Knowing Lionhead Studios, though, it will be about a year later.


[Edit: Some more creatures screenies linked below]
Evil Ape|Neutral Ape|Good Ape
Wallpapers of some other creatures

[Kiern]

hmm...they look great, but I thought B&W1 was too centered on your villagers, it was annoying, I mean, come on your the \"god\" do you really care about the villagers?  Self-supplying would be much better (just to give my opinion )

Also, did you copy that whole thing from somewhere?  You sound like an ad

[Moogie]

Hehe, no I made it up. I used to be a long-time member of the BW1 community... was about 2 years I think.

They say the sequel will have greatly improved villager AI, so that they really will be self sufficient, rather than screaming \"FOOD!\" \"WOOD!\" \"BABIES!\" \"We want more civic buildings!\" every few seconds.

[Kiern]

Oh, good, although now this gives me less of a reason to play how far can you toss the villager...not that I won\'t

[Moogie]

Yup, that was fun, especially the \"Ya can\'t kill me!\" guy with the slow-motion camera.

I also liked building big bonfires of rocks and trees, arranging the flaming pieces in a circle and placing people in the center... BBQ time!

[sashok]

I never liked B&W, maybe because I sucked at it, but this looks good

[hook]

*me watches moogie\'s sig-pic dance around for minutes*

...well in my playlist there was just a song that has the same rythm as your dancing ...well ...your dancing ...creature-thingie :]

*me looks at the screenshots*

niiiice

*me looks at their homepage and forums*

no linux port? ;( ...curse you moogie for showing me the renders!!!

*me goes on watching moogie\'s sig-pic dance to the music\'s beat*

[Abemore]

I was so sure some of those were pre-rendered.
Like the evil lion attacking...
Look how far graphics have come.
I\'m so happy I can travel into the future (at a speed of 1 second per second).
...would suck if I could only move backwards.

 ?(

[Xalthar]

Yea, B&W2 looks awesome... But great graphic\'s don\'t necessarily make a great game...
So I\'m worrying about gameplay...

[seperot]

i loved \"bowling enemy houses with baulders\"

[Monketh]

Darn you moogie.  Should I sue you before or after I buy the game and play it so much at high-detail I wear a hole in my ati card?

Seriously, I\'d pay 80 bucks ($80) for something like that.

[Fanomatic2000]

\"We need food!\"
\"We need wood!\"
\"We need more buildings\"
\"Villiagers MUST have food\"
\"Hey bud, could you pass us some more wood?\"

*Me gestures with hand*

\"\"Fireball!\"\"

FWOOOSHHHH!!!!

 8o  8o \"AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!\" 8o  8o

\"ARGH, the flames!!\"

*Me laughts sadistic*

[Wedge]

Errr, just thought I\'d say, youl\'d have a tough time convincing me they were pre-renders, not the other way around.  Not to say there aren\'t great, but you can do quite better than that with pre-rendered CG...

[hook]

Originally posted by Wedge
Errr, just thought I\'d say, youl\'d have a tough time convincing me they were pre-renders, not the other way around.  Not to say there aren\'t great, but you can do quite better than that with pre-rendered CG...

now that you mention it ...the amount of detail on the head does just steal your focus from the rest of the body

[kyp14]

While those look really really good I didn\'t think they were pre rendered not after seeing the Half Life 2 game play videos (woah there good) but I must admit they are mighty impressive for a 3D rts (remebers Empire Earth yuck yuck yuck well graphics wise anyway)