The five different Gods your wizard can claim allegiance to also give him different spells. At E3 we were shown a wizard who had dedicated himself to Persephene, meaning his spells had a greater focus on healing and defense with spells that could do things like invoking a huge wall to block the path of an encroaching enemy army. Shiny decided not to stop at mere walls though. Ooh no. In fact, some of the spells we were shown during the demonstration were nothing short of spectacular. A giant whirlwind descended on the floating island the game was being played on and picked up a number of the creatures with no drop in frame rate. Spells can also dig great canyons or raise mountains of earth that will suddenly explode into a volcano, showering the vicinity with chunks of explosive magma.
All this visual splendour is possible thanks to the impressive engine Shiny has created for Sacrifice. All battles are fought on giant floating islands with smooth terrain dotted with foliage. The engine does some seriously impressive level of detail work so that the camera can be pulled right back to show the entire island without murdering your frame rate. The game also uses the same character system as Messiah, although thankfully it has been much improved. There is now hardly any noticeable “polygon popping” at all when the game reduces or increases the complexity of a character model on the fly. In fact we only noticed something like this once. The Shiny character system allows Sacrifice to display an incredible number of creatures on screen. At one point the developer talking us through the title filled almost the entire screen with creatures by just clicking all over the place and we never noticed a drop in detail on any of the beasts, which we have to say we’re glad for after experiencing the constantly warping polygons of the Messiah characters. The closest release date Shiny could offer us was Winter 2000.
Pete Closs
Editor