Man… I remember marathon gaming sessions playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 back in the day. In fact it was the first game I ever did an all-nighter on. And at the end of February it celebrated it’s 15th birthday. Now I just feel old.
To celebrate, Ubisoft have done some interviews with the original team and they’re well worth a read.
From game development director David Mullich:
When I returned to the office, my team surprised me by creating a new hero for the game, Sir Mullich, whose in-game description was, “Generally stoic, Sir Mullich is prone to spasmodic fits of uncoordinated excitement believed to intimidate his troops into working faster.” I was both touched and amused by this in-joke, and allowed them to keep it in the game.
And from associate director Chris Vanover:
So when the Design Lead, Greg Fulton, told me he wanted to hand off another design task, I jumped at the chance without question. It turned out to be two requests, actually:
- Come up with names for the eight leaders of Erathia.
- Write a short bio / backstory for each hero. Each of the one hundred and twenty eight heroes.
…
“You need to know that I’ll come up with 128 character bios before I come up with 8 good names.”
I think that sums up the spirit of the game pretty nicely.