Black & White 2

Infobox VG
title= Black & White 2


developer= Lionhead Studios
publisher= EA Games
designer= Peter Molyneux, Ron Millar
engine=
released= October 7,2005
genre= Real-time strategy, God game
modes= Single player
ratings= ESRB: Teen, ELSPA: 12+
platform= Windows XP
media=
requirements= Windows 2000/XP,
Intel-compatible 1.6 GHz CPU,
512MB RAM,
3.5GB hard drive space,
8x DVD-ROM,
DirectX 9.0c compatible hardware,
and a 64MB video card with 1.1 Pixel Shader support.

input= Mouse, Keyboard

"Black & White 2" is a video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It blends real-time strategy, city building and god game elements. It was released on October 7, 2005 as stated on the official Lionhead website, but to those who preordered it arrived on October 5, 2005 from most sources. It is the sequel to 2001's "Black & White", also the brainchild of Peter Molyneux. The lead designer is Ron Millar, who previously worked at Blizzard Entertainment on titles such as "StarCraft" and "".

Game concept

The concept of the game is that the player is a god, called from heaven to help those who invoked the player. However, the player is not an omnipotent monotheistic style god, but rather a god who rises and falls with his believers and the player must help develop their nature according to the player's good or evil desires. The player also has a creature, the player's physical representation in the world, who takes the form of an anthropomorphic cow, lion, ape or wolf, and with an unlocker, a tiger. It can grow to an immense size, and adopt a good or evil persona reflecting the player's actions. Creatures help the player in most of the player's decisions and represent the player's god.

In addition to the god simulation and city-building elements of the original "Black & White", "Black & White 2" also features elements of Real-Time Strategy gameplay, with the addition of controllable warfare and fighting units.

"Black & White 2" also features a more conventional HUD (Heads-Up Display) system than its predecessor. Rather than the experimental HUDless gameplay seen in the original game, "Black & White 2" features HUD notifications that inform players of their creature's state of mind, the effects of their actions on their creature, the status of villages, etc.

Features

The only way the player can interact with this world directly is through the player's hand, with which the player can pick up people, trees, food, and influence the ground. The player can also cast miracles. However, a certain amount of "Prayer Power" (in essence, "Mana") from the player's believers is needed to do this.One of the game's most innovative features is that its user interface is almost buttonless. The HUD is much simpler than other such "creator" games, such as The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon, and the player sees little else on the screen but the world, the player's hand, and toolbars which the player can make disappear. To do things such as cast miracles, the player moves the hand in such a way to make a symbol on the ground, which is called a gesture. This activates the miracle, and if the player has enough mana, it appears in the player's hand ready to cast.Miracles have a variety of different uses. There are 6 ordinary miracles: fire, lightning, water, shield, heal, and meteor, (each of which can be thrown or poured), and 4 epic wonders, which are siren, hurricane, earthquake, and volcano.

The player's creature can do most things the player can do, such as cast miracles. They will grow slowly for a long time, and can become very large. Since the player trains him, his personality can become whatever the player makes of it. They may be an aid in supporting the player's kingdom or the ultimate soldier in the player's army.

There are three possible paths to take in this game: Good, Evil, or a more neutral combination of the two, although this decision is not discrete. The typical path of an evil god will be one of fear, torture, conquest and destruction using epic armies and building fearsome places, such as a pit of torture, while that of a good god will be one of benevolence, more positive city building, and lots of looking after the populace, particularly defending it from attack. Both of these require ore and wood, of which there is a limited amount (though some maps have bottomless mines, and water miracles can turn a single tree into a forest if used correctly), making players choose a strategy — but there is plenty of slack in each.

The game features Norse, Aztec, Japanese, and Greek tribes. The player's tribe is the Greeks.

Everyday Miracles

The six everyday miracles can all be used in a multitude of ways more than just pouring and throwing for example:
*Lightning: Lightning shocks all trees, buildings, animals and villagers in its path and can be thrown far further and bounced better than other miracles and is a primary choice for defending cities. When used in conjunction with the water miracle it is particularly deadly.

*Water: Water is by far the most adaptable miracle. It can be used to water fields, sustain herds of animals, grow forests, put out fires or even drown people.

*Fire: Fire can be used to make a wall of flames to deter enemies or to attack enemy forces.

*Shield: This is used to block projectiles and miracles that are poured or thrown, or send enemy soldiers flying.

*Heal: The heal miracle is the ultimate miracle for good. You can heal your own civilians and soldiers. A very helpful defensive tool, rapidly healing your soldiers or creature while they fight is a very good tactic.

*Meteor: The meteor miracle destroys everything in its path, so can only be used for evil.

Disciples

As in Black & White, players can create disciples to do the player's job in certain areas of the game while the player tends to other business. For example, if the player needs to lead an invasion, they can set villagers, and even their creature to farm for them while they lead an invasion.

Many roles from the first game do not come back. Craftsmen is removed, as there is a new building system. Many new ones appear as well, such as Refiner.

*Farmer: This will assign the villager to farm, they will tend to the crops any time of day, unlike in the last game where night time usually signalled the end of the working day.

*Builder: This will assign the villager to build anything that needs to be built. This role has been downgraded, as the player can now construct the buildings faster but more expensively themselves.

*Breeder: This will assign the villager to begin mating. When assigned, they will basically walk the town. As in the previous Black and White game, male breeders are more efficient than female breeders.

*Forester: This will assign the villager the job of lumberjack, leading them to search the land for wood. This role's importance has been downgraded from the previous game, as the player can gather any trees in their influence faster with Multi-pick up. However, they are useful when the player has used up any home resources.

*Mine Worker: This will assign the villager to mine. This new resource can be found inside mines, which the player cannot reach, or ore blocks outside. Some mines have a limit, while others can be bottomless. In later levels, there may be no bottomless mines, and ore is the only non-renewable resource.

*Refiner: This will assign the villager to work at a plant the player assigns them to. Instead of going to the store house, refineries will become the new drop off zone. Refineries will refine the resource depending on its building, for example, ore can only be sent to a Smelter. When refined, the resource will come out more than it was harvested. So if 200 ore was sent it, it could come out 300 or more depending on the number of refiners.

*Soldier: When assigned, the villager will join a military platoon to which the player assigned them. They will not age, and require more food than a normal villager.

*Worshipers: When assigned, the villagers will dance around an altar, generating mana for the player to use to cast spells.

Sometimes, unemployed workers may do other jobs around the village if the buildings are available. You cannot assign these roles, however. Even though they do nothing, it can be seen from a role play point of view. These can also be viewed as activities, and can sometimes improve happiness.

*Bar Tender: If the player has a tavern, sometimes a woman will become a bar tender. This just makes it look like the tavern is owned.

*Decorators: If the player has a Pot, Plant, or Statue market, villagers will take items from these markets and place them around homes, to seem like they are decorating their house.

*Acrobat: If the player has a theater, villagers will get together and perform flips, jumps, and other tricks.

*Scholar: If the player has a university, villagers will go to the university and read books.

*Mourning: If the player owns a graveyard, villagers may go and mourn on their own free will. If the player does not have a graveyard, villagers will stop in their duties and mourn anyone who has died near them. If there is a graveyard, they will continue to go about their business.

*Nursery: If the player has any children in the village, this will encourage them to go here instead of follow their mothers. Similar to the creche in Black & White.

*Resting Home: If the player has any elderly villagers, which can be identified as villagers scoffing across the town slowly, they will go here instead, and basically wait here for their final days.

Story

The player is called to the world from a "pure prayer" and thus comes upon a scene of a Greek city being devastated by a huge Aztec army. After the player saves a certain number of people, their people are transported to a new land with a handful of refugee worshipers, the player must re-establish a power base from which to eventually defeat the Aztec empire. To do so, the player must conquer the Norse, the Japanese and the Aztecs, by peace or war with a creature.

Throughout the game there is a theme of "The prophecy" which states that a tribe will be destroyed by the mightiest power in the world but will receive a god who will lead them to glory and dominance of the world.

Creatures

The creature choices include the lion, wolf, cow, ape and tiger. All of these are available to play, except for the tiger which is only included with the pre-ordered or collector's/special edition of the game. The tiger is also available in the Battle of the Gods expansion pack, as well as the new armor-plated turtle. The Tiger (in the collector's/special edition of the game) will appear by chance when you start a new story mode. It will not appear everytime.

The main enemy's creature is a Gorilla, in the Battle of the Gods expansion pack it returns, albeit with rotting flesh.

The creature is usually referred to as "he" - not only by fans, but the consciences say it. This indicates that the creature is a male despite the presence of udders on the cow.

Unlike Black & White, in which the creature had to be taught miracles through repetition, this sequel allows the player to 'buy' Creature Miracles with 'Tribute' currency. Along with this, Black & White 2 allows a player to revisit everything they've taught their creature in order to alter and fine-tune it at any time, while the original Black & White simulated a more realistic teaching by only allowing changes to be made as the creature repeated an action.

Also straying from its predecessor, the game greatly downgrades creature teaching. While the first game featured a simple slap-or-stroke system to teach the creature right from wrong, Black & White 2 micro-manages this with a spectrum from 'I will never do this', 'I will rarely do this', 'I might do this', and so on. Many have criticized this new feature as unrealistic, as actual pets wouldn't have the ability to recognize things such human terms as 'rarely' or 'might', but only recognize punishment/reward (slap-or-stroke).

All of these features have been heavily criticized as eliminating a realistically challenging and fun element by downgrading the 'Creature Teaching' feature of the original game into no more than a non-realistic and dull pet micro-management.

Game engine

One interesting feature of the game is the physics system of the game engine. In an interview, Molyneux expressed his dismay at the physics engines found in most RTS games:

"In most RTS games the player can get an archer with a wooden bow and arrows to fire at a brick wall and after like a minute, the wall will fall down."
....
"So the idea is why not introduce physics? You have walls made out of stone. How do you break stone down? You break it down with other stone, with catapults. You can't break it down with people with swords. It doesn't matter how long they stand there with a sword clunking at it, it's just not going to have an effect. And when that wall breaks down it doesn't suddenly disappear, you can form cracks in it: a little crack at the bottom, funnel your troops through, the other player can try to stop this gap up by building little boulders round the back. All of those things come from physics."

Public reaction

Critic reactions were positive with an average critic score of 76% at Game Rankings. However response to "Black and White 2" has also been mixed, with powerful feelings on both sides; the supporters cite the obviously improved graphics, the grander scale of city building, the improved method of teaching and guiding the Creature, and the creation of armies. Those opposing the game note the somewhat limited actions of the Creature, the poor pathfinding and enemy AI, the lack of packaged multiplayer and sandbox modes, and the feeling of being less of a god game, and more of a glorified city-management simulator, considering the lack of "divine" opponents, which were prominent features of the first game.

The angle taken by the sequel was vastly different from the original. There is no way to convert a village by impressing the village itself, but rather the other village must come to find yours superior. This can take a considerable amount of time and resources, leading many players to use war to conquer the towns.

The community has also been marked severely by users experiencing problems with playing the game, in the form of various bugs or crashes which practically rendered the game unplayable. The most vulnerable computer setup seems to be an AMD CPU chipset and NVIDIA motherboard and graphics card chipset. The most serious of these bugs on the AMD-Nvidia chipset was the inability to save progress of an ongoing game. The result often was a crash-on-save after an extended period of time. Other problems included ghost images that were persistent across game restarts. Another bug made it impossible to proceed beyond the tutorial unless the user has a mouse with a scroll wheel (and sometimes not even if they did; the game was only compatible with Microsoft's wheel implementation). There was also discontent with the 1.1 patch, released by Lionhead to resolve some of the bugs as well as balancing, which rendered previous saved games incompatible with the new version, forcing players to start over from the beginning.Lionhead has made two patches so far, however, many users aren't satisfied with them. Mod tools were released in early 2006, and an expansion () was announced soon after.

Expansion packs

The first and only expansion set released to date is "Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods", released on April 28, 2006. It featured a brand new creature (the armour plated turtle) and the tiger from the BAW2 Special Edition, three new lands, four new miracles, and an all-new enemy, a god born of death, supposedly hinted to at the end of Black and White 2.

The premise involved the player's return to Eden, where they discover that the Aztecs have raised their own evil deity, which must be confronted head-on for control of the land. The player has the freedom to choose how they will challenge this new god, either by countering the evil deity’s actions with good deeds, or attempting to defeat him with extreme evil. The players will have to watch out for two new enemy armies and the new enemy creature. Six new challenges and other new content are also available for players to explore.

References

External links

* [http://www.lionhead.com/bw2/ Official "Black & White 2" site]
* [http://www.planetblackandwhite.com/ Planet Black & White] Official GameSpy fansite
*
* [http://www.lionhead.com/botg Official "Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods" site]