Introduction

So what is Black & White? How can I put this ... It's a game that has the best concept ever conceived for a computer game. It has a graphics engine that's flawless, superior animation, ground breaking new technology and is being developed by Lionhead Studios.

Who? You know, that new company setup by Peter Molyneux, the guy behind Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet, Syndicate ... Populous(?). C'mon, you must know the guy I'm talking about? All those games were quality.

Right, now to enlighten you. The game is a God game. Basically, you are a God. You are omnipotent, you are powerful and you can do WTF you like. Great. As with any God, you don't actually exist unless people believe in you. Without the belief of the little people in the game you'll cease to be. So naturally it works the other way around too; the more people that believe you in you, the more powerful you shall become. Splendid.

You see, what happens, you and a few other Godly like people arrive at this land called Eden. This land is a vast and beautiful world inhabited by little tribesman and their settlements. Everything's peaceful and calm until you guys (the player) arrive and want these people to worship you so you can become more powerful. Not only will you become stronger, but you'll learn some great spells with which you can annihilate the other Gods.

How you go about getting these little people to believe in you is entirely at your discretion. You can give them little gifts and help them out with their farming etc., or you can torment and kill them and make them worship you out of fear rather than love. This is where the game gets its name, Black & White.

The Concepts

Titans

In the game you'll get to choose an animal to be your pet. I know it sounds silly at first but such is the depth behind this particular concept it is highly necessary. Some people will tell you that these creatures (bottom two pics on the left) aren't called titans until they're fully grown, if someone says this just tell them to piss off. I'd say that a 50 foot tall monkey as opposed to a 200 foot monkey is also of titanic proportions which ever way you look at it. Sorry, I'm rambling, it's just I've had this argument before which eventually became quite violent.

Yadda yadda yadda. Now these titans (you can only have one at a time), they love you. They're like your child, they obey your every command, learn anything you want to teach them and will respect you no matter how cruel and wicked you are.

Your titan will be a reflection of yourself and your style of play. If you're a mean and nasty bastard then your titan will behave that way and mimic you. Their appearance will physically alter to reflect this. An evil titan will probably have a hunch back, red eyes and will just generally look evil. Whereas a good titan e.g. a lion, will stand up straight with a long golden mane and be quite proud looking. There are also variations in between the two extremes, known as 'grey' or 'gray' depending on what side of the Atlantic you reside. When I gave the lion as an example, it didn't mean that lions couldn't be evil, because like any other creature, they can bat for either team.

You interact with your titan via the use of your hand (more about that in the interface section). You can slap, punch, tickle, rub, stroke, please, tease and just simply annoy the hello out of your titan with this hand of yours. This is useful for teaching your titan stuff. If your titan starts eating your followers (tribesmen) then you can damn well demonstrate your displeasure at this. You could beat the hell out of your titan, you could literally knock the poor guy off his feet and give him bruises and cuts. Blood will trickle down his body and he'll get scars. You could keep pounding him in the legs, and then the next thing you know he's woken up from his sleep and is walking around with a limp. This would probably be a bit extreme, a simple slap across the face is probably enough to convince your titan not to eat your tribes folk again.

Let's say your titan starts to munch of the opposition's tribes. Woohoo! Praise him! Stroke him and tell him he's been a good boy. Your titan will learn how to behave from the feedback you give him. When you cast spells he'll look on and copy what you do. This way you'll have your titan learning spells instead of having to do them yourself, which uses up your mana (power), and your titan has an infinite supply of mana which is why they're so useful.

Interface

OK, this game has one seriously bad ass interface. The cool thing is, it has no buttons! No really, none. You control the game by using just one hand that's controlled by the mouse. That's the only link between yourself and Eden, a disembodied hand that can do anything.

If you want to move through out the land, you just pull yourself along (although you can use the keyboard), just grab onto something and pull, or double click the mouse button to zoom there. You can pickup rocks with the hand and then throw them across the landscape. One really cool trick that's implemented is how the game determines how hard you've thrown the rock and in what direction. It's all down to this thing called the 'Gesture Recognition System', or GSR. You move the mouse with great speed and force and you'll send the rock into orbit, and depending on the direction you move the mouse determines what direction the rock will go.

I'm just using rocks as an example, you can throw anything you like, trees, villagers ... I mean, you are God after all. Say you wanted to rip a tree out of the ground, just grab onto it and give the mouse a little jerk (try not to take that out of context), you'll hear a creaking noise and the tree will bend but still stays firmly in the ground. Right, now grit your teeth, scrunch your face up and do a nice meaningful tug on the mouse. That's better, you've just ripped the tree out of the ground.

There are many things you can do with this tree, some ideas are to give it to your villagers, either by dropping it next to some of them so they can use it for building, that would count as a good act and you'd gain some belief points. Alternatively, you can drop the tree on them. Bwahahaha! You'll gain some belief points, but towards the other end of the good/bad spectrum. What else? You could throw the tree at your titan, if he's looking at you, and you don't throw it too hard, he'll reach out and catch it. Now a raging and pissed off titan would probably throw the tree back at you, by that I mean he'll sort of throw it at your screen. Throw it at him when he's not looking and at a nice speed, it'll probably catch him on the back of the head and send him face first into the dirt. Something that Peter Molyneux said was possible, was to drop lots of trees into some water and create a dam.

The citadel

Your house, basically. When a tribe decides to be believe in you, they build you what is known as a citadel, it's basically a temple dedicated to you. This temple uses a completely different graphics engine to the rest of the game and looks simply stunning.

The temple has many rooms that add a function to the game. Your titan has his own little room inside of your temple. It's where he keeps all his memorabilia, hangs pictures of landmark events and keeps lots of other stuff. Did I mention he even creates his own web pages? Well he does. Seriously.

There are other rooms for things like saving the game and changing the game options. You just select where you want to go, and the camera changes and focuses on its own and points to the desired area. The area is just one big lump of eye candy as you can see from the screenshots.

In the middle of the temple is a 3D map of your terrain, it does what you'd expect a 3D map thing to do. You can clearly see the incredible detail in this place. Due to that nature of this temple area being indoors, you can clearly see the engine goes nuts on detail because it doesn't have to worry about things like long distances and this clipping malarky. The engine also does this thing called ray tracing, I don't know what that's for, but it sounds impressive, doesn't it. At least I think it's impressive.

Story line

Black & White's story line is, as we say in the industry, rather large. In fact the game is game's story is going to be so large and in-depth, that there's going to be a novel written about the game. The game's dialogue is over 50,000 words in length and the game is full of little sub quests.

The game's story is helped along by the guys in the pictures on your left. They're like your mentors. They guide you through the game, inform you of events, help you when you're stuck in a rut and just generally float around and humour the player.

As you can see, one of them is evil looking and the other is good looking, not as in handsom, but as in just 'good'. You know what I mean. He's not my type anyway. They buzz around the screen at certain times and give you conflicting advice on how to deal with a situation. Let's say metaphorically speaking you wanted to take over a settlement, the evil guy would tell you to throw fireballs and burn them into submission, whereas the good guy would tell you to aid them in their farming so they love you.

They even argue amongst themselves and can be quite funny. Fingers crossed they don't turn out to be like those annoying advisors you get in games like Theme Park. Although I don't think that'll be the case. They're very cool guys. I've seen them.

Spells

Last but not least, the spells. Where would you be as a god without your own arsenal of spells? Every tribe you take over (e.g. Egyptians, Celts etc.) has their own unique powers that they can give you. These powers mean spells, and lots of them. From fireballs to shields to ones that create forests, they're all in there. You know that gesture recognition system I was banging on about earlier? Well, this is when it comes into a league of its own.

When you cast a fireball, you don't just point and click, you have to summon one by creating a gesture. Lets say a fireball is a circle, you paint a circle on the land, if you get the circle right, they'll be lots of funky lighting effects et cetera, and then in your hand you'll be holding a fireball. But wait a minute, you can power this spell up and maybe have an even bigger fireball, or perhaps throw 3 at a time. You then paint another symbol on the ground e.g. the star of David, and then holy cow! Throw it now. Don't just point where you want to throw, gesture it. Move the mouse in a rocking motion, take your aim and then let go. Vrrrrrmm!!

Every spell is accessed and controlled in this way. A shield spell (pictured right), you'd summon one, and then paint what area you want to protect, e.g. your temple. A dome would then appear around your temple. The one pictured is a shield that blocks physical attacks from rocks and stuff, there's also one to stop magic attacks like lightning and fireballs, which looks really cool.

This is when the game can get frantic in multiplayer. In clan games you can combine spells and do co-operative attacks. Meanwhile your titan is watching, learning and doing the same you. Suddenly this once peaceful land called Eden is a place of mayhem and chaos where mighty deities are battling it out in awesome wizard like battles.

The rest ...

Phew. Writing that took some energy. The annoying thing is that it's only the tip of the iceberg. No really. I've beta tested this game and there's so much more to it, you wouldn't believe half of it.

Just in case you were wondering, yes, those are in-game screenshots of a game that isn't even finished yet, and they haven't even been touched by a copy of Photoshop, except maybe the textures, the may have been made in Photoshop at the design stage.