Myth@Bungie.Org

Thursday December 28th 2000

Myth and Dune II: connection? { Lophan }

In my daily efforts to scour the internet in hopes of bringing new Myth news to the Bungie Community (which has been scarce of late, obviously), I have labored to find an article from Gamespot.UK that mentions Myth... and how it was influenced by the game Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis (circa 1993). Now, you may scoff at such a claim, but they pretty much say that any and all RTS games have been influenced by the features and gameplay of Dune II.

I don't totally buy it, but one might say I lost my impartial viewpoint sometime back in the mid-90s. An interesting read nevertheless as the larger article is the "15 Most Influential Games of All-Time."

Quick Update: After continuing through the article, I found that Myth: The Fallen Lords was selected as one of the 10 "runners-up" in the "15 Most Influential games of All-Time." Here's what Gamespot.UK has to say:

Myth: The Fallen Lords received a great deal of critical acclaim when it was released in late 1997, and although it's a relatively young game in the real-time strategy genre, its influence is certain. It was the first real-time strategy game to use a fully 3D terrain and a user-controllable camera that you could use to rotate your view point around your units as well as around the landscape around you.

Although gameplay was overly challenging and the interface was not user-friendly, its mouse-drive control allowed you to control individual units as well as groups. As for graphics, the game supported hardware acceleration and as a result, the landscape visuals were quite pretty and the animated violence and gore quite realistic. Its physics model was perhaps the best thing about the game because it allowed for a more-realistic depiction of flying objects and explosions in virtual three dimensions. A whole wave of 3D RTS games have come out or are coming out now, and the trend isn't ending anytime soon.