| BLACK & | WHITE |
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Genre |
Strategy / God |
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System |
PII 233 |
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Year |
2001 |
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| Developer |  |
I’ve been putting off writing this for weeks, because there’s so much to say and I don’t want to write a book. So here goes…
HISTORY
Peter Molyneux left Bullfrog about three years ago, along with a few of his award winning team, to set up Lionhead Studios. Teaming up with Steve Jackson of Games Workshop fame, he and the gang set about creating the ultimate God game. Being entirely independent and having no particular end date in mind, they were free to indulge themselves, experimenting and pushing the envelope as far as their skill and the available technology would go. By late 2000 the game was finished, with just the publisher’s quality control stage to go. A couple of false starts later, the finished product hit the shelves at the end of March (in Canada and the US) and in April in UK. It was, without a doubt, the most eagerly anticipated game of the year and possibly of all time.
A GAME OF TWO HALVES, JOHN
There are arguably two distinct things going on in B&W. Firstly there is the God bit, with resource management, crowd control, building and the usual casting of miracles. Secondly, and probably more importantly, there is a display of the finest AI ever seen in a computer game, in the form of your avatar on Earth, the Creature. The two strands interweave beautifully, but it is only when you realise how deep the latter runs that you truly begin to appreciate the game.
THE PREMISE
The opening scene: couple and child frolicking on the beach. Child goes for a swim and meets Mr Shark. Parents wail and call on the almighty to lend a hand. The prayer is rerouted to your continuum where it calls into being a God (i.e. you), who promptly zips across a reality or two into the wonderful world of Eden and snatches the boy from the jaws of death. Parents pretty delighted and promise to tell their village all about you and get them to start worshipping their new saviour. You follow the family back to the village and get to work persuading the rest of the villagers that you are the one for them.
Your interaction with Eden is accomplished with one of the simplest interfaces ever seen, to whit, a hand. This moves you around the land, picks things up and performs miracles, with nary an icon in sight. Thus you can pick up a villager and do with him what you want. You could take him back to his hut, reunite him with his family, drop him off at work or throw him halfway round the world. It’s entirely up to you. (Beginning to see the logic behind the name, now?)
Your aim in all this is to convince the villagers to worship you and you alone. This is done by engendering belief and can be achieved by simple things like chucking a huge boulder down the main drag, watering crops, topping up the wood supplies by uprooting whole trees, or accomplishing tasks. These last are denoted by silver scrolls which, when clicked on, will tell you what you have to achieve. It may be reuniting someone with their family, finding a shepherd’s flock or arranging singing stones in the correct order. Once you complete the mission, the supplicant will offer you something in gratitude. You can also take it by force, of course. You are a God, after all.
Once you have the village buttoned up on the belief front, the locals will build you a temple. Here they can be instructed to worship your eminence, generating magical power with which to cast spells. They can either do this until they drop dead from starvation or fatigue, or you can give them the odd day off. Up to you.
THE BEAST
You are given the chance to acquire your Creature upon completion 
of
one of the early tasks. The choice is of three to start with; an ape,
a cow or a tiger. Each has its own characteristics in terms of strength,
intelligence and docility, but you won’t spot the differences for quite
some time. I picked the ape, because he put on the best show when I was
deciding which idiot to go for.
Your Creature is about half the size of a house when you first get him and dumb as a rock. You have two methods of interaction, firstly the old slap/tickle routine to reinforce desirable behaviour over undesirable and secondly via the attaching of one of three available leashes. More on the latter in a moment.
Your new baby has just four requirements at first. Eating, sleeping, drinking and crapping. Just as in the game “Creatures”, he won’t know what to eat to start with, or even where to get a drink, so you will have to show him. His food choices are quite varied, with cattle, sheep, horses and pigs dotted around the place, fish in the sea and corn in the fields. In addition, he could try a villager or two, or perhaps a rock. Even his own poop. By either scolding or praising him, you will gradually teach him what is best. You may, for instance, be only too happy for him to dine on the odd worshipper, as it generates a fair amount of belief. On the other hand, your population won’t grow as quickly as otherwise, limiting your sphere of influence.
Having got the basic food and hygiene out of the way (it helps if you can get your Creature to crap in the fields, as this serves as fertiliser), it is time to teach him a few miracles. This is done by attaching the leash of learning to him and getting him to watch you cast a few. After a while he will start trying to copy you, though mostly ineffectively to start with. You then have to show him when and where it is best to use his new skills. There’s not much point creating grain if he then zaps the village centre with a lightning bolt.
There is much other behaviour as well. Inside the crèche in Land 1 is a ball and a pair of dice. You can show him how to play with them and he may, or may not, become addicted to gambling. Try taking him to the beach and showing him how to skip rocks across the water. Again, he may take up the hobby with a vengeance, ignore it entirely, or discover for himself the joy of using villagers instead of stones.
Anyway, after a while (several hours of play), you should be able to trust your Creature sufficiently to send him off on his own to attempt to convert another village. Your own influence is limited by the amount of belief you have, which in turn is greatly dependent on having a large population of fervent supporters. Outside this zone, your ability to interact with the world, including performing of miracles is severely curtailed, so just about your only choice is to send in the beast and hope he does the stuff for you.
BUT WHY?
There’s a story. Before you arrived, a God called Nemesis had decided to make Eden his own and, one by one, knocked off any potential competitors. At first you are able to ally with the last survivor, but when he buys the farm, you are on your own. Each Land, (there are five in total), has one or two obligatory quests (denoted by gold scrolls), which must be completed in order to progress to the next land. Each has one or more enemy villages which must be converted and a number of silver scrolls to help things along. The plot also involves putting together pieces of something called The Creed, but not having completed the final Land myself, I can’t say what happens should you succeed in doing so.
THE GAME
Each of the five lands has an overall aim, essentially requiring you to defeat whomever you are up against and reclaim a part of the Creed. Each time you will start with a village under your control, though they have to build you a temple before you can really get going, and you may want to have a look at the Silver Scrolls to see what needs doing. The rewards can be pretty much essential in pursuit of success. Also knocking around the place are other villages which you need to convert and this is where the real meat of the game comes in. As I said earlier, your influence is limited by the amount of belief you have generated and will only expand as your tribe increases in size. This they will achieve themselves, to some extent, though you will have to give them some help (rather too much in many people’s opinion). Your role is in making sure they have enough food and wood, the latter so that they can construct houses and civic buildings. This can be done by using miracles to create the stuff, helping them build fields, and by making some of your followers into disciples. These can be builders, craftsmen (who create the scaffolds from which builders build houses etc.), harvesters, fishermen, lumberjacks or breeders. These last will dedicate their lives to procreation, so it makes sense to ensure that most if not all of them are male. Talking of lives, your villagers don’t live forever. Generally they will make it to about 70, though starvation and being eaten by something will take a few years off.
Your villagers’ desires can be gauged in several ways, the primary being what they say to you as you hover near the village. “We want offspring/more houses/civic buildings,” are the usual cries and you can tell just how badly they want them from the flags on the Village Store, as well as from the advice given to you by your good and evil consciences, who will also help with things like creature training and intelligence on what the enemy is up to.
Going back to the influence thing, clearly it is going to be difficult to impress unconverted villagers with your omnipotence if it is limited to your own territory. Therefore you will need to send your Creature in to do it for you and this is why it is so important to train him, particularly in the casting of miracles, including the when and where. The second bit often takes longer than teaching the miracle itself and when you do let him off on his own, usually by attaching the Leash of Compassion to the target village, you will need to keep and eye on him, rewarding appropriate behaviour and punishing the other.
However you do it, you will be able to see how much more belief you need to generate by placing your hand over the village totem. Each thing that you or your Creature does will reduce the number (a message will show you how effective each action is) until finally the village converts, denoted by a mighty roar and a fireworks display. The villagers will thereupon head off to the temple to construct their own prayer area and altar and the miracles they posses will soon be in your armoury.
GOOD OR EVIL
The game has been described as a massive personality test. As a God, you can do pretty much as you like. If a neutral village isn’t taking much notice of your fancy rain showers, or your Creature’s dancing routine, then perhaps a bloody great rock dropped onto the village crèche will do it. Prayer power too little and too slow for something big you want to do? How about sacrificing one of the children on the altar? In other words, both good and evil actions will generate belief and it’s up to you which to use and when.
As you progress, each and every action on your behalf will effect your alignment (1.0 to –1.0), which will in turn alter the appearance of your temple, your hand and the very land your people inhabit. Veer to the dark side and your temple will darken to blood red, the sky will cloud over and the ground take on a blasted appearance (Mordor, anyone?). Stick on the side of the angels and it will be all sunshine and rainbows. Similarly, your Creature has his own alignment (entirely independent of yours, interestingly) and his appearance will change to reflect it. He will also act accordingly, so if you have taught him that throwing villagers off cliffs is the thing to do, then do it he will.
The most interesting way to play it therefore, is not to set out to be either wholly good or wholly evil, but just do what comes naturally and see how it pans out. However, you also have the opportunity to try the game from either extreme and find out where good and/or evil has the hardest time. (Guess what the answer is!)
Eventually you will fulfil the objective of the Land and a portal will open to the next. There is no requirement to jump straight in, however and it is usually well worth mucking around in the completed level for a bit. Without pressure you can practice playing with your villages, teach your Creature a few new tricks, or else just store up wood, food and spells and drop the lot through the portal for use in the next land. You can even throw a few dozen villagers through, to boost the initial population on the other side. (There is a way of virtually emptying the land, but I’ll leave that to you to discover.)
MULTIPLAYER
I haven’t tried this yet, but the idea is that you each take your Creature into a land and then duke it out to see who is the last one left standing. Alternatively, you can team up (good v evil, or just clan v clan) and set your own parameters. The Creature you select will retain all the attributes at the time you last saved him, so his strength, height, miracles and alignment will carry over to the multiplayer battle. Likewise, he will take back to the single player game any changes accrued. This includes scars picked up in battle with other creatures.
SUMMARY
Black & White is a very bold attempt to step right out of the PC games box. There is no doubt that the AI of the Creature, the enemy and the villagers is superb, particularly the Creature. As for the balance of the gameplay, opinion is somewhat divided and seems to lean against the amount of micro-management needed in the villages. Why, for instance, when the people want houses, won’t they chop wood, make scaffolds, combine them and get on with the building? Particularly if you’ve created enough of the relevant disciples. Some of these problems have been addressed in the first patch and undoubtedly will get looked at again, either for a subsequent patch or a sequel.
Similarly, the freedom of action is unparalleled. Whether and when you take on the silver scroll challenges and how you go about them are your choices. You are seldom under time pressure, so you can God away to your heart’s content, interfering as much or as little as you wish, floating over the land, exploring the valleys, woods and hills, ripping up trees, planting forests or just piling up your beast’s dung. Molyneaux described his aim as creating a giant sandbox, in which players could play as they wished. For the most part, I’d say he managed it, though it will take a second complete run at the game for me to be sure. Essentially, it’s so open that it is far too easy to miss doing what you should be doing in an effort to complete each level. Some of this is down to the pathetically thin manual. Something like Civilization, which is complicated to be sure, but not a patch on Black & White, had a manual running to a couple of hundred pages. I think they should have done a lot more to explain what is going on, if only to give players the chance to explore the full potential of the game. That notwithstanding, Black & White is a landmark piece of software in so many ways, not least of which is that the developer can be king and, with sufficient resources, skill and time, can produce something so far above the rest of the pack as to seem in a different world altogether.
