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“Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, right back in the very
beginning there were three dragons; Siberys, Khyber and
Eberron. Siberys represented ‘good’, Khyber ‘bad’
and Eberron ‘neutral’. Inevitably Siberys and
Khyber fought and after a bitter struggle Khyber won
and smashed Siberys into thousands of crystal shards. But
before Khyber could begin his ascendancy upon the world, Eberron
sacrificed his own life to envelop Khyber and force him
deep beneath the surface. Consequently, Eberron took
on the form of the world’s surface where men, elves and other
more peaceful creatures live, whilst Khyber became the
underworld, inhabited by monsters, demons and devils.”
So starts the new D&D world of a new millennia, Eberron,
created by Keith Baker and now encompassed as a completely new
setting within the Dungeons And Dragons world. It’s also being
used as the setting for a new Wizard of the Sword Coast D&D
game and this game, Dragonshard,
hailed as a completely new take on the D&D concept from Liquid
Entertainment. It is the first game to completely combine two
already well-established and very separate styles of gaming, RPG
and RTS.
The RTS element, which Liquid Entertainment has already
mastered, releasing well known and highly acclaimed games like Battle
Realms, and Tolkien based Lord of the rings: War of the Ring.
Is based very much around the expansive worlds surface, in a place
called “Ring of Storms”, an area of Eberron
that has been left deserted for a thousand or so years because of
mystical goings on and strange happenings, which is now a very
desired location as hundreds of Crystal Shards, renowned
 for their
power and magical properties, are now falling in and around this
area, with one, so big and so powerful it has it’s own name -
Heart of Siberys- falling right in the center of this forbidden
area.
Whereas the RPG element is based in Khyber, the dark
underworld inhabited by many monsters only the cruelest Dungeon
Master would think of. This two-tier type of gaming will seem
strange to many people, but it’s been thought through with the
greatest amount of delicacy and care, so even those that have
played one type of game and not the other can still really easily
get into it.
The RTS side of the game is structured similarly to many
other RTS’s. You build a base, then unit-producing buildings and
then, well and then it all gets a little different. There isn’t a
“tech-tree” which you have to slowly work your way up to get
the cool units, they are all available straight away. The way to
get your units to become incredibly good is to take a party down to
Khyber to “harvest” experience and money, you can then
spend this experience on doing up your troops above ground,
creating the super army.
Whilst down in Khyber you will experience a full RPG
game, with chests full of goodies, quests full of danger and traps
only your rouge can disarm, or re-arm to get the opposition, if you
feel that way inclined. You have a much more condensed team, but
then taking down your whole army to kill a couple of beholders
seems a rather silly idea as they will probably be much more useful
on the surface, ready to take on one of the 3 different races that
are all vying for a piece of Siberys’ Heart.
I really like the look of this game and am pleased that
someone has finally joined two game types that have evolved from
very similar backgrounds. Although there hasn’t been any playable
versions of the PlayStation2 game available yet, nor confirmation
of a UK release, what I have seen and heard of Dragonshard
has been very promising and hopefully Electronic Theatre will be
bringing you more news very soon.
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