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Brevity
05-15-2003, 08:46 AM
IGN
We dig up more info on the role-playing intentions of your favorite mutants

May 14, 2003 - We already know a whole lot about Activison's upcoming X-Men Legends RPG from Raven Software. The details we uncovered in a limited demo at E3 revealed a little more depth to the straight up action-RPG.
There's a strong physics system behind every object and structure in the world in terms of how characters will interact in the environment. Walls, crates, computer equipment all have a hidden weight attribute associated with them that will be calculated as you punch or grab or throw them. So, Wolverine will be able grab and throw enemies like rag dolls even though he's not know for such actions. But to represent the strength of a guy like Colossus those same enemies thrown by the big Russian will be more likely to smash through the object or structures they hit. Jean Grey can't manhandle enemies very well, but her telekinetic powers make up for it, even early on in the game when her psionic powers are still relatively weak.

Even though it's an action-RPG some real-time tactical elements will add another layer to the gameplay. You can set the attitude of your teammates to things like cautious, aggressive and defensive. The developers may add a few more different settings to help the depth, but the system is in place more or less to keep Storm from walking up to Juggernaut and trying to punch him. Putting her on the defensive will cause her to throw her powerful ranged attacks. You can also issue attack, follow and other basic commands on the fly. The game will have an "ally" button that will allow you to issue commands to your teammates quickly and easily. Holding ally and your super power button will tell your nearest teammate to use a special move against whatever enemy you're targeting at that time. The combos work the same way, but you can only target the enemy you want to attack but not which teammate you want to help you. That is you'll simply have to be close to the teammate you want to use in a combo to execute it. Any pair of X-Men you can come up with will have a combo they can execute in this manner and some will be more elaborate than others. For example either Colossus or Wolverine can initiate the Fastball Special when they're close to each other.

Teamwork extends to puzzle solving as well. Most major puzzles are solved by using one teammate for one part and another teammate to solve another. In the example we saw, you had to rescue Colossus who's being held prisoner by holding up a dangerous nuclear reactor. You have to move the reactor restraints into place to relieve him of his duty. You could use Jean Grey to put the restraints in place and Storm's lightning power to fuse the metal into place and secure the structure. Or you could use Storm's wind ability to move the restraints into place and Cyclops optic blasts (which never generated heat back in the old comic days) to fuse them into place. If Wolverine is in your party, he just has to sit back and watch. Which brings us to the levelling up system.

All party members will get experience points for being on the mission but the most active characters will get the lions share of bonus XPs. When you get back to the X-Men mansion after completing three zones, you can heal your party and spend your XPs on boosting your characters. The system is designed so that some characters will receive automatic upgrades to their strength, speed, body or mind ratings to keep them consistent. That is Colossus is automatically going to get points added to his strength to keep him relatively stronger than everybody else as the game progresses. Regular points will also be available to assign to your attribute list as you wish so that you can, for example, pump a lot of points into Colossus' speed. He'll never be as fast as say, Storm, but he become a more rounded character if you decide to go that route and balance his speed with his strength. But there are other ways in which characters are kept consistent when it comes to upgrading each characters individual mutant powers. Initially, Wolverine has to hit his special power button to use his healing ability, but as you level him up, his healing becomes automatic and his health bar regenerates on its own. Jean Grey can lift light stuff with her telekinesis early on, but when she's powered up lifting tons of stuff will be no problem.

X-Men Legends is scheduled to come out sometime in the second half of 2004. We'll have more on this mutant RPG in the months leading up to the game's release.

-- Aaron Boulding