Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny

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Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny is the second installment of the Lands of Lore series

LoL2 was released in 1997 and was a real-time, first-person RPG.

[edit] Story

The plot follows Luther, Scotia's son, who is imprisoned by the soldiers of Gladstone and accused for being a member of the Dark Army. Luther is cursed to be morphed into either a monster or a lizard, thanks to which he manages to escape. While the Draracle guides him, Dawn and Bacatta (from the previous game) are after him. Luther must go on his quest while avoiding his pursuers.

The player controls Luther on his quest to solve the curse. Randomly he will change forms, gaining the respective advantages (strength, or the opportunity to enter small spaces and discover secret areas).

The player can choose between two branches, good or evil, which then evolve into 5 possible multiple endings. Currently known endings include when Luther loses the final battle with Be'lial and the land is overrun with nasties, when "good" Luther triumphs and the Draracle discovers Luther in bed with Dawn, and when "bad" Luther triumphs, shown from behind raining destruction on the land as a powerful wizard.

[edit] Technical details

According to the fashion of that era, its cutscenes were FMV combining actors with 3D scenery. As a result, the title required 4 CD-ROMs and a large hard drive installation. The high-resolution, CGI-based in-game graphics represented the pinnacle of 2.5D sprite-based rendering (ie. Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, etc), but were criticised in comparison to the all-3D graphics of other games from that era, such as Quake and Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. The initial version only supported software rendering, but this was fixed in a later patch that updated the game with Direct3D hardware-acceleration support, thereby smoothing out the previously pixellated 2D sprites. With this patch, Lands of Lore 2 became one of the only, if not the only 2.5D game to support Direct3D, as other 2.5D games like Blood and Shadow Warrior were limited to 3Dfx support only.

In Westwood's typically "flashy" style, the installation program and menu system were highly polished and powerful for a game of that era. Whereas most computer games from that time period used simple DOS or Windows installers, Westwood opted for a unique, customized, full-screen installer that tied in with the games visual style and presentation, even going so far as to have a CGI introduction video leading up to the setup options, represented as a book on-screen. The in-game menu system offered a surprisingly high level of control over the video, hardware-acceleration, audio and keyboard/mouse settings.

The mouse support was also unprecedented for its time in 1997. Not only does it enable you to define controls for both the momentary movement and toggling of mouse-look, but it also allows one to set a key (also both momentary and toggle) to enable movement of the cursor for selecting on-screen buttons, similar to the system used in System Shock 2.