“Age of Empires with dinosaurs” is a flattering description for their upcoming RTS England vs. Vikingsaurus, as the developers at Dinolords recently explained to me at a cramped Gamescom booth. It’s also not a very accurate description. From what I’ve seen of the game, Dinolords is more about the lords than the dinosaurs, sharing as much in common with Diablo-style ARPGs as it does with classic strategy. And it’s a distinction that could well elevate it from novelty to role-playing game.
Technically, you're really only controlling a single noble, tasked with defending the kingdom after those cunning Danes fished dinosaurs alive from the ice fields of Greenland. You'll push him around, deploy abilities from his little ARPG hotbar, and most importantly, you'll only see the world through the isometric camera permanently locked to his head. You'll still order buildings and castle walls to be constructed, and give orders to the troop units assembled to defend against the biting horde – it still plays a lot like an RTS in that sense – but your perspective never changes.
This might, understandably, annoy strategy veterans who have spent decades having total control of their overview. But when it comes time for battle, the blend of genres produces something different, if a little more than a little hectic. When the Vikings appear, they are practically at the gates, and fighting with sword and bow attacks is as vital as directing your subordinates.
To accommodate a tighter perspective and a more hands-on approach to combat, the transmission of orders is simplified in a seemingly intelligent and intuitive way. To give a specific order to multiple units, you have to hold down a specific key, move the mouse freely over the desired soldiers, and then release; a sequence that can be performed in the blink of an eye and does not require any additional menus. And even if you should not expect a grandiose and full-on army war, there is always room for individual moments of tactical cunning.
On several occasions, I saw Northplay gameplay designer Kasra Tahmasebi send his lord leaping over the enemy vanguard to engage the more dangerous dino cavalry held in the rear. It wasn’t the most obvious play, when a squad of infantry was already pressed into the castle gates, but one that leveraged the lord’s increased strength and speed to deal with a greater threat. Take the time to steal your own dinosaur eggs (and build the requisite hatchery), and you’ll eventually be able to ride the beasts yourself; I didn’t get to see this exact scenario play out, but it seems that with the added agility afforded by riding a velociraptor, you could get around the hero’s camera’s lack of vision by scouting the outskirts of a battlefield more quickly.
Enemy raptors can also scale your city walls and devour archers in the process, while Danish T-Rexes are apparently bred to specialize in destroying static defenses. In other words, they're not just there for laughs: each dinosaur breed presents a distinct tactical challenge that you'll have to plan and counter in different ways, and while your overlord is strong, he's also not a Diablo-level godkiller powerful enough for you to ignore your more traditional RTS-style units.
If you ask me, all this fighting seems like too much for my poor, noble brain to handle. The city-building side of Dinolords seems positively serene by comparison, and perhaps a little more conventional to boot: you have resources to gather, buildings to construct, and a population to keep happy. Dinolords, meet the manor lords. Except you’re still roaming the world exclusively as your singular lord, so at first all that wood and stone will have to be gathered by you personally. Eventually, you’ll recruit enough proles to automate things, but you can still pitch in whenever you want—a feature I particularly appreciate, given how many times I zoomed in on my lazy townsfolk in Manor Lords to get them to move resources faster. In Dinolords, I’ll literally be able to do this myself, speeding up the transport of goods with my sprint ability or helping to hammer away at a monastery if I find it taking too long. I'm not a control freak, you understand. I'm just a lord of the people.
Similarly, I find the RTS/ARPG mix of Dinolord's combat more appealing than I normally would a pure strategy game. Obviously, if everyone thought that way, the genre wouldn't exist, but I've personally never gotten into games like Total War (or, for that matter, Age of Empires) because I like the feel of direct action in games, and watching all the little men do the actual action seems like a helpful influence at best. Having my own lord to throw into the fray might be what bridges that gap.
Also, being personally involved in the prosperity of your fiefdom still seems like a good strategic fantasy to me, with or without the comic sci-fi element. You might end up shooting an arrow made from wood you scavenged, by the arrow carver you hired, to work in the workshop you built, using the materials you scavenged, and frankly, that's as cool as any dinosaur. Except the Spinosaurus, obviously.
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