posted 04-17-12 01:09 PM CT (US)
Download here!
Watch the first scenario of the campaign, "Secrets of the Old Kingdom", on YouTube:
This is the sequel to
This campaign starts right where The Rockspring Revolution left off. Our hero Immanuel returns to his home province of Gwynhill, and his soon-to-be-wife Emily. Immanuel longs for peace and quiet, and the opportunity to finally marry his beloved girlfriend, and for a short while it looks as if his dreams will come true. But a campaign isn't very interesting if it's all peaceful and quiet, is it?
Out in the ocean, at a top-security prison, five iron-clad, monstrous ships show up at the horizon. They blast a hole in the wall of the prison, and its most dangerous prisoner escapes. Xaphira, the former Queen of Xioché, is on the loose.
The news travel swiftly to Gwynhill, and the local priest and recovering alcoholic Father Garnas is very troubled by it. For the past two years he has been studying an artifact that was used in the war against Xaphira (as seen in "Gwyndlegard"), The Relic of the Rock, and he has made some astonishing discoveries. He believes that it is one of the four Relics of Athalën, immensely powerful artifacts created by the ancient king Athalën, the man who founded and ruled the Old Kingdom for a thousand years. Father Garnas fears that Xaphira knows of the relic, and that she is coming to Gwynhill to get it. He thinks that she too knows of the power of the four relics: that with them you can shape the world completely as you wish to see it, and possibly live forever. And indeed he is right, and Xaphira comes as a thief in the night and snatches The Relic of the Rock away.
It is now up to you, as Immanuel, to make sure Xaphira doesn't get her hands on all four of the relics.
Whereas The Rockspring Revolution was an idea that popped into my head a week or two before I started working on it, The Relics of Athalën is a project I have had plans for ever since I started designing Gwyndlegard back in 2008. It has, of course, evolved a lot over the years, especially in the last few months. It is the third and final installment in the Gwyndlegard series, and when it's finished it will be the biggest project I have ever completed; and complete it I will!
In this campaign the Gwyndlegard universe expands in pretty much every direction: you get to play in several new countries and locations, and you get deeper insight into the history of the Old Kingdom, the art of magic in this world, and a lot more. If you really like this series, you will be able to obtain a lot more information about the world and the story through various side-quests. If you just want to play it for the action and boss fights, well, you can do that too!
• A 7 scenarios long campaign!
• An epic in the literal sense of the word - quite likely bigger in gameplay hours than "Gwyndlegard" and "The Rockspring Revolution" combined!
• Emphasis, as usual, on the storyline, humour and atmosphere, although I try to spruce it up with new ideas for gameplay as well!
• Various gameplay styles: pure B&D, Fixed Force, one-on-one boss fights, and RPS,
• A vastly expanded universe,
• Music from a wide range of composers, including Ramin Djawadi, Howard Shore, Russell Shaw and Kevin MacLeod.
• And finally, but definitely not least, one of the key features: extensive modding.
Now, before you break out the tar and feathers, light the torches and get out your pitchforks, let me say some last words in my defence!
As some of you might recall from my early days, I was never too fond of mods myself. I didn't hate them, and I did some data-edited scenarios myself, but I never really did too much with it. I thought that, if you were to use a mod you should use it enhance the scenario or campaign you were doing, and not use it as some gimmick just because you thought it was cool. That very same reasoning is why modding was an obvious choice when I started planning this campaign.
There are many parts of this campaign that could never have been made with just vanilla AoK and Trigger Studio, and in some instances doing a modded work-around, instead of extensive triggering and using beta units, meant saving hours and hours of work. With modding I'm able to focus on more interesting things than micromanaging 200 triggers for a 3.minute scene - i.e. everything else.
Oh come on!
I'm glad you asked!
• The campaign comes with roughly 400 new units: while a lot of them work "behind the scenes", so to speak, you will get new enemies to face, unique heroes, new eye candy units, and much more,
• It allows for vastly improved indoors scenes (see screenshots), new gameplay features and improved boss fights,
• It adds multiple all new castles and other buildings,
• and much more.
Credits for this mod go to several people, whose material has in some way been included in the mod, most prominently Matt LiVecchi (from "The Quiet Dawn") and Agamemmnon (from his expansion). A full list of people will come in the campaign credits.
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Extras:
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Alpha screenshots:
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Scenarios: All 7 completed
Story: 100%
Modding: 100%
Music & sounds: 100%
Bitmaps: 7 / 7
Playtesting was conducted early in 2012, and again in September of 2013. A few rounds of final testing was conducted by HockeySam18 in early 2014, prior to the release of the campaign.
• Tetsuo Shima
• Devestator
• Lord Sipia
• Popeychops
• BF_Tanks
• CarolKarine
• Gimley307
• Knaber
• Henry33333
• HockeySam18
• Julius999
A
The
OF | [/ \] |¯| [/ \] | ME
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The Relics of Athalën (5.0) | AoK Opus - 100,000+ downloads | StormWind Studios | "I consider the conversion of Basse to be one of the great triumphs of my modding crusade" - Matt LiVecchi
[This message has been edited by Lord Basse (edited 05-01-2014 @ 04:01 AM).]
Awesome!!!
