Review by: Chris Harding
Published: March 10, 2000

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Westwood Studios’ latest action-heavy RPG, Nox, for quite some time, and for many reasons. As a devoted role-player and a sucker for medieval fantasy, Nox, by its very nature, appeals to something buried deep within me. The other, far more intriguing reason for my piqued interest has to do with the amount of weight riding on the success of the title for its developer. Westwood, well known for its real-time strategy series, Command & Conquer, has yet to duplicate the success of the first two products in that franchise. Their last foray into role-playing, Lands of Lore III, was easily the most disappointing title in that trilogy. So it was with genuine goodwill, and out of love for the genre, and hope for a long admired developer, that I waited for Nox.

The history of Nox is long and involves two distinct cultures–the humans and the necromancers. The backend storyline is solid and very interesting. The setting depicts the struggle between two races attempting to inhabit the same world, each having their own distinct values and ideas on how the citizens of Nox should live. Over the course of time, the tenuous relations between them broke down, and war ensued. The battles and their destruction were all encompassing. The efforts of the humans were abysmal at best as the necromancers nearly wiped them from the land completely. The humans, however, had one saving grace–a wizard named Jandor. With his magic, he was able to seal the necromancers in an orb and banish them to another space and time. Since the end of the war, the humans have expanded both their beliefs and way of life, and peace has reigned as stories and legends of the necromancers and the bloodbath against them fades.

Unfortunately, Jandor’s spell was not perfect. In creating the orb, he took pity on one small necromancer–a little girl named Hecubah–and did not banish her with the others. Instead, he sent her to be raised by a family of ogres. As she grew up, she discovered she was not like the others. Over time and through study, she learned the history of her people, and with it, her hate and wrath for the humans grew. Enveloped in despise, she launched her own war against the human population using armies of the undead. And so the quest begins–to stop the reign of Hecubah and restore peace to Nox. In the screenshot located here, my conjurer is just about to enter into the Northlands, the home of the necromancers, for the first time.

The single-player campaign can be completed from three different vantagepoints–that of a wizard, a warrior, or a conjurer. As the story goes, the humans, unable to co-exist amongst themselves, split into three sects, forming the three character classes. Each class is based on several key attributes, with the core attributes for each character following standard RPG protocols. The wizard and the conjurer’s attributes are mana, speed, health, and strength. The warrior’s key attributes are health, strength, and speed. As the warrior possesses no magical abilities, he has no need for mana; he can, however, use enchanted weapons and armor. Unlike most of the other titles in the action-RPG genre, the single-player experience is nearly unique for each character type. Each class begins their quest in a different area, and though there is significant overlap in some areas, the path and sub-quests each hero undertakes are different enough to warrant replay. These differences carry over into all aspects of the game, including exploration, sub-quests, and available items and artifacts.

There are not a lot of new features in Nox, at least in terms of what it brings to the genre that we’ve not seen before, but there are a few. Nox uses a unique approach for line of sight and fog of war that Westwood calls TrueSight. It allows the character to see only the things he would normally see. Basically, the camera system works so that the available viewing area is limited to the character’s eyesight in correlation to location, direction, and objects in these paths. You can’t tell what is behind a tree or column until you maneuverer enough to see behind it, and likewise, it is possible to hide in a corner and prevent someone from seeing you, which is especially helpful during multiplayer sessions. While somewhat revolutionary in concept, I’m not a big fan of this system. While I am all for realism, the negative aspects TrueSight brings to the gameplay, such as a very limited viewing area and a lot of dark rooms, are enough to make me want an option to turn TrueSight off. And as this screenshot shows, sometimes it doesn’t work as billed. Nox‘s other unique offerings are more gameplay centric than feature introductions, which turns out to be one of the best things about the title.