By Paul Philleo

A few bold adventurers were given a tightly-guarded opportunity to explore parts of the unforgiving but lush world of Hyboria last week in Redwood City at the Eidos Interactive office. Eidos is the publisher of the upcoming massively multiplayer online fantasy role-playing game, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventure from developers Funcom.

In an appropriately animal-skin clad room strewn with sword replicas, those of us in the media settled in for a play session in Age of Conan that would last a few hours.

Breaking in Age of Conan

When I logged in to the game servers, I immediately began virtual life aboard a slaver ship in rough seas, panning and zooming through the hold, to zoom into a blank canvas of a character. The choice to play as a member of the warrior-like Cimmerian, cultured Aquilonian or mystical Stygian race, and selecting your class from the start, was offered. Character customization was remarkable - even absorbing -- at least on par with games like City of Heroes or Oblivion. The eyebrows, cheek, chin, ear, eyes, face, mouth, lips, nose, hair color and style are the facial elements that be molded in shape, through the use of a slider bar to vary the degree of the cosmetic surgery. One thing I was curious about was why there weren't any facial types with rugged, manly three-day facial hair growth, a la Don Johnson from his Miami Vice days. For the body, arms, chest, posterior, thighs, legs, skin color, height and build can be adjusted to suit any particular preference. In the presence of such a wealth of customization choices, the inability to create a female character was made more glaringly apparent, unfortunately.

Past the engaging distraction of creating the character, Age of Conan begins with being washed ashore on a jungle-rimmed beach near Tortage, after being informed that I was near death, without an identity or memory. Unluckily for all new players like myself, the slave master happened to be alive and heading to Tortage, and could ruin any chance for freedom. That was the over-arching quest I was faced with, as the single-player instance that dominates players' in-game lives to level five. Beyond level five, once in Tortage, players are introduced to multiplayer elements of the game, to break them in gently to a community experience. Players step in and out of their instanced cocoon, between single-player and multiplayer, depending on where they are and which NPC they speak with.

Besides the task of fighting for my freedom, there was the lesser task of breaking in the basic controls and functions of the game with a traditional pop-up tutorial to start me out, explaining fundamental interface commands, such as how to access inventory, and movement controls. Movement in the game is governed by the classic WASD control scheme, with left and right strafing and sprinting for those so inclined to run.

But back to where I started: Once I got my land legs under me, at the edge of the beach where I washed ashore like so much driftwood, a winsome lass, Casilda, was chained and waiting for a rescue, and willing to chat about it too in cut scenes. These cut scenes, several of which I encountered in my first half hour playing the game in the single-player instantced experience, are highly reminiscent of Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic. Jørgen Tharaldsen, Product Director for Funcom, had intended the similarity as an admirer of KotOR. That comparison equates to comparable dramatic in-game camera angles, the expressive voice-overs, lip-syncs, and multiple choice paths for the conversations. Not all the lip syncs were working for the purpose of this demo, but I saw enough examples of it working to convince me it was a worthwhile realistic touch. Ivar Frølich, Sales Director for Funcom added that they're "planning for a simultaneous launch of English, French, German and Spanish versions of the game - including multilingual voiceovers."

By this point, I had an opportunity to soak up the lush visuals already massaging my eyeballs. The Nvidia 8800 GTS chipset-fueled version of the game was everything I'd realistically hope to see from a game with a customized proprietary graphic engine. The jungle environments were colorful, illuminated in mottled shades of light, well-textured and even managed to feel steamy and claustrophobic. This will not be a game built to run on plain vanilla PCs. By the way, the version we ran was not a special build over and above what beta testers had in hand last week. Plus, it was a Direct X 9 version, not the more visually compelling and hardware-thumping Direct X 10 version.

The music and sound effects completed the immersiveness within this corner of Hyboria. The subtle crackle of flames, the lulling crash of waves and the myriad primitive sounds of the jungle help pull you in, while the drum-driven music will seem familiar to those who've heard the themes from the 80's Conan movies.

It was in the process of facing down Casilda's enemies, the Red Hand, that I got the first taste of real-time combat, one of the features Age of Conan is already well-known for. It took me a while to get the hang of this unique control scheme. Just as KotOR is the inspiration for the cut scenes and key dialog sequences, 300, according to Tharaldsen, is the inspiration for the combat system. "When we designed the mechanics of combat in AoC, we asked ourselves how we can get emotions elevated during a fight in the game."

Through the generosity of the options menu, I also tried auto-targeting enemies, to streamline attacking. More experienced players may find this option prevents them from focusing on more dangerous attackers in a mob. By definition, the shielding system is as dynamic as the attack system, meaning if an opponent's shield is raised to the left, it's best to strike to the right, although they will try to best you in this iteration of rock-paper-scissors. In other words, Age of Conan is innovating combat for MMO games in a way that street combat arcade-style games have been doing for about twenty years.

The combat requires a level of dexterity and reflexes that many MMO gamers may not be used to, but it's refreshing to see a change in the MMO combat formula. Typically, I found myself using my right hand mouse to manage my character rotation and camera angles, and my left hand to manage the "1, 2 or 3" keys for left slashes, direct down the middle stabs and right slashes combat, WASD movement and feat management on the rest of the number keys. Occasionally, I found myself mishandling the attacks, but that was due more to my learning curve when dealing with the combat system, than any flaws in the system itself that I could perceive. Enemies demonstrated a form of rudimentary AI, shielding themselves against repeated attacks on a given side. My hack-and-slash button mashing I tried at first did not get me far, before I had to re-position my character and think "variety" when attacking, even at this early stage of the game.

Speaking of hiccups, there was an occasion where I managed to get my character inextricably trapped in the fork of a tree branch early in the game, forcing a re-launch of the game. Considering Age of Conan is still over three months from launch, it was a relatively clean demo.

I did manage to legitimately die a time or two facing down a mob of disagreeable Picts in the jungle, as well, so I was able to see just what my penalty would be. My character was statistically de-buffed for a while and I restarted from a resurrection point in the jungle, but no other permanent cost or loss to my character was infringed. Resurrection points appeared to be positioned about 10-15 minutes apart early in the game, but of course someone else's mileage may vary.

Alas, I never made it far enough to find out what enticements Casilda planned to offer me for her rescue - but then again, I never did bring her to her destination in Tortage before this portion of the demo ended.

We will continue our adventure through Age of Conan, and wrap up with a summary of my impressions, in part two of our story.

By Crom, what an interesting array of items in the demo room. Animal skins, swords -- and gaming rig PCs.