SpellForce: The Order of Dawn
Description official descriptions
EO, the world in which the game takes place was torn apart by a ritual called the Convocation. The ritual caused the destruction of the continents and was performed by each of the thirteen most powerful mages (both light and dark) on EO, who collectively were known as The Circle. The Circle ruled EO before its destruction and had slowly expanded their knowledge and power. Their vast knowledge allowed them to extend their lifespan to a point near immortality. Across EO they resurrected rune monuments that could be used to quickly call forth obedient armies to enforce their rule (known as the Rune) and bring peace to all the races of EO. At some point they learned of an ancient text describing a ritual supposedly granting immense power, possible under a certain alignment of planets. Not willing to share this power, wars between the various Circle mages erupted. When the time came each preformed the ritual, but none could tame the elemental forces and the continents shattered. After the event only isolated islands around magical towers remained. The islands were later connected by magical portals that make travel between them possible. At the start of the game the player is resurrected by Rohen, a former mage of The Circle. He is also the one who connected the islands using the portal system in an act to redeem himself and is believed to be the only mage of The Circle to have survived the Convocation. He instructs you to travel to Greyfell, the headquarters of the Order of Dawn. Soon after this you learn that a second Circle mage has survived and embark on a quest to inform Rohen of this fact.
SpellForce is a real-time strategy game with RPG elements, similar to Battle Realms. Unlike that game, SpellForce gives more focus to the hero. In fact, the player can go into third person view (only for the hero) and play it like a hack and slash game. The game features six playable races. The player character is called a rune warrior, an immortal warrior bound to a stone by The Circle to fight their wars. If the avatar dies, he will respawn at the last activated bindstone (stones around the map that can be activated and used for fast travel).
As the game progresses the player will find rune stones of six races (humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, trolls and dark elves) and hero runes. After being inserted into the rune board, they can be trained at their respective monument and help the player in the quest. The player will also find building planes for each of the races. When a monument of a race is switched on worker units can be trained to gather resources and construct buildings. This will eventually allow the player to train fighting units to overcome an enemy base. With the avatar rising in level runes and items of a higher level can be used to kill tougher enemies. The game has a lengthy single player campaign of 20+ maps. It was followed by two expansions called The Breath of Winter and Shadow of the Phoenix.
Spellings
- 咒语力量:秩序黎明 - Simplified Chinese spelling
Groups +
- 3D Engine: KrassEngine
- Fantasy Creatures: Dragons
- Fantasy Creatures: Dwarves
- Fantasy Creatures: Elves
- Fantasy Creatures: Orcs
- Fantasy Creatures: Trolls
- Gameplay feature: Day / Night cycle
- Games made into books
- Middleware: Bink Video
- Scripting language: Lua
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
- SpellForce series
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Credits (Windows version)
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Trivia
Development
The first three (of overall four) years of development were spent by making Spellforce a MMORPG. In the end it was changed to a single-player title because the publisher JoWood did not want to provide the necessary infrastructure.
Mega Score release
The game was featured as the October 2005 covermount of Mega Score, the longest running Portuguese video gaming mag, but the discs (duplicated in Zaragoza, Spain) kept the SecuROM copy protection measures, which (obviously) recognized the CDs as copies, and refused to install.
To make up for that, the magazine offered the game again (with a non-faulty batch) in the following month, and offered to replace the faulty discs for casual magazine buyers.
Spanish release
Some copies of the Spanish release include an invalid CD key and the customer service was often hard to reach.
References
One of the NPCs you'll meet has the name Rigour Mortis. The name is very similar to a sign of death called rigor mortis (immobility of a dead body). By the way, the NPC is pale-faced.
Information also contributed by jaXen and Luis Silva.
Related Sites +
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SpellForce - The Order of Dawn
Official website
Identifiers +
- MobyGames ID: 11742
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by John Chaser.
Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, JRK, Sciere, DarkDante, Patrick Bregger, Evolyzer.
Last modified February 22nd, 2023.