The transition of the wildly popular Everquest world to consoles was beautifully created with the Champions of Norrath action/RPG. It capitalized upon the rich and detailed EQ universe as well as an impressive visual facelift on the old Dark Alliance Engine from Snowblind Studios. The result was a complex, engaging and graphically sharp world that captivated gamers for hours on end. What's more, it had a stable and awesome online experience that let players literally hack and slash their way through the adventure together. Well, Champions fans, you're in luck, because the much-anticipated sequel will hit PS2s early next year. Grab your swords and check your spellbooks, because we're going to take a look at Champions: Return To Arms. The build that we received of Return To Arms seemed to pick up shortly after the conclusion of the first game, with the defeat of the god Innoruuk at your hands. Of course, it's not that easy to destroy a god (he was a divine being after all), so his death merely scattered his essence through a number of planes and across Norrath. While that might seem like the end of the threat, Innoruuk's cult of followers have plans to resurrect their deity by collecting his strewn pieces and completing a dark ritual. Under the direction of Firiona Vie (the most readily recognizable character from the Everquest realm), you're tasked with preventing the cult from succeeding in Innoruuk's rebirth. However, one of the more creative twists found in Return to Arms is a branching, choose your own adventure-like form of gameplay based around moral choices. For instance, shortly after embarking on the Plane of War, you’re approached by an obviously evil character who would rather you help the forces of darkness than defeat them. Players will have the choice to be either good or evil, with the storyline changing appropriately. This means that some quests will not be available to some players; characters that were once friendly will become enemies, etc. While you don't need to have played the first game to enjoy Return To Arms, players who've spent time facing down the dangers of Norrath will be able to import their characters from their saved games. So if you've nurtured a character from the original title, you'll able to literally unleash level 50 characters on the forces of darkness from the start. The game does allow for further leveling up of these powerful heroes, so by the end of Return To Arms, you should be able to crush anything in your path. If you'd rather take a new warrior into battle, you’ll have the option to take any one of the ten returning characters from the first title or one of the two newer classes, the Vah Shir Berserker and the Iksar Shaman. The Vah Shir, a catlike race of bipedal warriors, use much more brute force than subtlety, running into the midst of combat without regard for their personal safety. Many of their powers revolve around hand-to-hand combat and strengthening attacks. The Iksar Shaman, on the other hand, is primarily a ranged combatant. Not particularly strong at hand-to-hand combat, it uses a lot of natural attacks such as insects or poison darts to defeat its opponents. Along with the single player campaign was a feature called arena mode, which is equivalent to a survival mode found in other games. Your chosen character faces off against a constant stream of enemies, each one tougher than the last until you’re fighting some of the meanest beasts in the game, ones that would give even the strongest soldiers trouble. While it wasn’t fully implemented in the build we had, the online mode will return as well, and will probably have additional features that we weren’t able to explore. Similarly, while the cutscenes and voiceovers weren’t implemented, the levels that we managed to play were pretty impressive, proving that Snowblind can work visual magic time and time again on their old engine to create distinctive worlds. We can’t wait to get our hands on this one, and we’ll be sure to give you more updates on it as the game approaches shelves sometime next year! Questions or comments about the upcoming release of Champions: Return to Arms for the PlayStation 2? Talk to us! [ E-Mail Jeff 'Linkphreak' Haynes ] [ Comment in our Forums ]

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