"It can't be hopeless."
Two nights ago half a dozen men and I crouched around a campfire, trying to stay warm, and one of them said those words. He'd joined the Legion only three weeks earlier, and started talking to himself after a Ghôl's cleaver removed three fingers from his left hand. He squatted there in the dirt, repeating that sentence. If he was looking for reassurance or sympathy, he came up empty-handed, for no one else said a word.
Tonight I sit by a campfire fifty miles northwest, remembering the way he screamed this morning when four thrall surrounded him, knocked the sword from his good hand, and hacked him to pieces.
I never got his name.
In 1997, Bungie Software released Myth: The Fallen Lords, a Real Time Tactics (subgenre of RTS) game which was set in a unique fantasy world devoid of dragons, orcs, axe wielding dwarves, goblins, or many other fantasy hallmarks. It was a huge success, leading to a sequel the following year, Myth II: Soulblighter, which won Game of the Year awards and became a staple of the late 90s, with order matches, and ranked play.
In 1999, Myth II got an expansion pack, Chimera, Chimera, made by a team that had contracted for Bungie during Myth II's development. Chimera was bundled at retail with Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soublighter in a release called Myth: The Total Codex.
Myth redefined the RTS genre, without base building, research, or unit building; instead, it focused on small encounters with realistic physics terrain and weather as key to winning battles. Higher ground would make archers shoot farther, and rain put out fires. Arrows could be dodged, and explosions sent swords flying and damage units. This gave degree of control over your units not seen in any other RTS.
Sadly, that would be the last time Bungie would create anything Myth related: Bungie was sold to Microsoft, and Take 2 obtained the Myth rights Take 2 quickly pushed out repackaged versions of Myth 2 with mods, a small Vietnam expansion pack called Green Berets: Powered by Myth II, and finally, Myth III: The Wolf Age.
Myth III was made in a very short timeframe, on a frankensteined engine, with a new team; it reviewed poorly and sold worse. With it came the end of the Myth series. In the years that followed, Myth was slowly removed from their websites, and the games haven't been purchasable since the 00's. A few developers tried their hands at creating homages to it, the most notable ones being Deadhold (I worked on it for its last 9th months of development, but it never made it out of early access) and Nordic Warriors (which I did some extremely minor consulting on), which had no coop, multiplayer or mod support. Both projects, while good in their own rights, didn't succeed in filling the niche left behind by the lack of Myth.
With all that context out of the way, as a fan I was lucky enough to gain access to all of the original development archives of the Myth series, and I've spent the last 16 years slowly remastering Myth: The Fallen Lords, Myth II: Soulblighter and Myth II: Chimera, using all the original assets where available. These assets were made in the 90s on archaic 3D applications, so, to finish this project I had to write my own manuals for some, and teach myself old unsupported 3D apps, across decades of operating systems. This was both a labor of love and an experience no other mortal should have to bare. However this all leads us to:
A full visual remaster of Myth: The Fallen Lords, Myth II: Soulblighter, Myth II: Chimera and more.
Like other remasters, Diablo 2, Monkey Island 1&2 remastered, and so on - you can click a button and go back to the original game and graphics.
I am also releasing Myth: The Fallen Lords Deluxe - It's a canon reimagining of the first Myth game, Myth: The Fallen Lords, which brings a lot of the gameplay and visual enhancements back to the first game, making it easier to go from Myth 1 to Myth 2, without it being jarring. Ontop of that, I finished sections of levels that the original developers ran out of time for, restored cut content, and added a lot of atmospheric things to match the tone of the animated cutscenes and gameplay. All in all, it's an easier way for someone that never played the game back in the day, to get into the series.
And if you only remember Myth II from the 90s, it's been updated and runs on modern Mac, Windows and Linux machines natively.
Finally, I want to give out a big thanks to the original Myth teams, whom I consulted throughout development. Doug "The Voice of Bob" Zartman (and face of Bungie during the development of Myth I and II) provided a new easter egg voiceover in Myth: The Fallen Lords Deluxe, and Mark R. Bernal (Original artist on Myth 1 and 2) created the new box art. I also wanted to shout out Alex Seropian (Bungie co-founder), Tuncer Deniz (Myth II game director, Bungie legend), Alex Rosenberg (Industry legend, programmer for Myth 1) as well as the fine folks Jeoku (Myth YouTuber) who cut the trailer, and Atlyx (Bungie musical historian) who composed the music for the trailer.
Now, here's some screenshots:
https://projectmagma.net/ - Get the update, and downloads for all of the above here!
https://bagrada.net/webui/metaserver - Make an account and play online here!
https://discord.gg/Smuv2tk5f6 - Join the discord to talk about it!
