Myth is a fantasy strategy game in which the player controls a small group of light soldiers in the fight against the dark and the undead. First released in 1997, the game takes place in a world quite similar to the Middle Earth of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, with the game featuring various regions and a detailed map of the world. The original game was subtitled 'The Fallen Lords', and was followed by two sequels - 'Myth II - Soulblighter' in 1998, and 'Myth III - The Wolf Age' in 2001.

The Characters

The game features a wide range of good and evil characters, each with their own abilities and weaknesses. Those familiar with fantasy will probably recognise several of these the mainstays of many novels. The Light Units were originally led by The Nine, a group of avatara¹, while in the first game the Dark Units were led by Balor and the Fallen Lords.

The Light Units

• Warriors - armoured men with swords and shields who move slowly but are the staple unit of the light armies.

• Berserks - armourless braves who move fast and make mincemeat of anything they can catch.

• Archers - as with most computer games, these archers are extremely vulnerable unless protected by melée² units.

• Dwarves - stocky and surly creatures armed with some particularly unreliable Molotov cocktail-style grenades.

• Journeymen - though quite handy at swinging a spade, these units are mainly useful for healing your units.

• Forest Giant - similar to Tolkien's ents, these living trees are very useful against smaller units.

• Mortar Dwarves - first appearing in Myth II, these dwarves have a greater range and can blast through walls during a siege.

• Alric - the last of the nine Avatara, Alric features as the hero of the first two games.

The Dark Units

• Ghols - these scythe-wielding beasts are the historic enemies of the dwarves, as they captured the dwarven homeland during the war against the Fallen Lords.

• Thrall - lumbering undead units which form the bulk of the undead horde.

• Soulless - these hovering archer units through poison-tipped javelins.

• Myrmidons - these are mummy-like units which are the dark counterpart to berserks.

• Wights - basically a bomb-laden corpse, this unit will explode near your units and cause paralysis of your units and great irritation. The precursors to these are Ghasts, which will not explode but can paralyse units on contact.

• Fetch - powerful undead units which fire lightning and are best dealt with from a distance, as they can severely ruin your day.

• Shades - the dark equivalent of avatara, these are best dealt with cautiously. They cannot cross running water.

• Trow - the historic enemies of the forest giants, these lumbering beasts are not necessarily affiliated with the dark.

• Stygian Knights - these are animated suits of armour found in Myth II which are invulnerable to attack by archers.

• Dark Brigands - corrupted warriors, archers and dwarves who fight for the dark army.

• Warlocks - these can create and release fireballs, and fight on the side of The Deceiver in Myth II (see below).

• Maul - large pig-like brutes which are very difficult to stop without a large quantity of explosives.

Storyline

The story of Myth is told in the form of a soldier's diary during the fight against the undead, with the storyline following the exploits of the Legion - a group of men responsible for the eventual victory over the forces of darkness. The second game features a different soldier and a different diary, but there are strong ties with the first game, while the third game tells the ancient history of some of the foes from the first two games.

Myth

In Myth: The Fallen Lords, the armies of the light have been fighting those of Balor and the Fallen Lords for the past forty years. The game follows the movements of the Legion, and of the last of their leaders, Alric. Together, they eventually reach Balor's fortress and exploit his weakness - all the armies of the dark are connected to him, and so his death brings the war to an end. During the game it is revealed that Balor was once the mythical hero Connaught, but returned inexplicably to level the world he built.

Myth II

In Myth II: Soulblighter, 60 years have passed since the war ended. Soulblighter, one of the Fallen Lords revived by Balor who disappeared at the end of the war, starts building a dark army. Soulblighter finds an artifact known as the Tain in which Connaught trapped an evil race known as the Myrkridia, and brings it to The Summoner, the man fated to revive the evil race. Alric is forced to seek out the help of another Fallen Lord, The Deceiver, and therefore rescues him from his prison under an icy river. The Deceiver leads a small group of men to kill The Summoner, and then exploits Soulblighter's weakness by stealing one of the many crows that he transforms into to escape. Although The Deceiver is later killed, his actions allow Alric to finally destroy Soulblighter just as he is trying to bring about the end of the world.

Myth III

Myth III: The Wolf Age is actually a prequel to the other games, and takes place 1000 years before the Fallen Lords attempted to conquer the world. The story follows the hero Connaught during the days before he became Balor, with his allies being none other than the sorcerers who later become the Fallen Lords.

Gameplay

The control system of the game is relatively simple, and consists of a slightly angled aerial view of the land which can be rotated and zoomed by the player. Units are selected and given orders using a simple mouse-based control system, and the game takes place in real time³.

The game contains both a single player section and a multiplayer section. The single player game is set to the storyline mentioned above, with the story progressing across the map of the world as each game heads through a variety of scenarios towards the final battle. In the multiplayer game, players can fight others on the internet with a small band of both light and dark troops, with various types of gameplay ranging from capturing a hill to all-out deathmatches.

Innovations

The gameplay in Myth: The Fallen Lords was probably a little ahead of its time, with the various weaknesses and strengths of certain units against others making the game quite challenging at the normal difficulty level. The troops can move in various formations, and the enemy will withdraw or attack and attempt to draw out the player's weak units and destroy them. The game also contains a few puzzling situations, as well as battles where the aim is not to win but to achieve your objective and then run away very fast. Sometimes this involves sacrificing a few units for the greater good.

The game features weather conditions ranging from wind and rain to downright freezing conditions, and these affect the gameplay in such ways as the rain putting out dwarven grenades. The undead units can hide underwater, making river crossings treacherous, and footprints in the snow can lead you to the enemy, or lead them to you.

In all the Myth games players are given the ability to speed up or slow down the rate of gameplay. This simple idea brought an end to the tedium of watching a couple of lame units slowly struggle across a large desert, while the ability to slow down the game allowed more thinking time in the heat of battle.

Myth II was generally intended to be a more epic game than its predecessor, with fire arrows, dwarven mortars and siege warfare all featuring. One level in the second game is in fact a sort of fantasy version of the Normandy beachhead assault on D-Day. Meanwhile, Myth III was roughly on the same scale as the previous games, the differences being the improved graphics and some supposedly more intelligent enemies.