New Dragonshard trailer and screenshots

Worlds which are alive generally have issues. You never come across living worlds that are just happy, you know, and want everyone to get along. Eberron, for example, which is the setting for Liquid Entertainment's forthcoming PC RTS Dragonshard, has some serious demons stuffed under the carpet.

Literally, as it happens - the back-story is that there were once three dragons, called Siberys (goodie), Khyber (baddie) and Eberron (er, neutral), and when bad had won out and shattered good into thousands of crystal shards, the pansy neutral Eberron sacrificed himself to envelop Khyber and force him underground. The result being that Eberron took the form of the world's surface, while Khyber wound up underneath.

So, er, reading back over that, Eberron probably isn't so much with the "alive". Ulp - one more slip like that and the Chief of Words will revoke our journalistic researching badge! To make up for that: the magical world of Eberron was actually the winner of a competition run by Wizards of the Coast in 2002 to find a new fantasy setting for Dungeons & Dragons, and this is the first game to be based on it. Betcha didn't know that, eh? Yeah.

Still, none of that matters because if... we... just... wave our hands vigorously over here... hopefully you'll be distracted by this very pretty Dragonshard trailer on Eurofiles, or these brand new screenshots we've also uploaded for you. Which is kind of why we brought you on down here anyway, as you may have gathered. (Eek! We buried the lead! The Chief of Words will be even more angry!)

[Continued waving] Watch the video, then, and admire things like the shift between the surface, Eberron, and the underworld where Khyber's influence means demons galore, and prepare yourselves for the game's release across Europe in spring 2005. We'll be back with some (hopefully more coherent) scribblings on the subject nearer the time.