Heroes Chronicles is an episodic series of level packs for Heroes of Might and Magic III, a turn-based strategy video game. Eight installments were released from September 2000 to June 2001, developed by Jon Van Caneghem through New World Computing and published by the 3DO Company. Heroes Chronicles tells the story of Tarnum, a barbarian judged unworthy of Paradise due to his crimes. He is made immortal and sent through time by the Ancestors to aid in various quests as punishment.
Intended for newcomers to the franchise, they are low difficulty campaigns that were marketed at a reduced price, and do not require the original game to play. Two of the Chronicles chapters- The World Tree and The Fiery Moon, were freely available as downloads from the 3DO website at the time, to players who already owned a number of the commercially released chapters. Chronicles' reception was mixed as it was perceived as a cash-grab, and lacked the main game's multiplayer support. The complete series was re-released through GOG.com in June 2011.
As Heroes Chronicles is a set of stand-alone level packs which run on an essentially unchanged version of the Heroes III engine, they feature the same turn-based strategy gameplay seen in the original. Each chapter features eight maps, except for the downloadable episodes The World Tree and The Fiery Moon, which had five. The maps are connected together into campaigns with some short CG cutscenes and a linking narrative.[1] Unlike the original game, Chronicles does not support multiplayer.[1][2]
Chronicles was intended to introduce a new audience to the franchise, and on that basis the installments are fairly short with a low difficulty. Eurogamer noted that there was some effort to limit the amount of town types on offer at any one time to avoid overwhelming the player with choices. The levels are also more generous in terms of resource availability.[1]
Plot
The first chapter Warlords of the Wasteland covers Tarnum's origin story as a barbarian king revolting against the Bracaduun wizards who dominate his people. While he is victorious, Tarnum enslaves the Mudlanders to do so, and his paranoia leads him to slaughter many innocents, even those who followed him. He is ultimately brought down by Rion Gryphonheart, King of Erathia, but the Ancestors judge him unworthy of Paradise. In Conquest of the Underworld, Rion's soul is stolen from Paradise, and so the Ancestors punish Tarnum by resurrecting him, making him immortal, and sending him on a quest to retrieve Rion from the Underworld. Tarnum adopts the mantle of a knight as he aids Queen Allison in this venture, and in the end rescues her.
In Master of the Elements, the 10,000 year truce with the Elemental Lords expires and Tarnum is sent to take the fight to them in the elemental planes. In order to face the elementals, Tarnum must work with and eventually become a wizard, despite his hatred of the craft. He fights the elemental lords on their home planes, pursues and defeats them back in Antagarich, and promptly abandons wizardry. He spends 20 years living among the rangers of Avlee, and in Clash of the Dragons aids them against the dragon queen Mutare. He grows frustrated with his immortality, but develops a kinship with the long-lived dragons.
In The World Tree, Tarnum learns of barbarians and necromancers who are being supported by Vorr, one of the Ancestors who has gone mad. The group are attempting to destroy the World Tree, a network of verdant underground tunnels that are responsible for life in the world above. The current barbarian king Targor has modelled his rule after Tarnum's tyrannical past, but Tarnum convinces him to disavow Vorr. With many of the necromancers killed, Vorr abandons the project. In The Fiery Moon, Vorr captures the other Ancestors and takes them to the moon. Tarnum- now rapidly aging as his immortality has been compromised by the absence of his gods- crosses the Sparkling Bridge to confront Vorr on the Fiery Moon. After defeating Vorr in battle, Tarnum uses sap from the World Tree to cure him. Seeing the effects, Tarnum finally believes that he can change and is not defined by his past.
In Revolt of the Beastmasters the restored Ancestors offer Tarnum the chance to make amends for his crimes as a barbarian king. He is sent back in time to free the Mudlanders- the people he enslaved as a mortal- from their current Erathian rulers. He becomes a Beastmaster himself to aid the Mudlanders, forms them into the nation of Tatalia, and faces off against Rion's descendant, the Mad King.
In The Sword of Frost, Gelu sets out to retrieve the blade despite an apocalyptic prophecy. The world will be destroyed if it should ever clash with Armageddon's Blade- which is already in Gelu's possession. In the intervening centuries Tarnum has prepared caches of resources for such an emergency. He poses as a Nighon overlord- stepping into a power void left by Mutare's defeat- to lead armies of monsters against Gelu and the barbarian Kilgor who is also searching for the sword. The final chapter sets up the events leading to the destruction of Enroth in Heroes of Might and Magic IV, where Tarnum reappears.
Release and format
Warlords of the Wasteland, Conquest of the Underworld, Masters of the Elements and Clash of the Dragons were retail releases sold individually, generally at about half the price of the original game.[1] The discs also include sample maps from the other installments- which were billed as "interactive trailers".[3] They were released in two batches, with the first two in September, and the second two in November of 2000.
The World Tree and The Fiery Moon were downloadable chapters and not sold on discs. Both were both made available in late 2000 alongside the batches of retail releases- The World Tree releasing the same week as the first set, and The Fiery Moon releasing alongside the second set. These chapters were freely available from the Chronicles website, however they required the target computer to have some of the retail packs already installed. The World Tree required any two retail packs, while The Fiery Moon requried any three on the target system. The installers were only compatible with the US version of the games, which meant that they were not playable outside of that territory. They also required one of the discs from the earlier packs to be in the disc drive to run. The website indicated the chapters would only be available until January 28, 2001,[4] however the files remained available after the deadline expired. A notice was added to the page stating that "The official download deadline has passed, but we're leaving these files up for an indeterminate time as a courtesy to our fans."[5] They remained available until 3DO collapsed in 2003 and the website went down.
The seventh and eighth chapters, Revolt of the Beastmasters and The Sword of Frost, were bundled together and sold as The Final Chapters on a single disc in June 2001. The Chronicles campaigns were not among the content included in Heroes of Might and Magic III: Complete, which released on November 17, 2000.[6] At that stage only six of the eight Chronicles campaigns had launched, some of them only days earlier.[1]
All eight chapters were re-released through GOG.com on June 23, 2011, with the pack simply labeled as All Chapters. The GOG re-release did not have the same regional requirements for The World Tree and The Fiery Moon, which made those playable for the first time outside of the United States.[7]
Chapters
The chapters were not originally given a formal order; this was unclear at the time given that the series involves time travel and most installments are episodic in nature. The numbering in the table below reflects the 2011 GOG re-release, which places the downloadable chapters after the first four retail discs, rather than adhering strictly to release order.
Reception was generally mixed. While the gameplay was still the same good standard Heroes III was known for, critics described the level pack series as a cash grab or rip-off, criticising the lack of new gameplay features. The Complete version of Heroes III launched around the same time and offered significantly more content for the price of two Chronicles chapters. The Spanish language game magazine Extreme PC reviewed the first four chapters and gave the series 79%, citing the loss of multiplayer support. Eurogamer was also critical of the writing, commenting that it was "fairly poorly written, at times long-winded, and rather stilted".[2][1]
↑ Due to region locking, The World Tree and The Fiery Moon were not playable outside of the US until the GOG re-release on June 23, 2011.
↑ The Fiery Moon was made available for download a day before Master of the Elements and Clash of Dragons launched, but was unplayable until at least one of those games was installed on the target system.[8][4]
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