Nine different peoples will grace the New World this time around. These include Africans, Aztecs, Eskimos, and Indians. All of the individual cultures will be marked by different needs and abilities as well their reactions to your moves. This should help boost the challenge that comes with the game, as players will need to study and understand what each culture intentions and needs are in order to deal with the native peoples in the right way.
The development teams at SUNFLOWERS and Max Design have been hard at work studying up on the native cultures that were present during the game's time period. They hope to create as authentic a world as possible so that while players are immersed in the game, they might just also learn a few new things about the cultures of the time. Each of these new native people will inhabit different areas, which will be enhanced by the addition of highly detailed buildings that might have been seen at that time.
The level of detail for all of the graphics of the game will be improved greatly from 1602. SUNFLOWERS is hoping to draw players farther into a rich and satisfying world with the addition of the new graphics. "Travelling has always been very important to me, because it gave me the feeling for the textures of materials, for the proportions of objects and for atmospheres," said Ulli Koller, a graphic designer at SUNFLOWERS, "A lot of the experiences and impressions I brought back from my travels during my years at university, while studying architecture, will also surely influence the graphic design of ANNO 1503."
A pub from 1602 | A pub from 1503 |
With these newly enhanced graphics and the addition of new native peoples, this game should hold a lot for people who enjoyed 1602. For those of you who are interested in the series but are unfamiliar with it, you might want to take a look at our coverage of 1602 AD. ANNO 1503: Setting out for a New World, will take players back into a time remembered for new discoveries and bold feats of exploration in the first quarter of 2001.
-- IGN Staff