B&W was a real fun game, very interesting ideas and it really tried to be different from other games in ways that did and didn’t work.

We really take control and camera schemes for granted these days, but it took a lot of misses before we landed on the semi-standardized methods we rely on now. B&W portrayed the player as a divine hand, and you had to click and drag to literally “drag” your viewpoint around the map. You could also click on the creature to lock your hand onto it and allow you to gently move the mouse to pet it, or rapid swipe to slap it across the face!

The creature responded amazingly well too, reacting to many stimuli in the environment, mimicking actions you take, and responding to rewards and punishments. The systems of morphing it’s character model based on how far along the “devil to saint” meter were reused heavily in Fable. MS probably has a patent on the technique, the fuckers.

Anyway, super exciting to see fans reverse engineering it! I’m a big supporter of remaking classic games as new open source engines. I think projects like Spring (rts) and gzdoom really show how powerful and creatively productive a community that cultivates good, open, tools can be.