Development
Overlord was officially announced by the start of May 2006 under the same name for the Xbox 360 and PC, advertised as being a next generation game set in a "twisted fantasy world where players have the choice to be evil ... or really evil!" Along with this announcement, the first screenshots and artwork were released to game websites. Early concept art showed the Overlord with a clearly visible human face as opposed to his form in the final release as a dark covered shadow with lit up eyes. At E3 2006, the majority of the game mechanics were revealed within the same month, while the multiplayer component had yet to be announced.
The Xbox 360 demo was released for download over Xbox Live on June 8, while the PC demo was released just days later over the internet, weeks before the game's first release in North America. The demo included only the initial portion of the game, which contained the game's introductory cinematic and narration, the tutorial and the Overlord's battle to free human peasants from a Halfling operated slave camp.
During post release, along with patches, by August there were already outlined plans for downloadable content for both versions. These were said to include the introduction of new multiplayer maps, offline co-op and the possibility of an extension or an additional chapter to the game's single-player plot. A patch was released for the PC version of the game, updating the software to version 1.2 and fixing a number of bugs, including one which occasionally prevented players from completing the game. The corresponding Xbox 360 update arrived several weeks later. The first official downloadable content was announced in November the same year, along with news of an official expansion, in the form of a "Challenge Pack", which was to add 7 new maps and 2 modes to the Multiplayer feature, an off-line split screen version and a "Legendary" difficulty for single player, with corresponding Achievement Points for the 360 version. These new modes were made available on February 15, 2008 over the internet on various gaming sites for the PC and Xbox Live for the 360, costing 400 Microsoft Points for the new Multiplayer options with the Split-Screen option for free.
In July 2007, shortly after the release of Overlord there were rumours of a port to the PS3 of the game due to job advertisements at Triumph Studios, which mentioned one position needed "Porting X360/PC code base to PS3". A spokesman for Codemasters however quickly corrected this by stating "We are not porting Overlord to PS3." It wasn't until February 2008, when Codemasters confirmed a PlayStation 3 version of Overlord was in development. However instead of a straight port of the original, the version is to include both the original game and its additional downloadable content and expansion on one Blu-ray Disc, under the title Overlord: Raising Hell to be released in Summer 2008. The demo was made available over the online PlayStation Store on May 15, 2008 and later fully released the following month in June.
Read more about this topic: Overlord (2007 Video Game)
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