It must be so tricky, taking on a project beloved by so many, but that’s exactly what Jean-Félix Monin and the team over at Ubisoft are doing with Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Remake. A cornerstone of turn-based tactics and PC gaming in general, the series still has a following and, therefore, an expectation when something new comes along.
“There is a huge community of very dedicated players that love the original,” Monin tells us. “We didn’t really want to, you know, do anything that would upset them.” Pressure makes diamonds, but it can also make a horde of angry gamers. Monin understands the assignment: “Early on, we decided to have a panel of insiders that we would work with to show them some of the designs, some of the ideas, and see if they were okay with it.”
Talking about the original game, Monin laughs that Jon Van Caneghem, the creator of HoMM, “doesn’t know how he did it.” He “achieved a magical type of balance” with the series, and because it couldn’t be explained, Monin decided early on that the core of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Remake shouldn’t be touched.
Being a remake, it’s unlikely that too much of the essence of the game would be changed, but that doesn’t mean that Monin couldn’t make some executive decisions: “Well, the original was there, so why bother [doing the same thing] … so we decided to move to 3D.” Ubisoft has priors with making beautiful worlds, which is something he wanted to tap into for the remake.
The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice that this isn’t the first modernization of Heroes of Might and Magic we’ve seen recently, with Olden Era appearing in early access not that long ago, although Monin notes that the two games are more “complementary” than anything else.
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Remake is an effort in addition without subtraction; building on what came before without removing any of the magic that made it so special. We’ll see how they do when it lands in 2027.