Ubisoft announced the Heroes of Might and Magic remake during Gamescom 2026’s Opening Night Live. Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake is bringing back the beloved turn-based strategy to a new generation. The title will bring together Heroes of Might and Magic III and its original two expansions.
Bringing a classic to new audiences can be a tall task, and in Cologne, Germany, we got the chance to speak with Ubisoft China’s Jean-Felix Monin, the Creative Director for the Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake. Having worked at Ubisoft for 16 years, Monin explained that he originally came from a design background before becoming Creative Director on the upcoming remake.
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We began our conversation with his love for the video game series, which began in 1995. With its 31-year anniversary here, we asked Monin to give us an elevator pitch for the game and the readers in our audience who may not have even been born when the series first launched.
Heroes of Might and Magic III is unique because of how it blends strategy and RPG elements.
“Heroes is a kind of really interesting mix of two main things: the more strategic kind of gameplay with some RPG elements. It’s also characterized by three main moments in the game, which are really the exploration [of] the map. Then, when you meet a creature, you start to get into a tactical battle mode, where you command your units to fight the opponent’s units. Finally, you can find towns or castles on the map, and you can kind of conquer them,” the Creative Director explained.
“Once you have conquered them, you can actually upgrade them to get more units that you can fight. So this is really the main move, and so this weird mix of different kinds of moments and this kind of RPG progression on the hero side is really quite unique,” Monin ended.
The franchise has been around for 31 years at this point; Heroes of Might and Magic III was released in 1999, 27 years ago, and over that time development has changed substantially. Having been at Ubisoft for 16 years, Monin explained some of the challenges of bringing an older title to modern standards with a remake. For him, the biggest challenge was in deciding what to preserve and what to change in the title.
With that problem in front of them, Monin explained how they tackled it. “Early on, we decided [that] we shouldn’t change the gameplay because that was obviously the thing that made [Heroes of Might and Magic III] so special. So, we shouldn’t change the main gameplay at all. But on the other hand, we thought that it needed to be modernized. The art side was obviously the one we wanted to modernize most.”
Adding, “Having said that, how do you modernize when you want to modernize? I think it’s always been kind of a bit of a difficult balance to find between having something that some people were perceiving as more darkness and grittiness of the fantasy world versus something a bit more bright and hopeful. We kind of found this grounded hopefulness as a way to describe what we’re doing.”
For Monin, the “grounded hopefulness” of Heroes of Might and Magic III was important to capture, and he explained that aesthetic as something “gritty and realistic enough that people can believe that it’s an actual world,” à la fantasy like Game of Thrones but still have “whimsical elements” as well. It’s a genre balance that we didn’t expect to come up, but one that does pose a challenge in a time where media is more fascinated by dark fantasy than whimsy.
As the conversation continued, Monin answered one of the most important questions that most players have today: Why not make something new?
His answer, while simple, spoke to the passion of the development team, but also their approach to preserving the legacy of Heroes of Might and Magic with this remake, and why the remake is actually answering exactly what fans of the franchise want.
Users will define what the Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake becomes.
“I would say that in the past, Ubisoft has been trying to change the formula, and every time people say, ‘No, but I just want to go back to Heroes III.’ We said, ‘Okay, we could try again, or we could do it differently.’ And so doing it differently is really going back to those basics, putting it out there. [Again], that’s something that people might not know really well now,” Monin said.
Monin explained that coming back to Heroes of Might and Magic III is something that players wanted, but from a development standpoint, things still had to feel new and different, even with a remake:
“But we’re going to push the [user-generated content] aspect a lot more. Meaning that [Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake] is the base game. This is what it is. Now, let’s have you change it. The idea is that we’re going to offer tools for people to create the new experience they might need, instead of us poking in the dark and doing something people might not be happy with.”
With this news, it’s clear that Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake is looking to embrace player creativity. But while this presents a unique design challenge, it also highlights Ubisoft’s approach to bringing back a classic and putting it back in players’ hands to determine its future.
Working with fans is always something that brings more questions. And the Creative Director was more than happy to explain the process with us and make sure that we understood the love and care that the fans and community bring to the game.
“Whenever they were telling us, sometimes not things that we were not happy to hear, [it] was always coming from a place of, you know, caring about the game. I think it’s really important, and yes, it’s not always been easy, but I think we always wanted to keep this kind of more humble attitude [to development],” Monin said.
But it wasn’t just that Monin and his team were working with the community to develop Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake; it was that humbleness that stood out in this conversation. It’s not every day that you hear a developer say that a community knows more than he does.
“[The community] knows the game better than we do,” Monin explained. “They played so many hours that even if I played hundreds of hours, sometimes they just know better. It’s about understanding what they’re saying, trying to see if that fits within what we want to do [as developers], and then if [that is] the case, then modify what we’re doing in order to do something that they would like.”
Ending, “But again, it’s still a huge community with people that might have different opinions within it. So balancing that is still a question, and we’re still working on that. But I think yes, [working with the community] is also one of the challenges that we’ve had.”
“The community knows the game better than we do.”
As our time together wound down, Jean-Felix Monin had three things that he couldn’t wait for players to see and get excited for. He started by calling out the game’s new art:
“The first one is the immersiveness of the [Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake]—the fact that it’s 3D now, and that this world that was kind of a bit flat now comes to life. [Players] can really feel [the world, the buildings, and] how, you know, titans are made.”
The 3D presentation of Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake was something that made Monin excited. Not just because he was proud of what his art team had done, but because he could imagine the excitement that players would have and the excitement he has seen the community has so far. And much of that is because, for Monin, 3D art is also a way for players to “dig deeper into lore through the 3D aspect.”
Next, Monin explained that legacy maps and the technology used would also be an exciting factor for players. “The second aspect is the fact that we are using a technology that allows us to have all kinds of legacy maps from the past—made with the original editor—be compatible with our game just with a press of a button. I think that’s really exciting.”
Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake is just the base game; resurrecting user-made-maps in the classic editor is the endgame.
When discussing user-generated content, it can be difficult in this era of generative content. But for Ubisoft, it’s about bringing back the past maps made by players in the classic editor and bringing them into the present. This is about preserving the work that the community has done, and Monin knows it will be exciting for players to see.
“People will be able to discover a lot more than just the base game. They’re going to be able to discover a lot of maps that have been made by the community, some of which are really love [letters] and some that are really different experiences too,” Monin said before transitioning to his third point.
In his last piece of excitement, Monin looked to something smaller, quality-of-life. “For the third point, I think is we’ve added some what we call quality-of-life additions, that I think are going to help [players],” Monin said. Adding, “So [the Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake] could actually be for both newbies [and veteran players].”
On those quality-of-life updates, Monin explained how the complexity has been adjusted, if a player would like. “I think that there’s a bit of complexity that [new players] don’t really have to master [right away]. They can automate some of the tasks that might be a bit complicated for beginning players.” Adding simplicity to systems can be key for any strategy game and its something that Ubisoft’s city-builder franchise Anno did in Anno 117.
Monin offered the “wishlist system” as an example of some of the automation and how it serves both new players and the more hardcore among the community. “In a town, you [had to go back every day to build [a] building and then [next turn, fo back to the town to build] the next building because you want to kind of go up the skill tree of the town,” Monin explained.
“Now you can say, ‘I want to go up there,’ make it happen, and then automatically turn after turn, the game will do it for you. That will help newbies to start and not be overwhelmed, but also get a more poweruser to basically [automate] action they don’t really need to do and [focus on other things].”
This topic was a great transition, because it showed that as Creative Director, Jean-Felix Monin was thinking about newcomers to the Heroes of Might and Magic. And with such a storied franchise, we had to ask what it was like stepping into its legacy.
“It’s a position of stewardship and the legacy that is here, both from the original developers and the community.”
Monin responded, “Humility is important. [Heroes of Might and Magic III was] not made by Ubisoft [originally]. It’s made by another company. I’m a steward, and I think the team is a steward [for the game]. It’s a position of stewardship and the legacy that is here, both from the original developers and the community. Our goal is to bring that legacy to more players or to players that might have forgotten about the game.”
“For me, that’s the position I want. That’s really where I want to put myself on the team to make sure that we’re not here to put our hands on it and just destroy it. We want to lead it into the future so that more people can play it and more people can be liking it and creating content for it for years to come,” Monin added, clearly excited but humble about taking on the project.
And with remakes, stewardship is the best way to meet a franchise with a legacy and a community still in love with the memories that title gave them. By the end of our time with Monin, it was clear that the Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake was much about preserving the past as it was bringing it to new players.
Ubisoft’s approach puts the community that made the franchise beloved in the driver’s seat, and that attitude stands out. The Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake is bringing the storied franchise to new audiences, but it isn’t forgetting the community that built it.
