 |
Fatherdale
We thank Gleb Vlasenko MPR from Snowball Interactive, Fatherdale
Italian Version
IGZ. It's a big time for Russian Software houses like Snowball or Buka. Why this is happening now and not ten years ago?
GV. The games industry in Russia is developing like in many other countries in the world - as the market expands, there are more possibilities for a small team to start a small projects and once you have enough small teams, some of them move on to become larger and more successful studios.
The good thing about the fact that the expansion of both market and industry is happening now and not ten years ago is that the budget and size requirements for the teams to finish the projects are higher, and since the project needs to match the quality standard to be published internationally only the best titles are finished (which means there’s less low-quality product coming from our country :-)
IGZ. Fatherdale's Graphic is stunning but why not a fully tridimensional environment with the possibility of moving cameras?
GV. We think that technology is only as good as it is good in serving the gameplay, so most of our technical features come from the fact that we needed a very good RPG/Adventure engine that would allow you to lead your party and see detailed world.
The rotating cameras didn’t make it through because most of player won’t use them - it’s a good illustration of engine, but of little use in RPG or adventure (I remember someone from Blizzard saying that with WarCraft III, most of players in focus groups didn’t rotate the camera while playing a beta). So at the end of the day the question was, whether or not we want to sacrifice the visual beauty of ingame world to implement a 3D world with a freely moving camera. I think our answer is obvious :)
IGZ. There will be a turn based combat mode?
GV. No, we played with the idea for some time and even built a prototype once - but as much as we love the TBS genre, it still has the limitations that get in the way of storytelling. If we were to make Fatherdale anew, we probably would make it a TBS from the scratch and adopt the genre concept accordingly - but once we’ve reached a balance with the story and the way it develops, we found it hard to sacrifice the dynamics that RTS offers. Still, in Fatherdale battle scenes are not click-based - remember that it’s an RTS where no two units are similar, and because it’s so much based on the RPG part, there are the rules of the combat and death is quite a rare outcome.
IGZ. Did you consider some sort of interaction between party's characters?
GV. Yes. Just like in a real adventure, different people will make it easier or harder for the others in your party to develop and progress. Sometimes it’s just a simple quarrel, but because normally you would unite several characters into a battle group and assign them with a proper leader there are more serious conflicts where a Guardian will refuse to serve under a particular leader or the leader will remove somebody from his group because of the reputation and conflict of key values.
IGZ. What do you mean with RTS/RPG/Adventure? How did you managed to include Real Time Strategy into Fatherdale?
GV. The mix of genres is important because Fatherdale is all about the story, and we can't deliver a diverse story if we only have a limited list of actions that players can do. The RTS part in Fatherdale includes using zones of vision, different attack patterns, battle groups, formations, weapon types and all the things you would expect a Guardian to use on a day to day basis in a land at the brink of war. I must admit it wasn’t easy, and we’ve spent a lot of time merging it with the concept of unique items and characters as well as making sure it leaves no holes in the believability of the storyline and Adventure part.
IGZ. I noticed your interest for Gothic and Medieval stuff. I presume that the map is not the only historically accurate thing in FartherDale.
GV. We certainly did our homework. The game is absolutely correct to the year of 1072 where it concerns inventory -- balance, RPG stats, types, looks, materials, sizes, where it concerns characters -- names, appearance, occupations, and where it concerns the world -- locations, forests, houses, etc. We've spent about year and a half on research of inventory and battle systems and we also keep following up references and historical data throughout the development cycle - those who wish to follow up the topic and see more should see our Links section at www.fatherdale.com! :)
IGZ. What about multiplayer support?
GV. There will be a separate release one or two quarters after the main game, and it would be a dedicated MM module. Early in the development cycle we decided to focus on making Fatherdale a rich and balanced single-player experience, while the multiplayer part - a sort of arena on the border of steppe, valley and forest with mercenary-based parties and a number of quests available to competing heroes who all fight to gain access into the citadel - will require a separate approach.
IGZ. Are you planning a demo of some sort?
GV. Certainly. There will be a fully playable Episode One available once we are certain about the release quarter and we plan to launch it ahead of the game so that players will know what to expect! :)
IGZ. We'd like to know the most played game at Snowball.
GV. On a global scale, it’s probably Heroes of Might & Magic and Battle Isle. Spellcross, Incubation and Final Fantasy also rated high. However, past week it was Toon Car -- a racing from the Revistronic team that our publishing arm is releasing here in Russia later this month. We decided to help with the testing and somehow got quite addicted :)
|
|
