RPS: So how is single-player structured? Is there an overworld? How does it progress?
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Alex Thomas: The idea behind it is youÂ’re an entire civilization of Vikings escaping from this rolling darkness thatÂ’s swallowing up the world behind it. Like the Neverending Story, the Nothing. We realized, when we started making the game, that we wanted a big, epic-sized world. But we didnÂ’t have the resources to have exploration the way that you would in Dragon Age or something. Our equivalent is going to be this travel instead.
The way the travel works is, you have a civilization of people who all have needs. TheyÂ’re going to spawn these events that happen. To simplify it, itÂ’s a bit like of King of Dragon Pass meets Oregon Trail. ItÂ’s King of Dragon Pass on the road. As you travel, their endurance is going to get lower. Their morale is going to get lower. You have to do things to keep it up. But if you camp, this wall of darkness is getting every closer. YouÂ’re balancing the speed at which you can travel with the needs of your caravan.
RPS: What happens if the wall of darkness catches up?
Alex Thomas: What we are weighing heavily upon is that time is an important factor. As youÂ’re going, what happens around you changes depending on when you get there. Having choice in a game is an expensive proposition, because once thereÂ’s a branch, you have to sayÂ… Okay, thereÂ’s this content, thereÂ’s this content, and you donÂ’t see both. You pay a lot in time to put that in. What we want to do is, youÂ’re working through a story that makes sense in context. YouÂ’re trying to achieve a particular goal. But when you get to certain things, that will change whatÂ’s happened and what state itÂ’s in.
Arnie Jorgensen: You will be interacting with this darkness in Chapter Three. In Chapter One, it’s there, but it’s not going to be one of the things that’s right in your path. By Chapter Three you’ll have decisions to make and you’ll be interacting with that. We have all three chapters laid out as one story. We were actually going to do it as one game. One of our guys, Gordon Walton, here in town has made a lot of games, and he said, “No, you’ve got to do it much faster.” So we said, “Okay, we’ll have three chapters.” Each chapter will have a complete beginning, middle, and end. Kind of like Lord of the Rings.
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RPS: With your caravan, how much individual identity does each member of it have? You said that people can just come and go as they please. That reminds me of Animal Crossing, in its own weird way. Is that the kind of thing that youÂ’re going for, though? Where you can talk to these characters occasionally and, if one of them leaves because you pissed him off, youÂ’re not going to be happy about it?
Alex Thomas: Yeah. I think thatÂ’s exactly what [we're going for]. To go to what Arnie was saying about taking a risk on the game design, we donÂ’t think a big studio, for example BioWare, is going to let you lose someone that you like. As a smaller indie studio we thought that was freaking cool. We might ruffle some feathers, but we want to have that in the game. ItÂ’s exactly like you said. You may go out of your way to make a guy happy because you like him. HeÂ’s part of your combat team. And itÂ’s going to mess with the rest of the caravan. Maybe heÂ’s pissing a bunch of people off, or whatever the explanation. We want you to decide what you think is the right course of action, so weÂ’re giving you lots of options like that.
