Gods and Heroes is an exciting new game in development from my friends at
Perpetual Entertainment, set in the legendary world of Ancient Rome and using Roman mythology and legends as a fantasy backdrop the premise has a rich history and well developed background. Other innovations include a new squad combat system and direct assistance in the form of God Powers.
I was able to catch up with lead Design Director Stieg Hedlund and ask a few questions concerning his progress.
Here is what he had to say:
You have a chosen a very unique time frame for your game setting. Why did you chose the mythology of Rome in shaping this game?
We knew we wanted to use an ancient world setting with an identifiable mythos. That led us to the choices of Greece and Rome, and the military elements of the game (i.e. squad combat) made us favor Rome. Once that had been settled, we wanted to deal with Rome before it became an empire-building juggernaut, when Rome itself was being invaded by her enemies and struggling to survive. That put us in the days of the Republic, right in the middle of wars against the Samnites, Gauls, Etruscans, Greeks and Carthaginians. You could still very clearly see a sophisticated society with a democratic representational government, culture, industry and all the stuff that we like about Rome because we can relate to it.
Then we had to start ringing the changes. We wanted to bring the myth and legend to life, so we asked ourselves a bunch of “what if” questions to get to a world as it might’ve been to a Roman who truly believed that there were Satyrs in the hills and that his misfortunes were due to daemonic spirits at work or the displeasure of the gods. That’s the world we’ve brought to life.
If appears as if G&H will be using a unique system of solo and NPC henchman play. How important will your henchman play as the game progresses. Will various squads be able to combine in order to form a PC army for combating epic challenges?
Squad combat is a very important mechanic in GnH. You get a minion early on and your squad becomes larger as the game goes on, to a maximum of eight. When you form a group with other players, you can have five group members so that group with full squads is 45 characters, which is a small army. Epic battles are certainly one of the big payoffs of the system, and we’re presenting some very cool scenarios that showcase that.
Given the meddlesome nature of gods in Roman Mythology can PC's expect to have interaction with gods of an opposing ideology.
Absolutely. As often happens in myth, the upheaval that is occurring in the mortal realm exists because of unrest among immortals. In this case the Olympian gods, who are essentially the major gods of Rome are being threatened by the resurgent Telchines, who had been overthrown and banished during the war against the Titans in the distant past.
That’s the big arc, but the machinations of the various deities surface in a variety of ways through many subplots as well.
With the focus on gaining godlike abilities and favor with your patron deity what other activities will be available for your PC's to partake in?
Those things essentially work as a type of quest, and so there are other types of quest as well: civic quests that are done for the protection and service of the nation.
Which such an emphasis on action how will delegation and control of minions be handled during large-scale battles?
Minions will act very reasonably on their own, and many commands are very easily done as well. We don’t want players to have to micro manage their minions, but give them standing orders and then call special unit feats from time to time to get them out of tough situations.
Are there any plans at launch to include permanent tribe or player structures to house their minions and allow for PC interaction away from the battlefield?
Every player will get his own camp, where he can visit his minions and other NPCs that help him with squad setup and minion equipment. We have plans to make these increasingly customizable. We’ll also be trying to add tribe (guild) housing.
What has been the development teams biggest hurdle in avoiding the traps set by previous fantasy MMO's.
We’ve really come at the game from the perspective of trying to do the things that are important to the gameplay vision of squad combat, action combat and myth-related stuff, and expanded out from that core. When we have decided to include things that are common to other MMOs, we’ve looked carefully at the way other games have handled things and really tried to identify the best versions, and used those as our starting points.
With such a bold game design and using a known mythology base. What section(s) of bringing G&H to life has been the most rewarding.
We’ve done tons of research on all kinds of ancient-world stuff, and a lot of us have really enjoyed that. Seeing some of the stuff people only read about until now come to life in the game has been a lot of fun. There’s a lot of stuff people don’t expect, but which still is reported by guys like Pliny, so we bring it in and put in into the context of entertainment, which is really what GnH is all about—you know, for the kids.
What, if any, new features have been added during development that you can't wait to receive user feedback on?
Oh, we’re getting feedback already. We did some fun stuff with the beginning player experience that we knew were risky, but really broke out of the typical mold. People liked it a lot, so we were happy. There’s a lot of feedback we’ve gotten that has made us feel very good about the world we’ve created and where we’ve spent our time. There’s other stuff that is not as positive that we’re addressing, but it’s been overwhelmingly good.
I'll end with the standard GM question, If you could change anything about G&H, what would it be?
What’s awesome about an MMO is that we can continue to develop content and features past ship, so here’s very little reason to have regrets—we can still fix things. Speaking as a game designer, it’s always hard to let anything go out the door, since there are always things you wish you had time to do, but are too under the gun on other things. Here we concentrate on laying down the best basic gameplay we can and know that we can give the stuff beyond that the attention it really deserves, instead of choosing between rushing it and implementing something that’s not as good as you’d like it to be.
For more information concerning the development and progress of "Gods and Heroes"
Please visit them at the: Gods and Heroes Website
Gods and Heroes is an exciting new game in development from my friends at
Perpetual Entertainment, set in the legendary world of Ancient Rome and using Roman mythology and legends as a fantasy backdrop the premise has a rich history and well developed background. Other innovations include a new squad combat system and direct assistance in the form of God Powers.
