King's Bounty Interview
StrategyCore had the opportunity to Speak with Anatoly Subbotin, PR Manager with 1C, regarding their upcoming game King's Bounty.
SC: Is this based on an arcade game?
No, it’s based on an old classic IP, the game was called King’s Bounty, and it was released back in 1990. It was in VGA, a 32 color game, so its quite an old one.
SC: Was the original King’s Bounty the inspiration for Heroes of Might and Magic?
Exactly. By many this is considered to be the ancestor of the whole genre, the adventure RPG. So Heroes came after King’s Bounty.
SC: Is combat similar to Disciples III or Heroes 5?
In King's Bounty, since it’s all in real-time, the player can even avoid a battle. You can even run away from an enemy if you don’t want to fight him. It depends on the way you want to play. If you want to fight automatically and skip the battles, you want to just go through the main quest and side quests, no problem. If you want to avoid the enemy, if you see he is too tough for you, just run away, something you are definitively not able to do in Heroes.
SC: The hero doesn't participate in the combat, only the troops?
In King's Bounty, you got one hero which moves around the gameworld in real-time. Unlike the Heroes series, it is all happening in real-time. It’s not mission based and there’s only one hero on the map. As soon as battle mode starts, it’s turn-based, and it’s only your soldiers, your troops that are fighting on the map. The hero himself does not participate in the battle. He coordinates the battle and helps with some magic spells but he doesn’t participate in the battle.
SC: What are the RPG elements?
There are a whole lot of RPG elements in the game. We’ve got a huge tree for the main character, where he has characteristics, perks and so on. There are actually 3 character classes that you start up with at the beginning of the game: warrior, paladin and magician. After you pick up your specialization you develop the character through the game. You can also develop the rage demons that you’ve seen. They also have 3 levels, so you can upgrade these creatures as well.
SC: So, once you choose your class, how much customization is there within that class? Let’s say you choose to be a Paladin, how can you customize your character?
Ah, that depends actually on you, whether you want to go more magic or more fighting skills so you have to decide in the beginning what you want to be. If you want to go more magic, you’ll have more access to different kinds of spells. If you want a more action type of hero, you’ll develop more strength, defensive spells, something like that.
SC: Once a spell reaches it’s highest level, can the power of the spell be influenced by the person casting it? Is the spell always cast by the hero?
This is more for the rage demons. Hero spells are cast by the hero outside battle, but if we’re talking about just ordinary spells, these can be cast by magician as well, and this really depends on the rank of the magician you have in your army.
SC: Do the enemies act dynamically off screen to reach their own personal goals, or do they wait for the character to arrive?
We’re developing the game world as if it’s living. This game comes from the developers of the Space Rangers and Space Rangers 2 games who have experience creating a dynamic gameworld. Quite often in computer games, the gameworld only comes alive as soon as the hero enters a certain region, but before that everything is standing still. Here, the world has a life of it’s own. The non-player controlled characters are interacting with each other, so you’re just one more character, it’s not like you’re the center of the universe in the game. It’s like you’re just participating in this whole small world.
SC: Based on the alignment (good or evil) of creatures in your army, will it make a difference how you put your party together?
Yeah, it does matter how you create your party. This means that some creatures don’t mix very well together. So if you had a "good" party of unicorns, and you want to add some demons to it, this might cause trouble.
SC: Would they fight each other?
They will not fight each other on the battlefield, but the demons might reduce some of the characteristics of the unicorns.
SC: Is there a day and night cycle?
No, there are no day and night cycles. There are instead different lands to visit: some of them are in the dungeons, underground, demon lands, some are in the countryside.
SC: Is there are maximum number of units that can be in combat at any one time?
It hasn’t been defined yet, so we’re still thinking about it in terms of game balance. Right now there’s only one unit type shown on the map which represents all of that type of unit. So for an archer, if it says "35" below the figure it means you’ve got 35 archers actually, but only the one figure is shown on the map. As far as the unit types go, the maximum is something like 12 in a battle.
SC: I saw a giant spider creating offspring in the battle, does this happen very frequently?
No, just for some of the monsters of the game, some of the big bosses, and some of them will be doing these kind of weird stuff as well.
SC: Is it possible for the hero to have been married?
Yeah, this is a possibility that you do not often have in a game, you can have a wife and she’s actually put in a special slot in the hero's screen. If you have a wife then she gives you additional opportunities, it gives you additional slots to put items in. So its very good to marry in this game.
SC: Can you have more than one wife?
*laughs* No, only one wife.
SC: Who is responsible for the voice acting in the game? Is it the distributor, or...?
We haven’t done the full localization yet, and we’re working together with Atari in the states and yes, we will do localization with them together.
SC: Is Atari your distributor or publisher in the US?
Yeah, we’re having a co-publishing and distribution agreement with Atari and they’re doing all our major titles through Atari here in North America.
SC: How about in Europe?
In Europe we already signed the game, it will be done all across Europe by a French company called Maybelies.
SC: What are the minimum and recommended specs of the game?
The code haven’t been optimized yet, but I should say that this game is not the type of game that requires high end hardware. I would say that it will probably run okay if you have 1 gig of RAM and a Nvidia 6800. This is definitively not the type of game that eats a lot of resources.
SC: What are the current release dates in North America and Europe?
Right now we’re aiming at a beginning of 2008 release. We want to do it simultaneously around the world.
SC: Is there a demo planned?
Yes, we plan a demo maybe in 2-3 months.
SC: How about beta testing? Is it open or in-house?
Usually we do in-house beta testing because we got a good beta testing team. Sometimes we do it externally, but usually it’s an internal thing.
SC: Thanks and have a good one.
Thanks, have a nice show. And thanks for the interest in our titles!