To you, what are the essential features of a Might & Magic game that you aim to preserve in Legacy? What about the series attracts you personally, and which of the Might & Magic games influence the new game the most?

To us, Might & Magic RPGs are about a party of adventurers exploring a large world in first-person view, meeting a variety of characters, visiting cities, and of course exploring dungeons and fighting monsters in turn-based combat. The specifics may vary from one game to the next (for instance Might & Magic 6 introduced free movement while the earlier games were grid-based), but these basic ingredients were always there and they are still at the core of Might & Magic X - Legacy.

Since there have been several "eras" as far as the gameplay of the series is concerned, we had to think hard about the kind of game we wanted to make. Several pitches were made, more or less faithful to the original games, but we finally decided to go for a gameplay similar to the World of Xeen episodes. We still kept some ideas of the later games, notably our skill system is similar (though not identical) to the skill system featured in Might & Magic 6-7.

Might & Magic games have always been open-world and not just corridor-based, which distinguished them from other first person RPGs such as Wizardry or The Bard's Tale. How open-world will Legacy be compared to the previous titles, and how big will the world itself be? Will the game have level scaling of any sort, i.e., will it scale the power or number of enemies in an area to your level (like Might & Magic II did)?

Might & Magic X starts with a smaller area. This is the "tutorial" area, which we call "Act I". Here you’ll explore your first town, get your first quests, complete your first dungeons, learning how to play along the way. When Act I is over, the rest of the world opens and what you do next is really up to you. If you want to go to that mountain over there despite the fact it’s notoriously full of angry Cyclopes, nothing will stop you.

There will be no scaling of the monsters depending on your level. We feel it’s one of the great pleasures in RPGs to become a demi-god and then return to those Cyclopes and teach them a lesson. However as you progress through the main story some new creatures and monsters may appear in some areas.

While it’s too early to talk the specifics of the game’s world, we can already say it’s bigger than the world of Clouds of Xeen for instance.

Could you elaborate on how training for skills is going to work in Might & Magic X? When will you need to look for a trainer and when will you not?

While, as mentioned earlier, you don’t have to train just to level-up and gain your skill points, we did keep the idea of teachers that can allow you to reach the next tier for your skills.

You start as a Novice, and then you can become Expert, Master and finally Grandmaster by locating the appropriate teacher. Of course Expert teachers are fairly common, while there’s only one Grandmaster teacher per skill and they can be pretty hard to find. And when you do find them, you never know what they’re going to ask you to do before they grant you the title. : )​

Might & Magic X - Legacy has been in development for almost 7 months. To be honest, this title was in our minds for a long time... It was hard for us to be sure there was an audience for such titles, but many Kickstarter successes (all those old-school IPs and genres) and also the triumph of games like Legend of Grimrock (kudos to Almost Human guys, and thanks for this great title!) have proved the audience IS there.​

Well, as Ralph W. Emerson famously stated, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. : ) At that time we were convinced we would never release a game called "Might & Magic X". Since then though, a lot has happened, and as we’re doing a game that is truthful to the legacy of the series, in the vein of Might & Magic IV and V, we think Might & Magic X is the right name. For sure, we argued about it, asking ourselves what people would expect from such a title but we decided to go for it, as it makes sense to us!​

To us, Might & Magic RPGs are about a party of adventurers exploring a large world in first-person view, meeting a variety of characters, visiting cities, and of course exploring dungeons and fighting monsters in turn-based combat. The specifics may vary from one game to the next (for instance Might & Magic 6 introduced free movement while the earlier games were grid-based), but these basic ingredients were always there and they are still at the core of Might & Magic X - Legacy.

Since there have been several "eras" as far as the gameplay of the series is concerned, we had to think hard about the kind of game we wanted to make. Several pitches were made, more or less faithful to the original games, but we finally decided to go for a gameplay similar to the World of Xeen episodes. We still kept some ideas of the later games, notably our skill system is similar (though not identical) to the skill system featured in Might & Magic 6-7.​

One of the strengths of the Might & Magic RPG series is the fact the previous games always aimed for greater accessibility. MM2 introduced the automap feature, MM3 had one of the very first questlogs – maybe even THE first one. The series quickly embraced mouse control, icons and colors to make the information clearer, etc. Thanks to that, a game like World of Xeen remains very playable today and has aged better than other RPGs of its time (not speaking of the technical side of course).

For Might & Magic X - Legacy, we tried to maintain this tradition of accessibility. Accessibility, by the way, is not to be confused with simplification. Accessibility is not about making the game less complex, but making it easier to use and understand. So Might & Magic X has detailed tooltips, clear signs and feedback, drag-and-drop interface, quick-action bar, etc. Nothing extraordinary, but important features players are used to finding in modern RPGs.

One thing we didn’t keep from the older games is the need to "validate" your level-up by spending gold in a training center. This seemed a little too old-school and in a grid-based game would have meant a tedious amount of backtracking.​

Might & Magic X starts with a smaller area. This is the "tutorial" area, which we call "Act I". Here you’ll explore your first town, get your first quests, complete your first dungeons, learning how to play along the way. When Act I is over, the rest of the world opens and what you do next is really up to you. If you want to go to that mountain over there despite the fact it’s notoriously full of angry Cyclopes, nothing will stop you.

There will be no scaling of the monsters depending on your level. We feel it’s one of the great pleasures in RPGs to become a demi-god and then return to those Cyclopes and teach them a lesson. However as you progress through the main story some new creatures and monsters may appear in some areas.

While it’s too early to talk the specifics of the game’s world, we can already say it’s bigger than the world of Clouds of Xeen for instance.​

We’ll have a clearer view on the game’s actual length once we have implemented all quests and all dungeons. But considering we have more than 20 dungeons of various sizes and complexity, and a whole outside world to explore, we’re confident there will be a lot to do in Might & Magic X: Legacy.​

This PAX preview is right: There won’t be any sci-fi elements in Might & Magic X - Legacy. More accurately, you won't explore spaceships, fight killer robots or wield blasters. This decision is directly tied to the new world (called Ashan) we created since Might & Magic Heroes V, as those elements are definitely not part of the lore of this world. But it doesn’t mean there's no connection to the older games of the series. Actually, if you know the "ancient universe" you should keep your eyes open while exploring the world of Might & Magic X...​

Legacy will feature 12 basic classes, 3 per race. Each of these classes will also have a promotion quest, allowing, for instance, your Freemage to become Archmage.

As mentioned before, the skill system is close to the system seen in MM6-7, with skill points and Expert-Master-Grandmaster tiers. There are more than 20 skills, and of course, for any specific skill, depending on the character’s class, he might not be able to become a master or grandmaster – or learn the skill at all.

But we’ll get back to the topics of classes and skills in more detail in the coming months. : )​

This is basically linked to the "game design laws" of the world of Ashan. While in the previous games you could have an Orc ninja or a barbarian Elf, in Ashan the associations between races and classes are a bit more "rational".

Each race has access to one Might class, one Magic class and what we call a Hybrid class – a class that has access to both Might and Magic skills in "balanced" proportions. Of course, all classes have access to different skills, so for instance, the Human Magic class is different from the Elf Magic class.​

While, as mentioned earlier, you don’t have to train just to level-up and gain your skill points, we did keep the idea of teachers that can allow you to reach the next tier for your skills.

You start as a Novice, and then you can become Expert, Master and finally Grandmaster by locating the appropriate teacher. Of course Expert teachers are fairly common, while there’s only one Grandmaster teacher per skill and they can be pretty hard to find. And when you do find them, you never know what they’re going to ask you to do before they grant you the title. : )​

There are no random encounters in Legacy. Like in World of Xeen, you can have up to 3 monsters on the same tile. The number of monsters you’ll face will depend on the area and the level design. We have dungeons where monsters are not that numerous but very tough, and others where you will find yourself surrounded and blocked by melee enemies while their companions use ranged attacks against you.​

No, there will not be "always-online" copy protection! Buy, download, play, that’s it.

However, implementing Uplay is a Ubisoft corporate policy and Might & Magic X - Legacy will not be different from any other Ubisoft title. So yes, Uplay will be in and you’ll need to be online for ONE time activation.

As the game will be based on Uplay, the chances of it being available on GoG are fairly slim, as their policy is no DRM at all (if we’re wrong and GoG is happy to distribute the game, please contact us! : ) )​

Well, it’s difficult to say about other publishers... We’re working (only) for Ubisoft! :p

As far as we’re concerned, we definitely think niche PC markets, not only old-school PC RPGs, but also other genres such as rogue-like (thinking about Faster Than Light of course) are interesting and could lead to success.

The difficult part for big publishers targeting those niche markets is to change their communications strategies and adapt them to their audience. For our particular project, spending millions of dollars on Marketing and PR is not the way to go in our opinion... You have to make sure every dollar is used the proper way, targeting the right audience.​