Tags: DEMIURGOS: Path of the Leviathan
Demiurgos: Path of the Leviathan is an interesting indie RPG currently on Kickstarter, and because the main man behind that Project, Daniel Bill, works at the same university I do, I decided to interview him. And boy, was that interview fruitful - one and a half hours of questions about his game, as well as some general discussion about RPGs and game design, which ended up providing almost 14k words of text to be made into a Codex article.
I interviewed him in German and tanslated everything to English, so if anything seems unclear to you, feel free to blame me. I'll make sure to ignore your complaints as best as I can.
The game's combat encounters sound very varied and promising, and most of the resident posters are likely to agree with his opinion on a certain Bioware title:
To read more about the gameplay systems and philosophical themes of Demiurgos, and of course more of Daniel Bill's opinions on RPGs both old and new, go read the full article!
Read the full article: RPG Codex Interview: Daniel Bill on DEMIURGOS: Path of the Leviathan
Demiurgos: Path of the Leviathan is an interesting indie RPG currently on Kickstarter, and because the main man behind that Project, Daniel Bill, works at the same university I do, I decided to interview him. And boy, was that interview fruitful - one and a half hours of questions about his game, as well as some general discussion about RPGs and game design, which ended up providing almost 14k words of text to be made into a Codex article.
I interviewed him in German and tanslated everything to English, so if anything seems unclear to you, feel free to blame me. I'll make sure to ignore your complaints as best as I can.
The game's combat encounters sound very varied and promising, and most of the resident posters are likely to agree with his opinion on a certain Bioware title:
And every encounter is hand-placed then, right?
Yes. We’re working on one encounter right now, we didn’t manage to include it in the preview video yet, there are some boss encounters too. Like tanks from the WW1 era driving through a street, and you have to flee from the tank while you’re also shooting at enemies. When the tank gets too close, it destroys your cover. We do want that every combat – there’s one in the preview video, with the hostage situation – has something the player has to pay attention to, and maybe sometimes it’s a better approach to solve the encounter without firing your weapon, like in the hostage situation where you could endanger the hostages. And just as the hostages are released, you shoot your enemies anyway… the player can do that if he wants. We want to make every combat encounter a little special. Hand-made.
So you’re also placing some unorthodox elements into your encounters, like those tanks that can destroy your cover, in order to make encounters more varied and exciting.
And also more cinematic and action-packed. It looks pretty cool, too, when you zoom out your camera and wonder – will that tank arrive at my position in the next turn? We also have a cool fight – it’s not completely finished yet – where there’s a submarine that submerges and rises up again occasionally, and you have to fire at the submarine from afar. And you can shoot at the periscope the crew uses to look at the battlefield, and when it’s destroyed the submarine has to come to the surface which makes it easier to attack. We also have an encounter on a train! Maybe we’ll manage to finish that one before the end of the campaign and show it off. You’re on a train and have to go forward while fighting some enemies, and when you’re all the way at the front you enter the driver’s cabin.
So systemically, your combat system is going to be simple and easy to understand, but what makes the combat interesting is the variation of encounters. That means you’ll probably have few encounters, and encounters with special elements to them, so you’re probably not going to include any filler combat either, are you?
What’s filler combat?
Filler combat is… did you play Dragon Age?
Yes.
That was chock full with filler combat.
Dragon Age… [starts rambling] I don’t get what people… I played only Inquisition, and it’s… I don’t understand how one can even compare that to other games, that’s not even an RPG for me.
Yes. We’re working on one encounter right now, we didn’t manage to include it in the preview video yet, there are some boss encounters too. Like tanks from the WW1 era driving through a street, and you have to flee from the tank while you’re also shooting at enemies. When the tank gets too close, it destroys your cover. We do want that every combat – there’s one in the preview video, with the hostage situation – has something the player has to pay attention to, and maybe sometimes it’s a better approach to solve the encounter without firing your weapon, like in the hostage situation where you could endanger the hostages. And just as the hostages are released, you shoot your enemies anyway… the player can do that if he wants. We want to make every combat encounter a little special. Hand-made.
So you’re also placing some unorthodox elements into your encounters, like those tanks that can destroy your cover, in order to make encounters more varied and exciting.
And also more cinematic and action-packed. It looks pretty cool, too, when you zoom out your camera and wonder – will that tank arrive at my position in the next turn? We also have a cool fight – it’s not completely finished yet – where there’s a submarine that submerges and rises up again occasionally, and you have to fire at the submarine from afar. And you can shoot at the periscope the crew uses to look at the battlefield, and when it’s destroyed the submarine has to come to the surface which makes it easier to attack. We also have an encounter on a train! Maybe we’ll manage to finish that one before the end of the campaign and show it off. You’re on a train and have to go forward while fighting some enemies, and when you’re all the way at the front you enter the driver’s cabin.
So systemically, your combat system is going to be simple and easy to understand, but what makes the combat interesting is the variation of encounters. That means you’ll probably have few encounters, and encounters with special elements to them, so you’re probably not going to include any filler combat either, are you?
What’s filler combat?
Filler combat is… did you play Dragon Age?
Yes.
That was chock full with filler combat.
Dragon Age… [starts rambling] I don’t get what people… I played only Inquisition, and it’s… I don’t understand how one can even compare that to other games, that’s not even an RPG for me.
To read more about the gameplay systems and philosophical themes of Demiurgos, and of course more of Daniel Bill's opinions on RPGs both old and new, go read the full article!
Read the full article: RPG Codex Interview: Daniel Bill on DEMIURGOS: Path of the Leviathan
