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Tags: Alex Norton; Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox; Visual Outbreak
Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox is an indie turn- and grid-based first-person RPG being developed by Aussie team Visual Outbreak. In this day and age, just hearing it's turn-based might spark an interest in some. But Malevolence does something different as well. The game procedurally generates the game world, creating an infinite experience - and not just geographically.
After some buzz on the glorious Codex forums, we got in touch with Creative Director Alex Norton to see if he could shed some light on various aspects of Malevolence and how the game will play in practice. Here's a peek:
Read the entire thing right here!
Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox is an indie turn- and grid-based first-person RPG being developed by Aussie team Visual Outbreak. In this day and age, just hearing it's turn-based might spark an interest in some. But Malevolence does something different as well. The game procedurally generates the game world, creating an infinite experience - and not just geographically.
After some buzz on the glorious Codex forums, we got in touch with Creative Director Alex Norton to see if he could shed some light on various aspects of Malevolence and how the game will play in practice. Here's a peek:
The player does not control a party of heroes in MALEVOLENCE, which is otherwise quite common in turn-based RPGs. How do you make turn-based combat tactical and fun with a single character?
MALEVOLENCE is all about the character progression. Your abilities, spells, feats, etc, evolve in an infinite way during the game, meaning character maintenance/tweaking is a full-time job. Because of this, every aspect of your character comes into use while playing the game, but at the same time, everything you do has a consequence. As you practice and get better in one field, you will start to suffer in others. It's this balancing act that keeps things interesting for the player. But keep in mind, MALEVOLENCE is played in the style of a classic RPG, but is, in actual fact, more of a very advanced roguelike. Hence the single character aspect.
You claim that MALEVOLENCE is almost entirely procedurally generated -- weapons, items, dungeons, cities, creature stats and even dialogue. Is the procedurally generated content based on the player character's level, on current quest objectives... or something else? How do you balance the game's challenge and how do you implement plot goals in a procedurally generated world? Are all quests going to be procedurally generated as well?
Yes indeed. All quests are generated by the game, and yes, they are somewhat based around the characters level. That being said, the game most certainly does not spoon-feed you. Many modern RPGs make it so that the game levels with the player. MALEVOLENCE does this, too, however it does so in a much more harsh way. At any point, no matter what level you are, you will be able to find things that are much too easy or much too difficult for you. That way, the player can choose their pace of gameplay and follow the path that is right for them.
One thing about procedural generation is that it seems to be in danger of making the game too generic, both in its looks and its gameplay. How do you introduce enough variety in it?
Well the short answer is that in an infinite game, there's always going to be eventual repetition of 3D assets, voices, textures, etc. It's just the nature of it. However, we have a large variety of biomes, environments, buildings, dungeons, etc to keep the player occupied. Think of it like the DIABLO series. They would re-use the same assets, but rearranged in a different order and it had great replayability. Most people assume that we're making an infinite game so that people can play it forever, but that's not actually the case. We're making an infinite game so that people can play it for as long or as short a time as they'd like, rather than have to have it end. There's nothing worse than reaching the end of a game that you love and wanting more!
Read the entire thing right here!
if you're a sandbox gamer. Devil, of course, will be in the gameplay, but I'm already liking the philosophy of not letting you powermax and randomizing things like the spells. I'm interested to see if they can avoid the curse of so many open-ended games, though, in the form of lack of closure. Many seem to just end up meaningless if you play for too long (something narrative games prevent by cutting you off). Maybe there'll be some sort of in-game attainment or challenge that will cap the whole experience.
