Legend: Hand of God - Interview @ GGMania

GameGuru Mania has spoken to Jan Beuck from Master Creating about Legend: Hand of God. Here's a lengthy bit on character creation that actually turns to combat:

GGMania: How flexible is the character creation system? Will you be able to choose different genders and appearances? What are the choices available to you in terms of "class" and how it develops through the course of the game?

Jan Beuck: We decided to have one unique hero - a human male - as the game's central character and make him an integral part of the story, which makes the plot much more compelling.

In terms of character development, this means you don't choose between set character classes at the beginning of the game, but you can develop him with a great amount of freedom throughout the game. Many different paths are available: you might want to go with a combat-oriented hero and develop a heavily-armored warrior or maybe you would rather develop a magic user who wears light robes and casts powerful spells. You can also play any type of hybrid between the two, concentrate on various typed of weaponry and much more. Together with the different magical disciplines, this makes for interesting combinations, e.g. flaming swords, when you master fire magic and swordsmanship or frozen arrows, when long-range weapons and ice magic are combined.
6) What can you tell us about the enemies in Legend: Hand of God? What sort of foes will you battle? How intelligent are opponents, by the way? Will they simply attack you on sight until you die, or will the smarter ones use tactics? You claim the game will feature a 'cinematic combat system'. Could you describe it?

The unique quality of Legend's combat system comes from the spectacular portrayal of the fights, paired with a simple and intuitive control scheme. In other action RPGs, combat is generally very samey. The monsters - big or small - are always fought in the same manner, which makes combat become boring quickly; it becomes a mere comparison of stats instead of an exciting duel.

One of our biggest aims is to change that - with the help of the Cinematic Combat System, which generates cinematic-quality combat that looks as though its been choreographed, but is highly dynamic at the same time. It takes into account the size of the enemy: you can simply clobber smaller enemies (e.g. goblins) from above, who have to jump to even reach you and deal damage. But this is reversed when you meet a larger-than-life monster - now you're the one who has to leap, and blocking their powerful swings is out of the question - you're only option is dodging. Some enemies are 3 times as big as the hero; some are bigger than the whole screen! And this leads me to the second important point: if an enemy has a shield, he actually uses it to block. If he has a sword, he parries - with an axe he has to try and dodge. This way, the style of combat changes dynamically according to the weapons used and the attributes and skills chosen by the player.

Different enemies also have different AI behavior. Some are rather stupid (like the undead), others react to your strengths and weaknesses (for example the type of weapon you're carrying) and use group tactics.