I love low fantasy. That is to say, fantasy with little or nothing in the way of magic, elves, or even prophecies. Low fantasy, to me, offers all the grim delights of medieval history, without being weighed down by any need to reflect the actual events of the past. It's a subgenre that lends itself particularly well to stories of murky people doing murky things, and people don't get much murkier than mercenaries.
Enter Wartales, then, which maddens me with the urge to append "woo-hoo" to its name every time I type it. It's a game about getting by in a medievalish world reeling from the effects of a calamitous plague -and when I say "getting by", that's exactly what I mean. "Your job is just to survive and to do the best you can," explains creative director Nicolas Cannasse, as he joins me for my third attempt to break the Wolf Barrier, "based on whatever moral stance you choose to go in with."