Unknown Realm - Interview with GameRaven

GameRaven interview Bruce and Laura about Unknown Realm.

Sean: What's the story behind how Unknown Realm's concept was formed?

Bruce: The original concept for Unknown Realm came out of some frustrations I had with the direction RPGs were taking during the late 1980's while I was still in high school. They started becoming focused on simulation aspects and less enjoyable to me. I wanted to do more exploring and discovering things, and less combat, simulation, and story grind. I always felt there was huge potential for this type of RPG to tell a story and keep the player's imagination engaged at every step of the journey, but it requires the right balance otherwise, the game can quickly become a monotonous waste of the players time and intelligence.

Bruce: A big test for me as a game designer is whether the player actually finishes your game. Many players I know never finished RPGs they started because the games became too long, tedious, or generally less engaging. In my opinion, this is like an author writing a novel that is so boring or hard to read that the reader puts it down after a few chapters and doesn't feel compelled to finish. A good RPG, like a good story, should be so engaging that the player cannot help but finish it because they are enjoying the experience at every step and can't wait to see what happens next. Scope and pacing are very important for an RPG.

Bruce: A concept I formulated long ago is that games should be an abstraction of reality, not a simulation thereof. I think one game designer who understood this concept well was Sid Meier. His game Pirates! is just one example of what I consider great reality abstraction in a game and it influenced me greatly as a game designer. Better graphics and more realistic physics can never fix a bad game design.

Bruce: A lot the design choices that went into Unknown Realm came out of my D&D tabletop days in the 80's. For instance, I dislike the idea that a role-playing game should have multiple players that you control. All the D&D players I knew only role-played with one character. This is why in Unknown Realm you only control yourself. Any companions in the game are computer-controlled. While I know many will disagree with me on this, I do not consider a game where you control multiple characters in a party to be a true RPG.

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More information.

I extracted some excerpts that I considered very interesting.

They [RPGs] started becoming focused on simulation aspects and less enjoyable to me. I wanted to do more exploring and discovering things, and less combat, simulation, and story grind. I always felt there was huge potential for this type of RPG to tell a story and keep the player’s imagination engaged at every step of the journey…

Many players I know never finished RPGs they started because the games became too long, tedious, or generally less engaging. In my opinion, this is like an author writing a novel that is so boring or hard to read that the reader puts it down after a few chapters and doesn’t feel compelled to finish. A good RPG, like a good story, should be so engaging that the player cannot help but finish it because they are enjoying the experience at every step and can’t wait to see what happens next.

A concept I formulated long ago is that games should be an abstraction of reality, not a simulation thereof. I think one game designer who understood this concept well was Sid Meier.

For instance, I dislike the idea that a role-playing game should have multiple players that you control….I know many will disagree with me on this, I do not consider a game where you control multiple characters in a party to be a true RPG.

To me, it’s important that a player is 100% focused on role-playing only his or her own character in an RPG. Having to break character and jump from one role to the next is not immersive and quite schizophrenic in my book. I always try to avoid anything that breaks the immersion in my RPG designs.

Unknown Realm is all about freedom. It’s totally open-world and non-linear, so you can basically decide to not listen to anyone or follow any plot and go running off into the forest naked to pick mushrooms if you wish.

in the interest of convenience, there are some modern conventions we have adopted for Unknown Realm, such as automapping, auto-journal, mini-games, NPC portraits, and a cleaner, simplified interface. We really wanted to create an RPG that you could play for short or long periods of time and easily pick up later without being totally lost.

I think this looks and sounds great and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it. Some of the design decisions are very interesting - a focus on exploration rather than combat will be a welcome change of pace.

Their design philosophy seems to be great and I must say I love everything about this game for now.

Let's hope they are real good at programing AI because in most cases party AI is usualy so dumb that it ruins any party based RPG.

Anyone else think this could be the spiritual successor to Wasteland 1 and Pool of Life?

Originally Posted by Terry
Let's hope they are real good at programing AI because in most cases party AI is usualy so dumb that it ruins any party based RPG.

True albeit I'm pretty sure this wont be a party-based RPG. They've said you play only yourself, there will be companions though, but you wouldn't be able to control them.