Age of Conan: Interview with Gaute

We’ve been talking much about Conan:Hyborian Adventures these days. That, and we’ve been supplying you guys with plenty of scenic shots of the sort of landscape players can expect to trod upon when the game’s finally coming out. Now, to get a better idea of the game’s features, we’ve got game director Gaute Godager to talk about PvP combat, castles, guilds, individual quests.

In this interview by the dudes over at Action Trip, Gaute first explained how the game drew from 70 years worth of Conan franchise – books and comics – for the depth that his team needed to bring out Conan’s theme, which was something of a dark, brutal antithesis to the high-fantasy that many fans of the genre were accustomed to. As Gaute said:

It’s a much more sinister, brutal and realistic world than what people are used to. Magic-users do not run around with pointy hats shooting pink stars – they will summon the demons of hell that will stop at nothing to rip your throat out.

Moving on with the interview, Gaute also mentioned that aside from the usual PvP action that people would be expecting, there was the quest element. Rather than a “Kill everything in sight” sort of quest system, the devs had gone for something that required as much brains, as Conan had bulging biceps (and body hair):

In another quest, you find yourself in an ice cave far up in the snow-capped mountains. Your task is to go through the cave in order to reach your destination. The problem is that there is a gigantic beast blocking the passage and charging it would be suicide. You may then go and find the food that this beast usually eats and place it in the cave somewhere, successfully distracting it so you and your party of adventures can quickly scurry pas it unharmed.

That’s just a sliver of the details that Gaute’s sharing in the main interview – click on the read link for the full details.

We’ve been talking much about Conan:Hyborian Adventures these days. That, and we’ve been supplying you guys with plenty of scenic shots of the sort of landscape players can expect to trod upon when the game’s finally coming out. Now, to get a better idea of the game’s features, we’ve got game director Gaute Godager to talk about PvP combat, castles, guilds, individual quests.

In this interview by the dudes over at Action Trip, Gaute first explained how the game drew from 70 years worth of Conan franchise – books and comics – for the depth that his team needed to bring out Conan’s theme, which was something of a dark, brutal antithesis to the high-fantasy that many fans of the genre were accustomed to. As Gaute said:

It’s a much more sinister, brutal and realistic world than what people are used to. Magic-users do not run around with pointy hats shooting pink stars – they will summon the demons of hell that will stop at nothing to rip your throat out.

Moving on with the interview, Gaute also mentioned that aside from the usual PvP action that people would be expecting, there was the quest element. Rather than a “Kill everything in sight” sort of quest system, the devs had gone for something that required as much brains, as Conan had bulging biceps (and body hair):

In another quest, you find yourself in an ice cave far up in the snow-capped mountains. Your task is to go through the cave in order to reach your destination. The problem is that there is a gigantic beast blocking the passage and charging it would be suicide. You may then go and find the food that this beast usually eats and place it in the cave somewhere, successfully distracting it so you and your party of adventures can quickly scurry pas it unharmed.

That’s just a sliver of the details that Gaute’s sharing in the main interview – click on the read link for the full details.