Age of Wonders III Interview

The folks over at IncGamers recently chatted up Triumph Studios’ Lenart Sas, lead designer on the forthcoming Age of Wonders threequel.  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, this one will be chalked up as a day-one purchase for me:

If you had to pick your favourite thing from Age of Wonders 2, Shadow Magic and Age of Wonders III what would they be and why?

Aw, now that’s a mean question. My favorite thing from AoWII was the overall improved strategic gameplay core and for Shadow Magic the arrival of the random map generator, which greatly increased replay and made the unknown a factor for all players in multiplayer games.

For AoWIII I think I’ll choose the new battle system. The new classes are great, but it’s the battles that make everything come together. We can do a lot more today with presentation, so the battles feel more intense and alive, and the new rules like flanking and engagement give a lot more tactical depth, even with simple fights.

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One of the burning questions with this series is the fear of the AoW III being streamlined or made too accessible in gameplay terms i.e. down to an apprentice level not to a wizard one. Should fans of the series be concerned at all?

AoW3 has more depth and challenge than the previous games, just as AoWII had more stuff going on that the first one. We have the new race-class combo’s, the territory and economic system is more advanced with terrain bonuses and especially battles have more depth. Random Maps have now been designed from the get-go so expect some improvements there too.

However we don’t think ‘˜streamlining’ is always a bad thing. We changed some of the things that would sometimes drag the game out, like the damage routines are fined tuned better so that battles don’t run on for such a long time. And the interface should be a lot easier to use with detailed mouse-over pop-ups on everything.