DeathSpank Interview

RPG Codex nabbed an opportunity to quiz adventure game veteran Ron Gilbert about his upcoming action RPG/adventure crossbreed, DeathSpank.

3. How are you combining the adventure and RPG elements? What will the balance between the two genres be? More adventure or more RPG?

Good question and probably the hardest thing about designing DeathSpank. If there were ever two genres that belonged together, I think it’s Adventure and RPG. They share a lot in being story and world focused. But there are also differences, mainly in what motivates players to move forward and how they attack problems. An adventure game can be described as a bunch of immovable objects you need to navigate your way around, and a RPG is a bunch of really heavy objects you need to push out of the way. I would be lying if I said it’s not a constant challenge to balance the two. As John F. Kennedy once said of the moon landings: We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.