Disciples III: Renaissance Interview

IGN was able to corner Disciples III: Renaissance producer Denis Epifanov for a thorough interview about the upcoming turn-based strategy/RPG sequel. The intro question:

IGN: It’s been seven years since the last Disciples game, and the design team on Disciples III is new to the franchise. What’s new in Disciples III, and how will does it improve on the first two games?

Denis Epifanov: When we started to work with Disciples, we realized that we had a very complicated path to tread. Disciples and Disciples II were successful games. So the title already had a history of its own, a whole army of fans and a long list of fans’ expectations. We understood a great responsibility lay on us. On the other side, it was obvious that the Disciples series must evolve and it wouldn’t be appreciated by gamers if we just cloned Disciples II and called it Disciples III.

First of all, we are trying to make Disciples look really nice but keep its authentic atmosphere. Disciples III is fully done in 3D and uses most modern technologies but it is still Disciples. 3D gives us more freedom in making the game and its visualization. With modern technologies, we can make Nevendaar and its inhabitants much more believable. It is very important now as more than 10 years had passed since Disciples had been created. Actually we’ve got a new generation of gamers that have grown up and lots of them didn’t know a thing about the Disciples series. So if we didn’t make D3 a modern game none of them would even want to play it.

One of the main innovations is a significant increase of the player’s self-progress, which became possible because of bringing in strong RPG elements (the previous parts of the game were almost pure strategy). We have unlocked characteristics of the heroes (leaders). Now every class of leader has its own unique skill grid, where you can see all the skills from the very start so you can plan the evolution of the hero. Many of the abilities are accessible for any class of the leaders, so there is no obstacle for the warrior if he needs to enlarge his battle skills with some magic abilities and powerful spells.

There are global changes in the rod system. Now rods are no longer just place holders, but can become land guardians (any unit can place them now, but only in special areas), which have three levels of advance and are the leaders of their own detachments. It wouldn’t be so easy to get such a defender out of the way.

The strategy part of the game has changed too: the battles take place on the randomly generated arena 12X12 hexes. There are different objects like power nodes, that give bonuses to the different type of units and, for example, magic node, which helps mages to make extra damage. Units with superior initiative are the first to attack. We can also note the dynamic change of the day and night time, large quantity of new units and equipment, and the transfer of leaders to the next mission, without losing their equipment.

To sum up, we can simply enumerate the most interesting features of the game. We have more than 170 characters animated by using motion capture, more than 70 spells that can be cast both on the global map and on the battlefield, over 450 items, 150 of which are equippable; more than 270 unique map objects, 90 of which are interactive; more than 12 unique battle arenas with randomly generated battlegrounds, unique combat system combining strategy and RPG-genres.