Legends of Eisenwald Interview

There’s a new Legends of Eisenwald interview over at Strategy Informer, in which Aterdux’s studio head Alexander Dergay fields questions on the title’s setting, moral quandaries, combat and more. Here’s a couple of snippets:

Strategy Informer: The ethics in Legends of Eisenwald are also a little less black and white than the norm. Can you talk about that?

Alexander Dergay: Yes, one of the things that are equally overdone these days is that a hero has to save the world simply because he is a hero. We wanted something more human than that. For us, to achieve immersion into the gaming world you have to make it believable, so in our gaming world people are driven by realistic aspirations. Those would be things like the desire for revenge, for fame, for money, or wanting to rule. The game is a fantasy but it’s based on real historic motivations in a way which we think makes the world more immersive for the player.

Strategy Informer: Given that you’re focusing on a grittier and more folklore-based world, to what extent is magic featured?

Alexander Dergay: There is magic in the game but all our mages, so to speak, are units of support. So healers can do incantations to improve your characters will, for example, and there are some witches who can curse you. The magic we have is quite low-key, the kind of thing which could function based on real-world beliefs and superstitions. Equally the fantasy creatures in the game are based on historic lore.

Strategy Informer: Could you tell us a bit more about how the combat works?

Alexander Dergay: Our idea was to evolve the kind of combat in Disciples 2 and games like Heroes of Might and Magic. We wanted to make it not as long-lasting but still tactical and fun. So with our system we try to prevent empty moves we constrain the player in some ways to force them to attack or make meaningful moves. In addition, our system has no randomness to it; everything can be calculated absolutely.

Another crucial difference with Legends of Eisenwald is that units are not stacked. You don’t have armies of hundreds of units occupying one tile. Instead, every unit on the battlefield is an individual fighter with a name, statistics, and equipment. Because of that you have a lot of scope for customisation, you can equip your units with the items that you want and then decide in what ways to upgrade them. Rather than a big military general with a massive army you are more like a knight commander with a small dispatch.