Rune II Gameplay Videos, Interview

Back in June we had an opportunity to check out a trailer for Human Head Studios’ Rune II that highlighted the game’s so-called “Ages of Ragnarok.” The trailer didn’t really explain how those ages fit into the game or what they were exactly, so now we have this video where the game’s community manager Mitch Alpiner lets us know how that whole system is going to work:

Then, there’s also a 30-second highlight video dedicated to the game’s Wild Giant enemies:

And if you’re interested in the game, you should read this WCCFTech interview with Human Head Studios’ co-founder Chris Rhinehart where he talks about the game, its campaign, multiplayer elements, and storefront choice. An excerpt:

Loki is clearly the main foe in Rune II given the setup, but are there other bosses, for example tied to a particular Age?

There’s no specific boss of the fire Age, for instance, no. But what there is, is in any given age you’re going after artifacts, mystical relics from Norse mythology. There’s a story behind all of those, they are all connected to Ragnarok in a certain way. There’s a mistletoe dart and that’s the dart that killed Baldur, which actually was one of the starting points of Ragnarok, or it’s a part of Heimdall’s horn that you are trying to recover. Each of these artifacts is protected by one of these minions, there’s kind of a mini-boss or a mini clan sometimes because it might be a much larger group of enemies protecting this thing. You need to recover these artifacts and take them to Heimdall in order to get the ability to go to try to take down Loki. By collecting enough these artifacts, you’re tearing the veil into this alternate dimension where Loki is hiding from the other gods. But the interesting thing also with these artifacts is they’ve got different abilities and powers on them. For example we have one that lets you run faster, and your punch damage is way higher. So you can be this crazy punching dude while you’re having this artifact.

There are downsides to artifacts as well. Some of them may have negatives, for example reducing your health. So while you’re super punching guy, you might be more likely to get killed, that kind of thing. And while you have a number of the artifacts, Loki is more aware of you, which means he is going to try to kill you. Even though he’s in a different dimension, he’s got the ability to reach into Midgard and say drop meteors on your head.

Nice. What can you tell us about the crafting system?

Crafting is a really important part of Rune II. It’s an action RPG, or rather action/adventure game with RPG elements, but there are some crafting and survival elements to it. It’s not really a survival game but crafting is a really important part of Rune II. You may kill an enemy and it might not drop a given weapon, but it might drop a recipe for a weapon. The other interesting thing we have going on with the weapons too is if you find a weapon and you want to make more of this given a weapon, if you salvage it, break it down for its component pieces, you’ll also learn the recipe.