Interview Part 3

FiringSquad: Visually what kind of art style are you going for in the game?

Stieg Hedlund: We’ve drawn heavily on the source material of the historical architecture of the cultures we are portraying, not to present something literal, but instead to create a fantastic, hyper-real ancient realm that we think of as ancient Europe as it should have been. Therefore, we’ve really pushed the direction, exaggerating things like the terrain and climatic differences between areas, as well as the cultures, which historically were all greatly influenced by the Hellenistic Greeks, but which we wanted to make more distinctive than that. Finally we’ve done some fudging on the timeline: as far as the fiction, it is closely based on the specific time period, but if we saw a building that was just cool and that we wanted to bring into the game, but was anachronistic, we’d use it anyway—we are creating a piece of entertainment, after all.

FiringSquad: What other elements does Goes and Heroes have that make it different than the normal MMORPG?

Stieg Hedlund: It would probably be easier to talk about what’s the same. We really took a from-the-ground-up approach with no assumptions about what was “needed” for an MMO. We have a design team that’s an interesting cross section of people with direct experience in MMOs and people from other backgrounds, which is quite deliberate—we wanted the perspective of those who had worked in this category before, so we weren’t reinventing the wheel and hitting the pitfalls they already had discovered, and we wanted the other guys to push the boundaries and think about how we could bring the highly directed experience of single player games into the MMO space. Squad combat is really the coolest thing. The addition of squads makes soloing more viable since the player character’s strengths and weaknesses can be complimented by the selection of different squad setups, but it also makes grouping richer and cooler. A group with full squads is a small army of 45 characters—that’s what a raid is in other games—now imagine what a raid looks like in our game!

FiringSquad: What is the current status of the game's progress and when will it be released?


Stieg Hedlund: The game is coming along well. We expect to be in beta in the spring and summer of this year and a launch in fall.


FiringSquad: After its launch, what plans are there to add content to the game?

Stieg Hedlund: We plan on updating features as well as content for the game on a constant basis. There is already a list of things that is planned for in this regard that we think will add to the play experience and allow further exploration of the game. There will also be expansions, as I mentioned earlier, in which we intend to present new cultures, with their own homelands gods and creatures of myth.


FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Gods and Heroes?

Stieg Hedlund: I’m really excited about GnH! This game has a whole lot of new stuff in it and I think people who are getting tired of very formulaic experiences will find that there’s a lot to explore in our world.