Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes Interview (con't)

FiringSquad: What other elements do you think will separate Vanguard from the MMORPG pack?

Nick Parkinson: I think two things will separate us from the crowd. First, our visual style – the late master fantasy artist Keith Parkinson served as art director at Sigil until he passed on in late 2005. He established the look of Vanguard through the eyes of a painter and as a result, it feels much more alive and organic – much like an oil painting.

Depth of game play is the other big thing. There’s just so much to do. Gameplay is broken into three separate spheres. Two of them, adventuring and crafting, should be familiar to most players. But the third, diplomacy, is something that’s pretty new to the MMOG genre.

FiringSquad: The game uses the Unreal engine. What sorts of updates and refinements have the Sigil team made to the engine to make it work?

Nick Parkinson: We’re constantly working with the guys over at Epic (who are great, by the way) making tweaks and adjustments for various things we may need. Our graphics engine is more of a hybrid at this point than anything. We licensed the Unreal engine, and as you know, it is an FPS engine – so we’ve had to make a lot of modifications over the past couple years to make it into an MMOG engine that will fill Vanguard’s needs.

FiringSquad: When can we expect the game to launch its beta test and when is Vanguard's official launch scheduled?

Nick Parkinson: We’ve been in closed beta for a while now actually and are quickly nearing Phase 4 – which will see a lot of new people be brought in to help test the game. As for a launch date, all we can really say at this point is Q1, 2007.

FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Vanguard at this stage of development?

Nick Parkinson: Like I was saying before, nearing the end of development, it’s a really exciting time around the office. Everything we’ve been working on, pouring ourselves into for nearly the past four years we’re almost ready to finally share with everyone – and we couldn’t be more jazzed about it.

Just this week, our pre-order boxes shipped out across the country and you can find them at Gamestop, Best Buy, Fry’s and other retailers. Check out our website at http://www.vanguardsoh.com and if you like what you see, pick up a copy and we’ll see you in Telon!