Knights of the Temple Feature Feature

Knights of the Temple (KOTT) will be published by TDK, yet to set the gaming world alight, in early 2004. The building process any publisher goes through, when they have no real gaming history, is a long and arduous one but once they have their first big seller they become accepted. Knights of the Temple is currently scheduled to be released for GameCube, PC, PlayStation2 and Xbox and the Scandinavian Starbreeze Studios, the dev team creating this title, is well respected for the recent project Enclave title, and is also working on the sequel Enclave 2. Daniel Wilfor, Associate Producer, was eager to give TVG a full insight on this 3rd person fanatasy, action, adventure.<br><br>The player will assume the role of Paul de Raque, Knight of the Temple, as you set out on a holy crusade across a forbidding, mediaeval Europe to join your order in the Holy Land. Armed with your sword, axe, bow and shield, you must fight with all your strength to complete your journey, for saving the future of the world is your ultimate goal! The core of the game is medieval style fighting with the classical weapons of European knights, coupled with detailed graphics of the historical milieus of the 12th century crusades. <br><br>The team’s inspiration was to create a hack and slash game with a focus on really cool and fast fighting elements. Before Paul goes off to war the player starts as a young farmer boy in the middle of medieval Europe without any fighting experience and solid weapons. After receiving a letter from his father, who is involved in the crusades in the Middle East, he and his brother decide to take part and start their journey across Europe. The game tells the story of the journey from Europe to many places in the Middle East.<br><br>It was explained that there are two states of consciousness in the game. One is the real world in which actual travel is shown and the other is the dream world. The player accesses the supernatural levels when he gets wounded or is in any other way harmed. He will fall into a coma and experience his own nightmares in which he has to fight through a demon world. If he survives, he will be rewarded with tips and hints on how to proceed in the real world. Daniel added: “It is important to understand that this game will NOT be a pure fantasy 3rd person action adventure. The actual storyline takes place in a real world scenario with epic and cinematic camera views and focus on a very good and interesting fighting system."<br><br>Critical to the game is the story and so a Hollywood scriptwriter, specially brought in, has added experience to the team. As the game is heavily story driven there will be lots of cut scenes to bring the story closer to the player and to push the player’s motivation and interest. Also using a large and well-equipped MoCap Studio has given the team an advantage in capturing quality movie like scenes with a dozen actors.<br><br>With a number of facets - story and presentation - well covered and seemingly well conceptualised it was the important aspect of the game's technology that was investigated. “The engine on which the product is based was developed by Starbreeze, as were all the required tools to create the world and animations. Starbreeze has also set up the largest motion capturing studio of all game developers in Europe and the motion capturing is operated by a highly dedicated team that also took part in the motion capturing of the recently released movie Matrix Reloaded, as well as Matrix Revolutions. The game engine is highly optimised and able to create breath taking visuals and scenes on all platforms. During E3 recently, we received a lot of very good feedback regarding the quality of animations and the overall first impression of the game. IGN.com, for example, rated Knights of the Temple as “one of the nicest surprises of the show.”<br><br>With fighting being the main focus, the need to have plenty of variety is essential. At the beginning the character is not that experienced and only knows a few fighting moves and also only has a small, old sword. Progressing in the game he learns more fighting moves and he will find new weapons. It will be interesting and essential to learn new moves and learn how to use new weapons. The game allows fighting against multiple enemies and does not stick to pure one on one fights.<br><br>“To add, the player will continuously learn new moves during the game and in the end will be able to do lots of combinations and finishing moves. All moves are designed using impressive motion captured data and we will also add visual effects when performing a special combo. The fights are shown in a cinematic camera view to enhance the dramatic feeling."<br><br>Being in the front line means injuries will occur throughout the game. An indication of the character's health will be given constantly in order let the player know when to pick up and use a healing ointment. The different weapons and all the variations of attack moves will create differing degrees of damage and injury and the damage of each opponent also depends on where they were hit. Seamlessly linked to the injury and detection system is the games AI and the team is putting a lot of effort into its development. “We want the enemies to be highly skilled and able to perform intelligent attacks. They will interact with the player in a realistic way."<br><br>"As the game is set in the period of the big crusades we will offer all elements that you would expect from these times. The weapons will be authentic, as well as armour and architecture. But the player will also discover locations that relate to historic places. The setting we presented at E3, for example, takes place in the historic city of Petra, which was an important crossroads between Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia. Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock and is surrounded by mountains riddled with passages and gorges. It is one of the world's most famous archaeological sites."<br><br>With the focus on combat it is interesting to see equal billing for the adventure tag and this is prevalent in the fact that the journey will take the ‘would be hero’ from medieval Europe to the Middle East - through about 14 levels. The vision is to recreate unique settings with a realistic and dense atmosphere. The journey, of course, will be linear and the player encounters various enemies in his quest to become an excellent knight.<br><br>Already Knights of the Temple is looking a noteworthy title, with well-designed and detailed levels and a variety of challenges. It is all about ensuring continuity of interest throughout a game with ongoing surprises and challenges to keep the player hooked. We shall check out this title as it nears completion.<br><br>Daniel parted with this own slant to the game. “Knights of the Temple is incredibly atmospheric. While the realistic scenarios draw you into the game through the game's authentic medieval setting and the hard realistic combat with the typical weapons of a knight, the nightmare worlds will scare you by creating sinister and evil locations.”