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Battle Realms Feature
Stephen Leyton
00/12/0000
TVG sits down with Ed Del Castillo, president of Liquid Entertainment, who has recently been named alongside Peter Molyneux as a ‘God’ within the PC industry.
If you look at the CV of this development team it is sure to impress. Look at the game and you will see this could well be something quite special. Battle Realms is a real-time strategy game set in a fantasy universe with strong martial arts influences. A RTS with a vision, and that vision is to create a living world. The teamâs mission statement is: âwe want to make a game which feels like it has stronger ties to the living nature of this world. It must also excite, tell a story and be engrossingâ. 32 year old, Ed Del Castillo, president of Liquid Entertainment, who has recently been named alongside Peter Molyneux as a âGodâ within the industry, was on hand to answer all questions, giving a rich insight into the game.
Ed Del Castillo, like all the personnel of the team, has an impressive track record having worked on titles such as Siege and Bloodstone and in 94 going to Westwood to be the Producer on âCommand & Conquerâ, âRed Alertâ, and these ports and expansions. Along with a stint at Origin Systems with the Firaxis Team in Baltimore and working alongside Richard Garriott, you canât have a more impressive background; this was before he set up Liquid Entertainment. Many of the current team have also worked on famous games like âCommand & Conquerâ, âStarcraftâ, âRed Alertâ, âBladerunnerâ, âTomb Raiderâ, âTomorrow Never Diesâ, and many more and it comprises 1 Producer, 3 Designers, 6 Artists, 1 Tech Lead, and 7 Programmers, not including Ed and the support staff â“ impressed? Well you should be!
An Insight
Battle Realms striking qualities, as an RTS, are its influences from Japanese culture with martial arts, plus a strong flicks/anime feel, as Ed added: âThe original idea is an amalgam of my childhood gaming and movie watching experiences. I played tons of RPGs and watched way too many Kung-Fu movies. Throughout my paper gaming âcareerâ I was always incorporating mythical Asian/Anime influences into the game worlds. The Battle Realms universe is the ultimate manifestation of that. (I'm even creating the paper game version of the world for use in a potential D&D3 or GURPS campaign that I might run later).â
The objective within Battle Realms is to unify the land under one rule... yours. You are the second son of a now dead Emperor. For reasons exposed in the game, you were exiled when your father died, but now you have returned to find the empire in chaos. As the story progresses, the player is begrudgingly drawn into a people that need a hero, and a world that needs a champion. For once a producer admitted that the story âisâ important but can be skipped. âThe player can, of course, ignore the story and just play the game mechanically, but the story will explain the motivations best, and fill in the back plots as well, and allowing the player to understand his units and the enemy better. To ignore the story would make the player's game harder. To add, there are 2 storylines in the game - Dragon and Serpent. As you might guess, they are flip sides of the same coin. Honour or nefarious deeds are your choices.
Continuing on Ed did not see the explosion of RTS games as a bad thing up against his own creation, he also harps on a great deal about the story, so miss it and you miss out! âMany RTS's have suffered because in most cases, the events on the game field are too âsimpleâ to move the plot along, so you get something that lacks depth because the plot moves forward in the cinematics and you only get 10-15 of those during a campaign. It's just not enough, if the plot has little to do with the fighting. That's the biggest change we are making. We conceived a universe, then we conceived a timeline or history thread for a certain part of it, finally we picked the time in history with the most conflict. That's when the story takes place. It is a story about war, about conflict, so itâs intrinsically tied to the game youâre playing. If you decide not to take in the story you miss out. This not only makes the in-game cinematics (there are no cut scenes) more relevant, but they serve a supporting role to the gameplay rather than the other way around.â
Lots to tell you!
Battle Realms has many complex elements and Ed started on the 'living resource system'. âThe concept is simple. The real world is about opportunity, costs or trade-offs. When you do something, there's something else you could have been doing. We applied that concept to the resource model in this game, so when you use water to put out a fire, that's water that could have been used to make the rice grow faster or to build a building or âtrain a warriorâ. If you use that horse as a pack animal then he isn't being used to strengthen your military. The living resource system is devoted to giving you the kinds of options you might see in the real world.â So does the game offer resource management? âYes. For the beginner player the resource management is very easy to automate, but like all things, greater efficiency can be gained by micromanaging it. It isn't the primary concern, however. Combat strategy and tactics are very important in this game. There are many variables in the terrain and itâs how the units are used which can tip the tide of battle. Players will definitely have to worry about their production, but they will have to worry more about the battles they are fighting.â
Power
Almost all the units are human-based. There are different clans with very different types of units. Samurai, Musketeers, Barbarians with huge crossbows mounted on their backs, vomit throwing diseased Zealots, healing Druidesses, Werewolves, Ninja, Zen archers, etc. All the clan's units start as peasants, and the player has to decide whether to leave them as a productive peasant, or to train them into soldiers. Once a unit is created, he can go to war or train up further. By taking him into different training buildings, the unit can become something different... not necessarily more powerful, just different. So a Spearman can become a Dragon Warrior, which can then become a Samurai; at each level having unique abilities, which make him useful. There are also loads of weapons, as ED explained. âThere is all sorts of stuff. From your standard swords, to magical staffs, flaming swords, huge crossbows, flying powderkegs. The list is pretty long. But you won't be able to take the enemies weapons (we had to save something for Battle Realms 2).â With a focus on a real world there are animals that make an impact. In some clans, horses are captured and domesticated to be used as either pack animals or war-horses. In the case of other clans, some feed them to the wolves for food, and others convert them into Shadow Steeds. Wolves are used as attack troops by the Wolf clan.
Clever Stuff
The locations and environments play an important part in how effective they can be. Ed: âThe terrainâs height and other properties affect all the units. We have grasslands, swamplands and mountains. The effects on units won't vary from terrain to terrain but there will be some universal concepts of height and sight, which will create tons of strategic value. Iâd like to add that the AI is very very important. A lot of focus is going into the AI. We have one full time programmer on it from now âtil the end of the game. There are a lot of lies about AI out there right now. One is the AI âlearnsâ - most games don't have something that truly learns. If they did the game would be unbeatable. The omnipresence of the computer in the game world is too powerful of an advantage. We have been successful in creating a very challenging AI (I can't beat it... yet) and will continue to construct something that's engaging and fun. Also, we are placing focus on the unspoken side of AI...the AI of YOUR units. They will 'communicate' with one another so that if there is a threat they will respond together not one at a time. Putting 'smarts' into your units is often underdeveloped in other RTS's.â
Experience counts
Battle Realms has many distinguishing factors but ED believes it is through his past experiences and those of the team that will make this game stand out. âIt's a pretty fair statement to say that I've spent some time with almost every RTS that has come out since âSeigeâ (1987). There have been lots of cool ideas, and lots of bad ones. We draw from all of these experiences in an effort to give the player the best RTS money can buy. In recent history, there have been a number of good RTS's and we learn more from each one we play. Couple that with a new universe, and our ideas about how things could be better, and you have Battle Realms. There are lots of entries, RTS games, but they seem very derivative of each other conceptually. We ARE striving for innovation. There is soooo much that can be done with this genre that hasn't been. We hope to raise people's expectations with regard to what is achievable in this area. The game is designed to be easy to get into and hard to master. The player who has never played this kind of game will definitely have to go through the âlearn the RTS interfaceâ phase, but no more so than any other game. The hardened strategist might gain the early advantage of knowing about things like high ground and sneaking through forests.â
The gameâs look is very nice and different. It really isn't a Far East setting. The fantasy world the team has created has some Asian trappings. The key here is that as a group they have built something they love - Kung-Fu worlds. There are a lot of fantasy elements which extend beyond the gameâs Asian mask, and will continue to be developed if they do a sequel. Think of the Asian influence as Clan specific rather than world specific and you get the idea.
Technical
âWhen we create games, the game dictates the technology. There are way too many un-fun tech demos out there already. We have had to build a very robust 3D engine (The Steam Engine) because of all the things we wanted to do with it. (Including potentially licensing it.) Itâs probably the best RTS engine I've seen to date, but we build on the shoulders of giants.â Ed.
Itâs still early days on this product, with lots to be added. We shall keep tabs on this title.
Battle Realms could well be one of the surprise hits of 2001
Quote âBattle Realms - Taking Real Time Strategy back out on to the battlefield... where it belongs!â Team.
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