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Exclusive: Imperial Glory Q&A Feature
Derek dela Fuente
09/12/2004
The creators behind Commandos and Praetorians give TVG the low-down on its latest title...
Pyro Studios, based in Spain, is responsible for some superb titles which include the Commandos brand. Imperial Glory, with its two distinct gameplay modes: turn-based imperial management model and real-time land and naval battles in full 3D, offers spectacular land battles with striking environments that provide the backdrop for gruesome scenes of combat. Along with fully interactive battle maps, allowing you to gain a defensive advantage by occupying buildings, forests, boulder fields, plus varying climates and terrains of the 50 plus maps dramatically change the look and feel of battles, Imperial Glory offers all this and a lot lot more. Derek dela Fuente spoke with César Valencia, Project Leader at Pyro, about this exciting title.
The essence of Imperial Glory is to forge the destiny of the world amid the turbulent times of the early 19th century, in this epic game of empire building and conquest. Gamers are charged with leading one of the Great Empires in titanic conflicts, or achieve economic dominance backed by shrewd diplomats and resolute military. Choose to rule as absolute despot or constitutional monarch. Unleash Hussars, Lancers, Dragoons and Imperial Guards across more than 50 battle maps ā“ from the green fields of England, to the icy wastes of Russia and sweeping deserts of Morocco ā“ all in superb, full 3D. Fight for naval dominance in breathtaking, real-time sea battles. This is an age of change - be at the leading edge of modernity or your civilisation will fall by the wayside.
TVG: Pyro Studios has now been active for a good few years. How do you feel as a team you have progressed and do you feel you have an advantage because you are Spanish based and so the team members would have fewer options to go to another Spanish development team?
We are currently working on four different projects with over 100 people in the studio, so if we look back to the beginning of the studioās life where there were only 10, itās clear that we have gone down a long path. So in that sense we feel quite solid and quite happy about the future. Nevertheless we do not consider that being the only successful videogame developer in Spain is an advantage for us but the opposite. You could look at it as you did with your question, in the sense of it being easier to retain people because there are not that many places to move to in the Spanish industry, which is true, but there are two things that we should probably consider. The first one is that we are competing with developers from all over the world so not having them in Spain is not an advantage. The second one is that it works both ways, so people donāt leave to go to other studios but we donāt get people from other studios also, which means that we have to train people (which is costly in terms of both time and money). I think this works as the basic economic principle, where the bigger the market the better for everybody, unfortunately that is not our case. Not to mention the fact that studios from bigger videogames markets get additional benefits in terms of coverage and sales.
TVG: Has Pyro Studios considered working on console formats or even XBOX and whatās the reason, so far, for sticking to the PC?
We released Commandos 2 for both PS2 and Xbox, but until now we have never considered making a game for the consoles from the start. Now things have changed so the answer is yes, we are working on console projects, Commandos Strike Force being our first development specifically produced for PS2, PC and Xbox from the beginning. I also need to add that this will not be the only case. The reason for making PC games is probably because it did make sense for the type of games we wanted to develop which were mainly strategy games. And as you know the words strategy and console usually donāt match very well.
TVG: It must be hard to come up with new PC strategic ideas or ones that keep a strategic focus on a game. How do you go about re-inventing the same kind of commands and actions so that they look and feel different?
Making a game is always hard because it takes a lot of effort, but we like strategy games very much so we consider the strategy as a very open environment. If you compare it with football games it would be comparing a planet with a galaxy. In football games you need to change things from one year to the next, and those things may not be a huge number.
If you compare Imperial Glory with Praetorians you will find many big differences, in fact you will probably find more differences than similarities. They have a completely different engine, completely different graphics, types of cameras, game objectives, etc. Obviously technology can sometimes help in order to show more realistic scenarios, but I would say that everything is about changing the gameplay experience (trying to make it better), and from my point of view, there is still room for those changes.
TVG: How focused is the team on technical innovation and what treats are you planning for in Imperial Glory?
Technical innovation is not our top priority. We are not trying to compete with games like Doom 3 but to satisfy strategy players. Also I would be more than happy if people that have never played a strategy game before decide to give Imperial Glory a try and enjoys the experience. I think that technical innovation is like the special effects in a movie, they are a tool that should serve a purpose. In our case, we are seeking realism and also creating the right type of atmosphere. Thatās why we have put a lot of effort into the different scenarios, on the water, the weather effects or the particles.
TVG: How do you believe you will move the strategy genre on with Imperial Glory in terms of originality? More immersion, for instance?
This is something for specialist press and players to evaluate, but we think that Imperial Glory brings a new proposal. We are big fans of two great strategy series: Total War and Civilization, and we think that there is a gap between them that Imperial Glory could cover. So thatās our bet, to add new strategic elements, such as formations or the use of diplomacy, to the large scale battles and the management depth. I guess it is not about making a list of differences with other strategy games but about the result of adding those important differences.
TVG: Could you give us the basic premise to the game, the setting and the choice for this selection?
I would say that the basic premise could be: āthere is a lot of ways of doing things in the right way, in order to expand your empire, but each decision has its implicationsā.
We wanted the player to be free and to choose not only the empire with its starting position, strengths and weaknesses, but also the way he wanted to rule the empire. The type of government, diplomatic decisions, the way of developing technologies and of course the tactics in both land and naval battles. The result is that people could play many different types of games, feeling in charge, not following a pre-set path.
TVG: Imperial Glory looks like one of the most extensive games to date. How do you ensure that gamers will not get too confused and move along the right course of play and sequence?
Imperial Glory will be very easy to play, because it will be up to the player to decide the level of game depth. At the same time, having many different options does not mean that the player will have to deal with all of them. To give you an example we have several different types of quests (building the first stock market, fighting for the independence of Lousiana or organizing the worldās fair to name a few) but that does not mean that the player will have to deal with all of them during gameplay. Depending on the decisions taken by the player he will āopenā some of them while the rest will remain unknown for him.
On the other hand, as I told you before there is not just one way of doing things in the right way, and I think that is another help for the player.
Finally, we will have what we expect to be a very a nice tutorial that will teach the basics of the game even to the people that has never played a strategy game before.
TVG: How important is it to have real diversity with the styles and traits of the five empires and could you tell us briefly what the main strengths or weakness are?
To have a real diversity is a must in this game. We want to almost offer a different type of game depending on the empire chosen. It makes a difference the number of provinces you start with and also the surrounding countries. It also makes a difference to start surrounded by water in the case of Great Britain, or to start surrounded by countries as in the case of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Each empire has its own strengths and weaknesses in terms of resources. For instance, Russia has a large population and a good production of raw materials, while it does not do so well in the economy chapter. These are some of the values that we will continue adjusting in order to make sure that the empires in the game are correctly balanced.
TVG: The AI plays a significant factor in the outcome of the game so how efficient will each empire be as they grow and improve and does the wellbeing of the troops play an important factor?
Our concern is not to make the AI too good, or else it would be impossible to beat the enemy empires, and this works for both the management part and the real time battles. For that reason we will have different difficulty levels in order to offer different challenges to different types of players.
The wellbeing of the troops will be an important factor, for instance, if we have troops that are not in their best shape and they get attacked by a larger number of enemies, they will probably try to avoid combat and escape. Also in the naval battles we will clearly see that attacking an enemy ship with experienced crew makes a difference.
Another important factor will be the commanding officers. All the officers will start as lieutenants being able to command a few number of troops, and after playing some battles they will be promoted, so they may end up being field marshals and commanding a large number of units in a more efficient way.
TVG: Many will see turn based as old fashioned ā“ your comments?
I would be really interested in knowing their opinions after they play Imperial Glory.
TVG would like to thank Pyro Studios and Eidos for taking the time to answer our questions.
Imperial Glory is scheduled for release across Europe during Q1 2005; weāll have further coverage soon.
