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Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil - Q & A with Tim Cain

RECENSIONE di La Redazione   —   05/03/2003

[***dati incompleti: scheda gioco o num immagine mancante***]

RPGPlayer: There were many side-quests in Arcanum that were brilliant and original like, for example, the one about the Siamese Skulls, and these quests had a lot of mistery and suspance like certain tv-show (X-Files for example). Will there be side quests, or even part of the main quest, of these kind or will we just have the "classical" quests related to fantasy world?
Tim Cain: "While our main quest is a classical fantasy quest, involving demons, evil high priests, dungeons, and so on, we have added many side quests that are not the typical fantasy quests. The module hints at all sorts of intrigue occurring in the area, and we have supported that feel with numerous quests that reveal secret events taking place in the villages. Plus, we have added some nice Troika- style "quirky" side quests that involve topics I haven't seen in other RPG's."

RPGPlayer: Apart from Planescape Torment, the only RPG that wisely used dialogues of great quality and quantity was Arcanum. Will TTotE have the same quantity and, more important, the same quality of dialogues or will it just be a hack n' slash type of game due also to the nature of the Paper n' pen original module?
Tim Cain: "We have spent months adding dialogs and quests to make our game as rich and as detailed as possible. For people who make characters that emphasize diplomacy or trickery, you should find many things to do and many alternate paths through the main story arc and side quests."

RPGPlayer: One of the most fascinating things in Arcanum was the feeling of living in a 'realistic' world, in terms of law,politics, religion and rules. There were lot of stories,documents,and many other things (books, dialogues,newspapers,scenes etc.) that contributed to create this feeling. Will TTotE be detailed as Arcanum?
Tim Cain: "We're trying. Greyhawk is a HUGE world, and we are connecting as much of our story as possible to events and people in that world. So even though the adventure takes place in a relatively small corner of Greyhawk, you will meet important persons and have the opportunity to make decisions with far-reaching effects."

RPGPlayer: What are the characteristics to make NPCs and story more important in a game? Do you think it's better to have 5-6 followers with lot of personality (in terms of dialogues) and peculiar characteristics (seen for example in Planescape Torment) that helps the player to identify himself in the main character or it's better to have a huge list of pre-generated characters (also due to lack of time in the development of the game)?
Tim Cain: "Well, I think there are advantages to both ways of handling followers, and some people like one over the other. Personally, I like having fewer, more detailed followers in my games, because their idiosyncratic behavior adds to the richness of the world. But fewer follower NPC's does reduce the amount of replayability of the game, and in ToEE at least, I am trying to add followers of all different classes. So expect a lot of followers, and some of them are very detailed."

RPGPlayer: What do you think about only multiplayer games or about mmorpg? Have you ever thought about developing a mmorpg? What do you think about singleplayer games' destiny?
Tim Cain: "I have played EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot extensively. Both are fun games and I enjoyed them immensely, but I don't think I'd want to make one. Maintaining them is the hard part. Once people reach the level caps and have explored your entire world, what's there for them to do? No, I like making single-player RPG's, where the purpose is to tell a story. As for the destiny of single- player games, they will always be around. Not everyone likes the competition and player interaction that is part of every multiplayer game."

RPGPlayer: What are your plans about using the huge amount of material written for manuals and books that have come out in past months, since Temple of elemental Evil was previously released as an adventure rule book itself?
Tim Cain: "We are tyring to incorporate as much as we can in the timeframe we have remaining (just a few months now). For things like skills, spells and feats, we have had to skip most of the class books and stick with the basic set of rules. But we have converted a number of magic items from the module into 3E versions, so there should be "new" things to discover as well."

RPGPlayer Team

Sito ufficiale: Greyhawk
Sviluppatore: Troika Games
Publisher: Atari
Distributore: Infogrames Italia
Data di uscita: Settembre 2003
Fansite: The Greyhawk Chronicles
Intervista di Gamespot - Traduzione - Intervista esclusiva di RPGPlayer a Tim Cain - ITA - Intervista esclusiva di RPGPlayer a Tim Cain - ENG - Screenshots