RPGWatch: You stated that you aren't happy with modern RPGs. So what do you miss or dislike in modern RPGs?
Alexey: Many things. We miss the breathtaking sensation of discovery, the feeling that there is a new living and breathing world that lies ahead, with hand-crafted landscapes and quests and with detailed simulations of its inhabitants' daily lives. These days developers take a set of rules and fill it with content. This content might be professionally and well crafted, but you can see this approach from a mile's distance. The world might be huge and detailed but uncomfortable, it feels like cardboard decorations for the role they want you to play. Not a world where you can live an alternative life.
Also we miss new, not clichéd settings, for example the low-magic fantasy like the first 2 Gothics and the crazy mix of cultures you can find in Morrowind. The Witcher 1 was a breath of fresh air with its Slavic mythology and bestiary as well. These days developers are not taking any risks to miss their hard won audience, they choose good old heroic fantasy with brick-faced heroes and huge shoulder pads or "realistic" variation influenced by George Martin and his followers' books. Personally I would like to see a game set in Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" world, grotesque and not pretending to be so serious. Or Mass Effect gameplay mechanics in a Firefly TV-series universe... Or the Dune universe. Lots of interesting settings and opportunities but nobody takes the risk to create a AAA title like that.
Alexander: The gameplay and level design, that gives you freedom of exploration, not hindered by quest markers and other "guided experience" gimmicks. You know, we really "lived" in some games like Bethesda's TES III or on the island Khorinis in Gothic. Why? Because their creators designed them, so you can find your way without taking a look at the map and constantly using a fast travel system. It was more interesting to follow the road and see where it leads, than checking if there are some question marks, showing the location of the quests or other activities on the map of this area. We like the more ambient storytelling through the details, observation of the events in older games. That is what we want to achieve in Exoplanet: we don't want to hold player's hand but to invite him into adventures that we design. In modern games the guided "cinematic experience" kills this feeling of freedom for us.
