Age of Decadence - Interview #1 @ StarWarsKnights

The first part of a new VD interview on The Age of Decadence is online at StarWarsKnights.com, which looks like a KotOR fansite.  This edition deals with genre conventions and VD's motivation rather than the game itself:

In countless interviews and forum posts you've spoken about "choice and consequence." Would you like to explain to our readers what that means, exactly? From here it sounds little more than a buzz word -- like "extreme" or "epic".

Buzzwords like extreme, epic, next-generation, etc. describe nothing and mean nothing. Reading that game X is epic tells you nothing. These concepts are subjective and since gaming journalism tends to attract the dumbest, you can read deep thoughts like KotOR is the pinnacle of greatness in TB RPGs or KotOR's story in fact is one of the best stories told this century.

"Choices & consequences", like "turn-based" or "isometric", refers to a very specific design that can't be interpreted in different ways. A game is either turn-based or not; it either has choices or not; the gameworld either reacts to those choices or not.

Choices are the core of role-playing. That's what separates RPGs from adventure games; instead of following a predetermined path and solving problems in very specific ways, you decide what to do (within the frame of a story and setting), when to do it, and how to do it.