Broken Roads - Interview @ RPG Site

RPG Site interviewed Drop Bear Bytes about Broken Roads:

Broken Roads Interview: Painting the human experience against a desolate backdrop

Broken Roads, by Drop Bear Bytes, is an upcoming post-apocalyptic CRPG set in the Australian Outback. After playing part of the full build at PAX Aus, I asked the team my questions.

RPGSite: What was the reason to set the game out around Western Australia specifically, was it just the large swaths of land, or is anyone on the team from there?

Craig Ritchie, Game Director: We originally planned the game as a road trip starting in Perth and running to the Daintree in far north Queensland. It was going to be a generic post-apocalyptic world with tactical combat and resource management along the way. The more we got into the characters, story and locations, the more Jethro [Naude, co-founder of Drop Bear Bytes] and I realised we were making Broken Roads into a traditional CRPG. 

So, we narrowed it down to just WA, and then just the Wheatbelt part of WA, going for depth instead of breadth. At the time, no one on the team was from WA, but we have since hired Amos Wolfe, our Lead Programmer, who is from Perth.

RPGSite: The art direction looks to be a blend between classic Australian landscape paintings and top down crpg style. Was there any inspiration in that regard, or just a natural consequence of portraying the outback?

Bianca Roux, Art Lead: We have done everything we can to stay true to Australia’s colour palette by having our team take trips to Western Australia, capturing well over 1000 photos of the various locations in  the game, and researching numerous locations on Google Maps/Street View. 

There was a process of research and development in exploring how to capture a hand-painted style on 3D characters, buildings, and objects. We leaned on researching many different games with similar styles, while still trying to create our own unique method. Our Texture Artist paints all the textures by hand, capturing large brush strokes, and thus, giving the world our unique painterly aesthetic. Our goal is to create a game where it feels like you are playing in concept art and we achieve this aesthetic with our method of hand painting 3D models.

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Thanks Couchpotato!