Din's Curse - Interviews and Preview

Soldak's Steven Peeler has been busy with the first two interviews for their upcoming game, Din's Curse.  Here's a snip from Examiner.com giving an overview, although much of the conversation is about Steven's background and the industry:

Your newest game, Din's Curse, is supposed to have feature some unique game-play elements from dynamic generated towns to real consequences, can you elaborate on these features and how you plan on implementing them?

 Well first off the world is randomly generated. Each town you are to save has completely different problems (quests) that need to be solved and has different NPCs. The dungeons below the towns are also highly random. There are many dungeon and cave types, but even within the same type the layout will be unique each time. Within the dungeons the items, monsters, and objects are also placed randomly. Even the world itself has a different skew each time. One world might have lots of undead and the next might have lots of treasure. We want every single game to be unique. You will see many of the same elements here and there of course, but we want the mix to be fresh and different each time. One of my overall goals for Din’s Curse is to have a game that can surprise me even though I know about all of the individual pieces.

After the world is setup, it is still very dynamic. Things will progress depending on what the player does or doesn’t do, what the NPCs do, and what the monsters do. This leads to real consequences.

I like having actual consequences for the choices you make. If there is no consequence, then it isn’t really a choice. Should you save Gwen who has been kidnapped or deal with the Orc uprising first? In most games it doesn’t really matter either way. In Din’s Curse, if you deal with the uprising first, Gwen might die. If you save Gwen, the Orcs might start a war or raid the town. Of course if you are good, you might very well save Gwen and quell the uprising before anything worse happens.

Most of these things already work so we are past the planning phase. We are, however, constantly adding more pieces to provide more and more variety.

...and a sample from Werit's blog:

Werit:  With such a dynamic world, how do you keep everything from feeling disjointed?  Are there still 'epic' storylines or just one shot quests?

There are no epic storylines or one shot quests exactly. How it works is that each quest has the possibility of branching out to many other quests. Things basically flow from one quest to another just like an epic storyline, except the difference is that which branch is taken is based on the actions of the player, monsters, and NPCs.

Finally, Werit also has a short preview:

The first area which sets Din's apart is the character creation.   You don't just choose a class archetype and be on your way.  Instead Din's uses a hybrid skill system that gives the player around 141 class options.  That should add some nice replay value.