Kingmaker - Interview @Gamebanshee

Gamebanshee interviewed Owlcat Games about Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

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GB: The pursuit of a more grim, dark, and realistic fantasy world seems to be more prevalent in recent years. Game of Thrones and The Witcher come to mind immediately, but there are countless other pieces of media. Does Kingmaker follow the trend, or is it, perhaps, more light-hearted in tone?

OG: First of all, we try to catch the true spirit of Pathfinder’s art style, which is renowned for its attention to detail. Let’s take character art as an example. Every piece of equipment, including backpacks full of camping gear and potions, are visibly displayed on the character and make us believe that these are true adventurers rather than generic fantasy ones.

We would call this approach "realistic high fantasy." The art style is still "high" - compared to what you would call grimdark fantasy - but the unprecedented level of detail and the way they are functionally portrayed make us trust what we see in the art.

The story will do its best to keep this ‘realistic high fantasy’ vibe throughout the whole game. There would be an epic adventure, a story filled with heroes and villains, honor and betrayal, allowing the player to pick a side. At the same time, the characters are never flat, the shades of grey are always thrown into the mix. Even the vilest of villains has a story for a player to at least understand their motives, if not sympathize. Prepare yourselves for making tough decisions!


GB: You're using the Unity engine, which unfortunately has a reputation for lengthy loading times and other surface issues. How have you addressed any perceived shortcomings with Unity and how well should we expect Kingmaker to run in comparison to other Unity-powered titles, if that's even possible to tell at the current stage of development?

OG: Every engine has its pros and cons. We took the time to thoroughly examine our options - Unity, Unreal, Cryengine, and our own engine which we share with Skyforge. Then we debated the benefits of each approach in terms of quality, pipelines, and more. Sometimes these discussions were more like battle scenes from Highlander :) And much like Highlander, there could be only one - Unity, which we felt was the best match for the CRPG we were creating.

Well, we are more than a year in production now and we still feel Unity was the right choice. It has worked well for our small-scale team highly experienced in scripting.

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