Masters of the Broken World - Interview @ GameBanshee

This is the first time we've featured Masters of the Broken World, a turn-based strategy RPG from Snowball Studios. GameBanshee has an informative interview and here are a couple of snips. First, a quick bit on the style of game:

As for the second part of the question, we find the concept of MBW is extremely promising. Judge for yourself: the combination of the grand strategy (Civilization, Europa Universalis), turn-based strategy mode (Total War) and tactical battles (King's Bounty, HoMM) and it’s actually working!:) All we need to do with the re-make now is to recreate the original game on the modern 3D-engine and correct the minor gameplay imperfections along the way.

...and on the RPG elements:

GB: We understand that the game will have a heavy dose of role-playing elements. Can you tell us more about the role-playing elements and why RPG fans should be excited for the game?

Vladimir: First of all, let’s define the meaning of role-playing elements. For most games it means that there will be some kind of a role system, characters’ attributes and special abilities, level progressing and weapons with different stats. It is totally OK, but sometimes the real meaning of role-playing is lost behind all these ‘role-playing elements’.

In Masters of the Broken World the role-playing is the way of making decisions and choosing your own style of the interaction with the world. Imagine that in while playing Civilization V or Empire: Total War you’re trying to roleplay Bismarck or Washington – sounds bizarre, isn’t it? It just isn’t really possible because those games are more about the war and conquest rather than about tough political decisions. MBW, on the contrary, is very ego-centric game: it is very important that the player acts as one of the Masters – almighty beings with very strong individual features. As one of them you have the power to choose your own way of ruling the world and that’s what the real role-playing is about, we think.

True RPG fans should be excited about MBW, because it brings the real freedom of choice on the table – that’s something you don’t see every day in the modern videogames.

And yes, we also do have the ‘typical’ role-playing elements like different heroes with different abilities, level progressing, units upgrades and variety of weapons :).