Rise of the Argonauts - Interview @ IGN

Rise of the Argonauts Lead Designer Charlie Price answers questions from Jonric at RPG Vault in the first interview for Liquid's action/RPG we've seen:

Jonric: How did your decision to focus on the play experience impact the design of the actual systems? Are you willing to share an example or two?

 Charley Price: In examining combat, we really wanted to convey a sense of weight, impact and lethality that is so prevalent in the stories of the time; just read a battle sequence from The Iliad to get a sense of what we're talking about. Therefore, we felt that we not only needed real-time combat, but also a flexible and dynamic system that would keep every fight fun and interesting, rather than dry and repetitive. This led us to a physics-driven approach to combat, where power and resistance are more important than damage and hit points.

Early on we knew that reinforcing the pervasiveness of the gods was key to recreating a mythological Greek atmosphere. As such, we constructed our character development mechanics to impact and leverage Jason's "Favor" with them. Furthermore, given the vast array of places, characters and events with which we wanted the player to become deeply involved, we knew we needed robust storytelling tools and a means to make meaningful narrative choices - as such, we have an interactive dialogue system.

Taking it one step further, each of Jason's narrative choices is aligned with the gods in some particular way; e.g. Hermes rewards cunning and manipulative tactics, Ares rewards those who are more impulsive and confrontational, etc. With almost every conversation then, the player is impacting Jason's favor with the gods, and thus the progression and development of the character as a whole.

While some aspects of each of these systems are familiar, we feel that by thoroughly integrating them with one another we've created an entirely new experience that will really appeal to fans of both RPG and action / adventure games alike.