Shadow Realms - Interview @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer has a short interview with Bioware Austin about their next game Shadow Realms. You can check out the games details in another post on our site.

James Ohlen, our creative director, said that [despite how amazing some RPGs are now], we still don't have that thing we had in D&D—a dungeon master sitting at the edge of the table creating things and changing things and being dynamic in the game. We have AI, it's awesome, but imagine if you enhanced it with a dungeon master."

From that starting point, BioWare built out the capabilities they wanted their DM to have: spells that affect the heroes, the ability to spawn monsters, controlling the overall monster makeup of a level, spawning tricks and traps. "That was the pretty straightfoward stuff," Hickman said. "Then you get into: can we allow him to change the world? In its simplest form, as players are passing through [a level], the shadowlord says: there's two doors in the room. That door will open, that door will not. Or there are two destructible walls, or whatever—he makes a choice and says that one won't open, that one will. By giving the shadowlord those kinds of things to do, we can change the flow of the environment."

Hickman also hinted that BioWare has ambitions about how the shadowlord may even be able to affect the story. "The shadowlord is part of the story. As of right now, he can't change the story directly, but he definitely has an impact on the story in some ways...[that's something] we're going to continue to experiment with."

BioWare plans to use the Shadow Realms alpha to get feedback on the 4v1 shadowlord gameplay—the feel of the action RPG combat, difficulty, balance. "When we get to the point where the players and us think it feels good, we'll put the progression system in, and the loot system, and the story," Hickman said.