We recently landed a Q and A with J
ürgen Reußwig Managing / Development Director of 10tacle Studios, The
studio currently developing Elveon, an Action RPG, for the Xbox 360:

On the Xbox: Hello and thank you for taking time out of your work with Elveon to do this interview with us.
OTX: First off, give the readers who might not know much about the game a little background information about Elveon.
· What is Elveon about?
· What type of game is this?
· Who will you be playing in Elveon, and can you give us some
· information on the story of Elevon?

Jürgen Reußwig: When we started our work on Elveon, we thought of developing a complete new elvish universe and created the world of Naon.
In the background story of Elveon the Gods have left this world, which they originally wanted to transform into their paradise. Just the Neamas, the elves of the ancient times and the fellows of the Gods, remained in Naon. A new era started where a conflict between the different elvish races began – marked by envy, malevolence and relentless wars.

The player slips in the role of an elvish elite warrior and follows the path of a legend that leads him on the trail of an ancient elvish king who attempted to find and claim the rumoured paradise and centre of power of the world – the city of “Nimathar” and the tower of the Gods “Starspear”. This ancient king wanted to claim this paradise for the elves and lead them into a new era of greatness.

The player will become the hero of this epic and his/her mission is to achieve the objective, the fulfilment of the prophecy – namely the liberation of the city of Nimathar – as the mightiest warrior of Naon because this task is normally made for a god.

OTX:
· What type of RPG elements will be incorporated into Elveon?
· Will this be an action game with RPG elements or a RPG game with action elements?
· If there are heavy RPG elements how will increasing your skills be handled?

JR: Basically Elveon is an action-RPG with a strong focus on action. But the game doesn’t precisely fit into a predefined genre or sub-genre. It’s a different approach to present an action game in a fantasy scenario. In Elveon we tend to pick up some key features with extreme detail and quality. For our elvish action-epic we first of all concentrated on the combat system – the true highlight of Elveon. Furthermore we have a massive Background story and a different way of storytelling. This dynamic fusion between story and gameplay is what Elveon makes something special and absolutely unique.

The character development will of course support the action aspects of the game. The player can chose from several possible paths, representing the four different weapon schools and learn new actions in the given school. Within Elveon the player will regularly interact with divine avatars, who represent the games four principal weapon schools. He will decide which philosophy he will follow and subsequently receive favours from the divine avatar. You will either become an expert in one school (for example Parthan sword-school) or an all-rounder that knows a bit of everything but excels at nothing.

OTX:

· Will the world of Elveon be open ended where the player can go anywhere,
· will there be a set path of where to go, or
· will there be a limited degree of open endedness for the player to move around in?

JR: This question is not so easy to answer. Basically Elveon takes place in levels, but the story covers a millennia old ancient elvish legend and will be told in a non-linear way. So the player has the possibility to play some levels in the past and some in the present. Elveon in that way clearly differs from a complete linear game. Our elvish action-epic is based on a non-linear component, which allows several solutions and clearly encourages replayability.
OTX:
Many people have compared the combat of Elveon to Diablo.
Did the team use any games or other forms of work as reference for Elveon? In other words,did anything inspire, or help you make Elveon?

JR: I already pointed out that the combat system is the true highlight of Elveon. The game clearly focuses on the very appealing action gameplay. We hired an own martial arts crew who developed an absolutely unique fighting style. This represents the admirable and powerful skills of the characters. It’s basically a mixture of medieval and modern European and Asian fighting styles. The action gameplay consists of exciting and well-balanced duels with equal elvish and divine opponents. Furthermore there are several game modes such as fights with multiple opponents, ranged combats and stealth as well as exploration and puzzle solving sequences.
OTX:
What type of characters will you be fighting in Elveon?
Will there be creatures in addition to humans or will there be just one exclusively?

JR: There will be different elvish races with different fighting styles (again representing the four weapon schools) and the variation of one on one fights and one against many opponents. Besides that, we have divine and semi divine creatures with special powers as well as monsters you will have to defeat.

OTX:
How did you come up with the designs for the creatures for Elveon?
Was there any inspiration from other games, books, movies, ex., or was it all original?

JR: Of course we are influenced and inspired by other fantasy worlds and designs in general. But the outcome for our specific creatures is really original and designed to fit our fantasy world and the role the creature plays within this world.
OTX:
Elveon is being run with the Unreal Engine 3 correct? How has the Unreal Engine 3 been doing in terms of letting you mess around with the graphics to make them extra detailed? How has it been in ease of use?

JR: Yes, we are using Unreal Engine 3. Apart from being a very performant next-generation game engine in all important areas, UE3 offers a superb material editor that allows for superior visual asset quality without a radically increased effort compared to present generation asset production. The cooperation with Epic and other UE3 developers through the use of the Unreal developers’ network is very satisfactory. UE3 provides us all necessary solutions for the basic game creation and allows us to concentrate on development of our own features and distinguishing highlights throughout the rest of the project. We put a lot of effort in the development of own features for the engine which create a unique “Elveon” style. For example we have done a lot of development for the display of impressive nature outdoor environments with forests and mountains according to our ideas, but also things like physics or the animation- and camera system, where we needed very specific functions to make our complex close-combat system work efficiently and look smoothly at the same time.

OTX:
It was said at E3 2006 that Elveon would have multiplayer functionality. Can you tell us anything about this multiplayer option and how it is being used?

JR: Primarily Elveon is a story-driven, single-player action game. We will provide a basic introduction multiplayer with several different modes that will exploit the tactical possibilities of Elveon’s combat mechanics, allowing player to test their skills with different weapons and different setups against other human players.

But since we see much more potential in what we could do in the multiplayer area, we are discussing some opportunities for potential add-ons. Expect some more revelations on this in the next months.
OTX:
In your opinion what is your favourite part of Elveon?

JR: For me this is definitely the combination of very cinematic close combat fights embedded in a thrilling story which leads you through the history of our elvish fantasy universe.
OTX:
In a recent edition of the Official Xbox Magazine they reported Elveon doesn’t have a publisher backing it up. Is 10tacle still looking for a publisher or has one been found?

JR: We are still talking to publishers but have not signed anything yet. As we are self funded, we have a bit more flexibility here than a studio that needs to get funded by a publisher.

OTX:
Can you tell us anything about the release date of Elveon or is that a secret?

JR: As we have not signed the title to a publisher yet, this will have to be decided together with our future partner.

OTX:
Is there anything that wasn’t talked about here that you want to mention?

JR: It is maybe worth saying that we have really created a functional fantasy world from its very beginning over several millennia including an own elvish language. I strongly believe that players will recognize this and feel they really walk in a fantasy world. And of course you should expect to hear and see more from the world of Naon in the future!
OTX: Thank you for taking time out of your day to do this interview.