Enter the world of I of The Dragon with help from developer Primal Software

By Michael Lafferty

“… Most of all it’s the feeling of being a mighty magical beast”

The world seems so far below; the air fresh against the outstretched wings that grab pockets of air as though rungs on a ladder.

The enemy appears first as a speck on the land, then after a swift dive, it becomes clearer. It must be destroyed. You pull back your head and release a ball of fire, incinerating the trees and field, and toasting the foe. Ah, the life of a dragon. Now, if only there wasn’t that pesky prophesy to fulfill.

I of the Dragon is a pending action-RPG title from Primal Software and Strategy First. It traces the course of a young dragon, born and prophesized to counter the evil plaguing the land of Nimoan during the troubles of the 6^th Age.

But a young dragon must first grow before it can become the savior of a realm.

In I of The Dragon, players will take on the role of the dragon and will be tasked with growing the creature, improving skills and spells, and taking on a variety of foes. GameZone.com was fortunate to get an early look at this title and the environments and flight model were both exciting and fresh. But what lies at the core of the game. For those answers we turned to the team behind the title.

Slava Pismenny, Director of Development, and Pavel Grodek, Internal Producer, took GameZone.com on a magical flight into the world of I of the Dragon.

Question:  “I of the Dragon” is offering a rather interesting concept - which is allowing the player to assume the role of a young dragon born to fulfill a prophecy. What steps are you taking to ensure that players actually assume the role of a dragon and not just a warrior in a dragon skin?

Slava: No chance of that. In addition to seeing your alter ego, the fact that you’re actually flying, up in the air is rather hard to ignore, isn’t it? Besides that, a “dragon-ish” storyline builds up the player’s self-image.

Q: How will the flight dynamics of the dragon differ from what players may have experienced in flight sims?

Slava: This is NOT a flight sim. At the very least this is a Dragon sim. The flight dynamics also reflect this. It’s easy to learn (you can control your character directly with a keyboard for more action-oriented gameplay or with a mouse – with a Diablo-like point-and-click system – just like in most other Action-RPGs) and realistic enough to present a highly believable picture. But we are not concentrating on flight. We’re concentrating on the whole experience of being a Dragon. Part of it is flight, but most of all it’s the feeling of being a mighty magical beast instead of a puny human.

Q: Can you give us a bit of the background of the story? How does the prophecy part of the story and social dynamics (the perception/reaction of the races in regards to the presence of the dragon) fit into the plot?

Pavel: The world that your dragon has to restore to its former glory, peace and order is very dependent on your actions. “Your” side, local humans, have some magic abilities and they try to use them to help you (by attacking enemies, collecting their souls, researching new spells for you, etc), but you have to provide them with protection and help. You build their towns using some unique land magic, you upgrade these towns and defend them from approaching enemies, and the people do their best to help you in return. On the other side there are fearsome and evil monsters trying to devour everything in their path. They are not sentient but they compensate for that with bloodthirstiness. And, of course, there is an evil mastermind, Scharborr, who controls and directs them. You can’t leave small human towns without protection for a long time: monsters from nearby enemy-infested areas come there and try to overtake them. In short, there is a balanced world and the point of that balance is for you to define and shift it to your side.

Q: What elements do you think are essential in creating believable characters and how does this fit those criteria?

Pavel: We are proud that even in an Action-RPG genre we managed to make our dragons very distinct, with a well-defined fighting style and multiple development paths for each one. Even minor characters, that in other games of this genre simply give you a few quests and disappear from your horizon, have their own lives and fortunes. There is no need to get into details but watch out for traitors within your own ranks, someone who is willing to betray all the humanity…

Q: What elements of RPGs are essential to an immersive game and how does I of the Dragon meet those?

Slava: There is no simple answer to such a grand question. Most things in good games are so interconnected that there is no way to remove even one and keep the gameplay and fun factor intact. For “I of The Dragon” we had to balance its action part (you get to fight with your natural weapons, such as fire breath, and an extensive array of spells), RPG part (you improve your dragon abilities, solve quests, help local people) and strategy part (you have to keep all the towns that you built well-protected, to move forward only knowing that they won’t succumb to enemy assaults). This creates a highly immersive game that always keeps you doing something new and interesting.

Q: There are several different dragons available to play as in the game. Why did you create three diverse styles of dragons, and do these creatures level up in familiar ways or have you recreated the level system?

Pavel: One of our goals was to give the player a lot of variety. We couldn’t use a complex “inventory” traditional for human-based characters because that would ruin the feeling of being a dragon (a sword or an armor would look ridiculous on a huge beast protected with its own scales and attacking with its mighty talons and fiery breath). So we decided to offer something else: a lot of ways to improve your character.

Basically, each dragon represents a certain kind of player’s preferences. Red one is a strong, able fighter, getting into the heat of the combat and demolishing everything in his path. Blue one is his opposite: pretty weak by itself, his freezing breath is not as dangerous to enemies, etc. But he’s a very, very powerful mage, with devastating spells and fast flight. And the black one is a sort of “dark side” which lives in most of us, a kind of “dragon necromancer”. He fights by summoning all sorts of undead creatures, supports them with various offensive and defensive spells, and in a pinch his acid breath can be rather dangerous.

But that’s not all. Each dragon can be grown into a completely different beast: there are so many spells for each dragon that you just can’t take them all, so you have to decide what you favorites are and what you will have to skip this time.

That’s where our innovative leveling system kicks in: you get your experience points normally, by killing monsters, their lairs, completing quests, but you can freely spend them any way you wish. Want to get more spells? Just “buy” them with your points. Want more firepower, speed, health or something else? No problem again, the same points can be used for that. The prices are properly balanced, of course, so you can finish the game with any dragon that you create, but whether it would be easy or difficult depends on your own choices.

And this brings us back to diverse dragons: you can create a “sniper magician” from a blue dragon by getting spells that hit hard and far, but take a lot of mana to reload, and augment them with a lot of points into “mana inflow” stat to make them recharge faster. Or you can create a “fire magician” by investing points into spells with a red dragon. He is not as good with magic, so it would be a bit more difficult to find the best-working combination of spells and abilities, but it’s definitely possible and a lot of fun.

Q: On the surface, the environments of this game - while stylish - seem rather simplistic, and yet you have made them highly interactive. The dragon can scorch and demolish trees and cause landmass changes. How persistent is this world in the changes wrought - as in, if my character levels a forest, will it remain so? What was the hardest part of creating such an interactive environment?

Slava: The world that you live in is dynamic. It does its magic behind the scenes, of course, but it does its best to keep you interested and surprise you from time to time. Say, you want to burn down a forest. Should it burn? Sure, you’d expect it to! But should it stay burned forever? No, natural forests usually grow back with time, and it would be no fun if you have to fly over empty spaces. So, when you teleport to another area and return back the forest will reappear. It’s not a technical problem, saving the state of the world is not as difficult as it may seem. The real question is “what would be fun” – and that’s our answer. The hardest part is to find this balancing point: should this or that feature work in a certain way? What would a player expect and what would be the most exciting in a long run?

Q: The title of this game is rather obscure in relationship to the game, or maybe just straightforward and simple. To what does it refer?

Slava: Well, it all started with Steven King’s great novel called “The Eye of the Dragon”. While we were discussing the game at the very early stages we were thinking about making an Action-RPG that would convey the feeling of wielding a great Power to the player, but traditional characters were just a bit too commonplace, too obvious. We were sitting and thinking, tossing ideas around and then it came to us - “A Dragon!” A powerful magical flying beast, able to set fire to entire forests with fiery breath and level entire mountain ranges with an array of violent spells. And that’s how it all began. The story title remains a source of our inspiration (pretty distant, though).

As you can see in the images that we use on our site and in our logos, we keep the dragon’s eye as an important part of the design. There is something else, though, the real reason behind this wordplay – our dragon is not just a beast, powerful yet mindless, but a person, with his own life and value systems. He represents you, a player, and definitely has its own “I.” The dragon grows during the course of the game (not just visually – although noticing new horns and scales is a lot of fun); he matures and changes his opinions about humans and dragons. That’s where “I of the Dragon” comes from.

Q: Will this title offer multiplayer gaming?

Pavel: Initially we had some plans for this and almost final code but our internal testing determined that purely aerial combat in its current form was not as exciting as we’d like it to be, so we had to remove it and will try to get back to the drawing board in a sequel, perhaps.

Q: What has been the hardest element to realize when creating this title?

Pavel/Slava: Removing things from the original design. It’s pretty frustrating when some great idea just doesn’t seem to work as you’ve seen it in your mind and there is no way to keep it and make it work without changing half of the game. Basically, it’s every designer’s nightmare. Still, nothing is lost forever. We are sure that many things that did not make it into this title will make their appearance in our next games.

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