Take on the Role of Joan of Arc and Try to Crown a King
By Michael Lafferty

Enlight’s Trevor Chan Steps into the RTS Battlefields for a Look at this Upcoming Title

The stories recount how, time and again, she was on the front lines during the bloodiest battles, leading troops to victory. She was renowned and feared. She was wounded many times, and invariably had to be carried, protesting, from the field of battle.

The most amazing aspect of all may well be that she never carried a weapon into battle because she did not wish to harm anyone. Instead, she carried her banner, and her voice and will were the weapons the repulsed the English invasion of France, and it was her spirit that propelled Charles VII to claim his rightful place on the throne of France.

Joan of Arc was betrayed, convicted by a corrupt Inquisition court, and burned as a heretic. Her words, as the flames rose about the pillar, were so moving, so unrelenting in their passion of her faith, that those who sought her death were moved to tears. According to biographical accounts, the Secretary to the King of England, Jean Tressard, was noted as saying “We are all ruined, for a good and holy person was burned.” The Cardinal of England was reported to have wept, and the executioner, Geoffroy Therage proclaimed great fear of being damned for eternity because he “had burned a saint.”

Her conviction was eventually overturned, and she was beatified in 1909 and canonized as a saint in 1920.

Joan of Arc was an amazing figure. The question now is will her story make a good video game?

Enlight Software seems to think so. Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc is a third-person 3D epic saga featuring real-time strategic gameplay. The game will feature eight massive battle scenarios, and the task before gamers will be to take a young peasant girl, guided by holy visions, from the streets of war-torn towns into the front lines of the fields of battle, building a great army along the way.

Trevor Chan of Enlight talked with GameZone.com about Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc.

Question: Joan of Arc was an amazing figure in history. Her story is full of intrigue as well as battle. How has the richness of her story been translated into this game? Will players have the opportunity to alter history, or does this game follow the time line is detail? Is this game more on the RTS side of the spectrum, or does it incorporated strong RPG elements as well?

Trevor: In Joan of Arc, we have followed her exploits as closely as possible. However, certain liberties were taken to ensure that the gameplay and the player experience were maximized. For instance, Joan lost one or two battles; however, it would not have been fair to force the player to lose these battles just for the sake of historical accuracy, especially if the player has all the elements to execute a crushing victory!

Other battles were never fought, but were more shows of force, where the enemy quickly capitulated without so much as raising a fist. Obviously, adding a scenario where the player wins without engaging in any combat in an action/RTS title would not be terribly exciting!

Excluding these events from the campaign would have left large gaps in the game's plot as well as the historical accounts. Therefore, we do give the player the opportunity to "alter" the course of history by allowing them to win or lose decisive battles. And unless you're doing a simulation, where historical accuracy is paramount, I think the overall gameplay experience is what counts most.

In addition, Joan of Arc is primarily action-based, with heavy RTS integration. There are also RPG elements, such as character-building, where players can enhance their character’s attributes and combos through experience points. The player will also meet some characters and engage in optional side quests.

Q: In addition to her place as an historical icon, Joan of Arc is also considered, by some, to be one of the quintessential role models for young women. Has the personality of the legend been incorporated into the story? Obviously you want this game to have as broad appeal as possible, but what are the elements you think will draw players of all ages and genders?

Trevor: We feel that players will enjoy being in the shoes of a historic icon such as Joan. Her primary appeal for players of all ages and genders resides with the fact that she excelled in many disciplines normally associated with men, such as military strategy, tactics, loyalty and valor. These are exemplary traits for any person, and bearing in mind the fact that Joan accomplished this feat in a time when women were limited to their “traditional” roles, and taking into consideration that she never received any prior military training makes her remarkable. No matter the age or the gender, once gamers start their adventure as Joan of Arc, they will ask themselves, “Geez – did she really manage to pull off that siege? That’s something else!”

Q: Tell us about the technological aspects of the game. What kind of engine was used, and what did this engine allow you to do that others would not? What has this brought to the look of the game? How does this game differ in terms of its graphical qualities?

Trevor: The Joan of Arc engine has been in development internally by Enlight’s in-house software engineers for well over a year now. This is Enlight’s second-generation 3D engine that will serve as the backbone for all of Enlight’s future titles.

At the outset we set ambitious goals for ourselves for developing Joan of Arc, and we realized that the only way to achieve what we wanted in terms of gameplay was to build a custom engine for the task.

The Joan of Arc engine possess all the state-of-the-art 3D features and eye candy that other big name engines on the market offer, and is versatile enough to power both the action and strategy modes of gameplay very nicely.

In terms of its graphic capabilities, the Joan of Arc engine is able to exploit many of the features currently available in DirectX 8.1.

Q: Moving on to the soundtrack, will this game tread any new grounds in that department? How were the combat sounds actualized? Who did the musical score and does this game feature original titles or tried-and-true anthems and songs?

Trevor: We really enjoyed working with Marc Derell who composed the original soundtrack for Joan of Arc. He coordinated thoroughly with our team to craft tracks to fit the mood with each scene of the game. To accompany the unique gameplay, we really wanted the game audio to encompass the most realistic sound effects that would attribute to the feeling of medieval warfare. Using the latest sound design technology, Marc produced combat sounds that will allow the player to truly experience the action involved in Joan of Arc.

Q: Tell us about the user interface. Does this game utilize some of the standard configurations for this style of game, or have the developers revamped the stock look and come up with a new interface? How much of a learning curve do you think this game has?

Trevor: The interface has a medieval feel to it; apart from that, we are not breaking new ground. However, and this answers the other half of your question, we did not want to create a “new” interface, because we really want the casual gamer to be able to pick up the game and start playing immediately without the need to wade through lengthy manuals and online help just so they can get into the action. Anything new in terms of interface normally means coming to grips with its functionality, and we do not want to subject the player to a steep learning curve. Therefore, we focused on making every aspect of the game as easy to understand as possible. That included streamlining the interface so it does not get in the way of gaming.

Q: What do you consider to be the most essential elements in constructing a game of this nature, and how does Joan of Arc fill those criteria?

Trevor: Joan is perfect for a game of this nature: a well-known yet enigmatic character in a role traditionally reserved for male action-hero types, leading warriors onto the battlefield and determining the future of a country. These are the marks of an epic figure in an epic historical scenario in an epic game, with the obvious twist that women commanders were unheard of at the time! We know that because of the gameplay in Joan of Arc, players will enjoy controlling their destiny as the heroine Joan.

Q: What aspects of this game do you think will stand out, initially, in players' minds and have them taking a step backwards in amazement?

Trevor: Most games up to now either focus on the action, or the RTS elements. Joan of Arc is unique in that players will not only engage in fierce melee combat as a warrior, experiencing the visceral and brutal nature of medieval combat, but as a commander, the player can also dictate the outcome of battles by employing strategic and tactical thinking. This will clearly illustrate the critical high-level thinking required by field commanders at the time.

The combination of the two gameplay modes will give the player a clearer picture of how medieval warfare was conducted on all fronts, and while still providing the “wow” factor they expect from games today.

Q: Does this game support multiplayer options and if so, what style of multiplayer games will there be?

Trevor: In the interests of crafting an engaging and tightly woven storyline and the combo-based action, Joan of Arc will only support single-player. We realized early on that given our design direction, multiplayer would not have added significantly to the game.

Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc is slated for a mid-November release on the PC.
 

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