GZ Interview
9/20/02

Explore the divergent world of the role-playing game Lionheart with producer Chris Parker
By Michael Lafferty

The Disjunction ripped open a sealed breach to other worlds, allowing magical energy and powerful spirits to flow into the world and change it.

That was in 1588 A.D., during the Third Crusade. The magic and spirits brought power to some, fear to others. To protect themselves, the people of Europe surrendered to the Inquisition. The years have passed and the Inquisition still rules over most of civilized Europe. It inspires awe, faith and fear. It continues its relentless hunt for heretical wizards and magical creatures.

Because of the Inquisition the world has never emerged from the Dark Age.

It is into this world you are born.

The game is Lionheart, a Reflexive Entertainment, Black Isle Studios and Interplay game that could well create its own genre through combining several existing ones.

It is more than a role-playing game, and includes action and adventure elements. Other features include unrestricted character creation and development, numerous quests, a lush and diverse world, combat and an intricate storyline.

The PC game is slated for release in the fourth quarter of 2002.

Chris Parker, producer of Lionheart for Black Isle Studios, talked to GameZone about this upcoming title.

Question: Lionheart seems to be a fascinating combination of action/adventure and role-playing. How would you characterize this game?

Chris: “Lionheart is more role-playing than either action or adventure, but it certainly has aspects of those genres. Lionheart will have a little bit more of a twitch feel and has more puzzle-based levels than previous Black Isle games, but it’s not going to veer too far from our role-playing roots. It will still feature tons of quests and a healthy dose of dialogue and story elements throughout the game. These are all backed by the SPECIAL rules system (the system from the Fallout series), which allows extremely open-ended character development. The world and its characters have been made to take advantage of this and respond to the character as an individual. On top of all that there’s the typical slew of items, spells, and bad-guys.

“In short, I would categorize Lionheart as a true role-playing game, but that it has strong action and adventure elements.”

Q: The Web site game information talks about the Disjunction, and how the history of the world diverged. Can you expand up that in terms of plot and avatars players will incorporate in this realm? Are the avatars mystically based or are there other styles of characters that players can use?

Chris: “The backstory and setting for Lionheart are fairly unique. When Reflexive Entertainment, the developer behind the game, and Black Isle first started discussing the project, we knew we wanted to do something different. So rather than create a world outright, we decided to play with our own Earth history instead.

“So the world in Lionheart is much like out own, except that during the 12th century, magic and spirits were released upon the world by the Disjunction, a cataclysm of historical proportion. Many of the events that occurred in real history are mimicked in our world, but none are quite the same. At the same time, the human race has diverged into four branches based on the influences of magic in the world.

“The player will be able to select a character or they can create a character using one of these four races. The purebloods are normal humans, feralkin have been affected by a beast spirit, demokin have been affected by an impish spirit, and sylvants have been affected by an elemental spirit. Each of these bloodlines have certain advantages and disadvantages. After you select your race, how you develop the character is up to you as you select their skills and perks as they go up levels.

“The player’s character starts the game infused with a magical spirit. In fact, the story begins with the player imprisoned by the Inquisition because of the spirit they possess.

“There are some historical figures in the game, but none are historically correct in all aspects. You will meet Leonardo Da Vinci, who is still the tinkerer, mathematician, and artist, but he is also a magician of great power (which explains his advanced age). Similarly you can meet other prominent historical figures like Cortes and Machiavelli.”

Q: The game features a classless system. Are there skill trees that players must follow, or are character traits entirely open-ended?

Chris: “The game is classless, so after you have selected your race, nothing else is really deterministic. Skills don’t fall in trees, but are rather just a statistic that you can spend Skill Points in. There are several skills in the game like One-Hand Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Speech, and Fire Magic. If you’ve spent 40 points in One-Hand Melee and then decide to start spending point in Ranged, there’s nothing to stop you.

“It should be noted that characters that do specialize in skills will have advantages over other characters (when they do certain things). Of course, specialized characters will be very poor at other things.

“It’s intended that at every level a player should be concerned about how to best spend their Skill Points. How you level up your character directly determines what they will be good at, which means you potentially make a sacrifice at the same time. This makes the system extremely re-playable and should provide completely different experiences for different players.”

Q: The RPG genre seems to be coming back strong this year. What elements do you think will enable Lionheart to stand apart from its RPG competition?

Chris: “Lionheart features a unique world unlike other fantasy role-playing games. Most fantasy role-playing games feature a world that is created by the designers of the game or that is licensed. Lionheart features an alternate-reality Earth in which history has diverged from our own. The world is similar to other fantasy games, similar to our own, and eerily different at the same time. This creates a unique game experience which I think players will really enjoy.

“Lionheart will deliver a focused story with many sub-quests that do not distract from your overall goals. While other Black Isle role-playing games deliver in this category, few competitors create games that feature such a strong story experience.

“And of course, the SPECIAL system is really intriguing. Class based systems don’t allow complete control over what your character is best at. In Lionheart, with SPECIAL, you decide exactly how your character advances and what they are good at. For example, you could make a melee character who is also excellent at speech and bartering just as easily as you can make a sneaky character who excels at magic. It makes for a great role-playing experience.”

Q: Can you tell us about the rules and combat systems employed by the game?

Chris: “The combat is real-time, but uses the rules from the SPECIAL rules system. The basics of the system are that your skill is added to a d100 (random number from 1-100) and factored against the skills of your opponent. If you score higher, you hit. The fun of the system comes in the ability to target specific body parts and to cause critical hits. Critical hits can do increased damage, cause knockdowns, wound body parts, or cause any number of other problems for your opponent (or you). You can also tailor how your character is attacking. For example, you can increase attack speed at the cost of accuracy, or decrease your attack speed to land more hits.

“Spell casters will need to make similar decisions as to whether or not to use smaller, faster spells or to haul out their massive but draining spells.

“Other rules in the game function in a similar fashion to the basic combat rules. If you are trying to disarm a trap, we check your skill plus d100 against a value for the difficulty of the trap. If you roll higher, you disarm it. If not… you’re sad. If you are trying to Sneak past a critter, they occasionally check against your Sneak skill in an attempt to perceive you. Their ability to detect a Sneaking character is much higher in their primary field of vision of course, so it's easier to sneak where critters aren't facing.”

Q: Does this game feature multiplayer gaming, and does it have cooperative play? How will players be able to hook up? Will the enemy AI and strength change in intensity between the single and multiplayer game? Can you tell us a little about the game's AI?

Chris: “The multiplayer game will only be cooperative with 1-4 players. We plan to feature an in-game matching service to assist setting up the server-client games.

“The game, regardless of whether you are playing in single player or multiplayer, adjusts its difficulty on the fly to keep things interesting. We basically maintain a statistic that tells us the party's overall strength and as the critters are added to the map we adjust them.

“The AI varies quite a bit depending on the encounter. Some encounters will feature purposefully stupid AI, for example if you are fighting undead. Other encounters, particularly with intelligent or powerful creatures, will have much more intelligent AI where creatures call for help, gang up on certain party members, and make decisions in teams. It all depends on what we are trying to accomplish with an encounter.”

Q:  What kind of game engine does Lionheart use, and what did that allow you to do within the game?

Chris: “The engine is Reflexive’s proprietary Velocity Engine. The engine has actually been used in previous titles such as Zax: The Alien Hunter and Star Trek: Away Team. The technology behind the engine is extremely powerful in that anything and everything can be scripted to do whatever you want it to. On top of that, it features incredibly sharp 2D graphics with full alpha blending and anti-aliasing, so everything is really gorgeous. But the scripting is probably the most important part because it lets us build a world that acts more like a real world.”

Q: What aspects of this game do you think are likely to leave the biggest impression with game players?

Chris: “I think that Lionheart is going to feature the same aspects that have made other Black Isle role-playing games great. We have great story in a unique world, there are tons of quests, plenty of items and spells, many facets to character advancement, sharp graphics, great sound, et cetera, et cetera. I see Lionheart as an entire role-playing package which makes an impression as a whole. And that’s just what I like about it.”

Q: To whom do you think this game will appeal?

Chris: “I think that anybody that enjoys role-playing games, be it games like Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate, or Diablo, will enjoy Lionheart. It's exactly what it sets out to be which is a strong role-playing game that will deliver on character advancement, story, quests, combat and all that stuff. At the same time it will offer strategy and puzzle elements in a beautiful engine. Now who wouldn’t like that?”

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