Titan Quest Interview
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GB: How about Charms and Relics? How will players find these and what sort of effects will they have on existing equipment? Michael: Charms and Relics are very valuable, rare objects that contain the spirit or essence of powerful monsters, heroes, or even the Gods themselves. They are found as shards, or pieces, that can be combined to form completed Charms and Relics. You apply them to your equipment to get additional bonuses and new characteristics. Monster Charms are won by defeating specific types of monsters, and they have characteristics that conform to that monster type. So, for example, you may get a Boar Hide charm piece from killing a boar, and if you apply this to your armor, it will increase its armor stat. However, if you collect up five of them and combine them to form a completed Charm, it will get a bonus attribute on top of its base armor-boosting ability. Relics are more rare and can be found in high-level chests, occasionally by defeating monsters, and also as rewards for particular quests. Relics also tend to be more powerful, as they are more difficult to come by. Since only one Charm or Relic can be applied to each piece of equipment, and applying these to items is permanent, it becomes another interesting strategic choice that players can make.
GB: How intricate is the game's quest system? Will there be a detailed journal entry for each step of a quest or will players have to put some thought into what their next step might be?
Michael: There are really two sides to the quest system, the main quest path and the side quests. For the main quest path, the last thing we want players to do is get stuck not knowing what they're supposed to be doing next, so things tend to be fairly straightforward. The quest log always tells you exactly where you are in the main quest and what your next objective is; you can even re-play the dialogue associated with that part of the quest at any time you like. For the side quests, there's more that is left open for the player to explore. You may be given broad guidance to look for someone in a particular area, or have a lead on a problem, which you then have to track down in more detail to be able to complete the quest. Everything is documented for side quests in the quest log, but the details are sometimes left intentionally vague to let the player discover how to proceed on their own.
GB: What steps have you taken to enhance the AI in the game? Will creatures make use of any strategies or utilize teamwork against the players?
Michael: AI has been a major focus point for us, as it both gives a lot of character to the monsters in the game and provides some of the tension and challenge of combat. Every AI has something like thirty variables in its controller that allow the designers to do all kinds of interesting things. For example, not only are monsters differentiated in what types of events and how much provocation will turn them aggressive, or "aggro", but they can also be grouped to respond to similar threats against monsters of particular types, so a Boar may not care that you're picking off the Carrion Crows that are half-way across the screen, but if you attack the Centaur, he will immediately rally the Boars to help him attack you.
There are lots of basic combat behaviors, like monsters using ranged attacks will try and keep some distance from you, and monsters with certain skills will buff and heal nearby allies, but there are also some very fine and subtle touches, like the Maenads are more likely to try and dodge if you're attacking from a distance, and when you come into a camp, the archers will spread out, the spear-users will buff themselves and then charge you, while the sorcerer drops nukes and the huntress drops traps. None of this is scripted; each monster has its own AI controllers, and they react to the situation in fairly simple ways, but when you put it all together, it produces a very interesting tactical challenge.
And then, for the boss battles, we put a lot of work into making their abilities and their AI routines much more sophisticated, so their behaviors are even more complex, which is appropriate, since we wanted the boss battles to be memorable moments and challenging to players regardless of the type of character they brought to the fight.
GB: Tell us a bit about the adversaries we'll be facing in Titan Quest. Any specific favorites "boss" monsters you can tell us more about?
Michael: There are something like eighty different monster types, many of which have several variants, including different mixes of skills that they can use against the player, and like with the equipment, the monsters have particular ties to the history, mythology, and environments of the regions in which they are found. In addition to the base monsters, there are also champions, heroes, and of course, bosses. I'm torn about describing the bosses. On the one hand, they're really cool, and I'd love to tell you all about them; but on the other hand, I really don't want to spoil the experience of discovery that players will get as they come across them.
Okay, how about this. You put up a BIG FAT SPOILER WARNING, and I'll let you in on one of the fights. The boss that we included in the demo is a big, nasty Centaur. He's pretty mean, in that he's got a lot of hit points and does a lot of damage, but also in that he has some great skills and AI. When you find him, he'll call some buddies over to help him, so right away, you have to decide whether to wade into the middle or try and isolate them and pick them off one by one. Either way is risky, because if you wade into the middle, you're going to get whaled on, and some of his centaur minions can use net traps to stop you from moving, so if you get into trouble, you won't be able to get away. On the other hand, if you run away and try to kite them, the minions will move in on you while the boss hangs back, so you're going to have to take them out first; the trick is that if you kill all of his minions, he'll blow his war horn and call some more. If you try to dodge around the minions to get at the boss, they can also summon traps that will fill you full of arrows. So, my favorite tactic for this one is to draw off some of his minions and kill them, but not all of them; having a pet is good for this, as you can use your pet to tie up the boss while you take out the minions. If you do this right, you don't have to worry about the nets or the traps, and then you can gang up on the boss with your pet. Sometimes you may have to bail a bit to regroup or drink a few potions to help you through, but you can generally wear him down and emerge victorious.
Now, that's just the first boss in the game. There are more than 20 bosses, some of which don't even show up until Epic or Legendary difficulty, so there's a lot of great gameplay around these guys that players will get to explore.
GB: Have you built a proprietary system to handle Titan Quest's multiplayer component or will you be using third party software like GameSpy Arcade? What steps have you taken to deter cheating in the game?
Michael: We're using GameSpy and Xfire for matchmaking in multiplayer. We're not terribly concerned about cheating, as multiplayer is cooperative mode, so the worst damage that players can do by cheating is make the game not fun for themselves. If someone is being a nuisance in your game, you can always kick them out, or ban them, and if you just want to play with your friends, you can password-protect games on the internet as well as running local LAN sessions. You can also set player number and player level limits on the sessions you run, and search for sessions based on map or game name. It would be a different proposition if we were focused on competitive play or PvP, where we'd need to do a lot of work to make sure there was a level playing field for everyone, but with co-op, the best protection is just choosing who you play with, so we've tried to give players all the tools they need to do that.
Thanks for the detailed answers, Michael!
