The Fall: Last Days of Gaia Interview
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GB: How is development coming along on The Fall, and what aspects of the game are you currently working on? Are you still on track for a third quarter release date?
Carsten: Right now the The Fall is about 90% done. We're adding a few additional ideas and quests here and there, but mostly it's about testing and balancing the game. And yes, Q3 is still what we're aiming for.
GB: Can you detail how character creation and advancement will work, perhaps by providing a sample of what will happen when a player begins a game or gains a level?
Carsten: The initial character has average abilities and skills. The ability set consists of strength, charisma, intelligence, agility dexterity and constitution. The skills include Survival, Driving, Speech, Medicine or the specialization in a certain weapon class to name some of them. The player gets to adjust the body size and life experience of the main character at the beginning among other things. The former will affect the abilities. A robust character, for instance, is naturally stronger, however, will lose on the charisma side of things to balance it out.
Life experience is referring to what your character has done in his/her past and is related to the skills. A students of Martial Arts will receive a Close Combat bonus, but may not be of help when you're in the need of a good doctor. Of course, in addition to that you also have points you can distribute manually.
For each skill there is a set of talents that can picked upon reaching a certain (skill) level. Survival experts may learn a better way to cook meat (more HP restored) to refine this particular specialization. Later on one can also obtain the knowledge on more efficient approaches to set up a camp, which affects the regeneration of the party in a positive way. Skill levels and character level advance independently and you may get to choose a new talent while the character level stays the same and vice versa.
GB: Tell us a bit about how inventory management and trading amongst the party will work in The Fall. Will encumbrance be a factor, or will characters be able to carry as much as they want?
Carsten: Encumbrance is the most important factor even if the slots are limited. The stronger you are the more equipment you can carry. If you character gets ahold of a backpack he'll have more slots to put stuff into.
GB: How important will equipment be to a character, and will a majority of the equipment be purchased or simply looted while adventuring?
Carsten: Equipment in The Fall is as important as it basically is in most RPGs. The player can swap or steal items. Some merchants will provide equipment in exchange for quests you handle for them. Of course, you'll also be able to get weapons and items from defeated enemies. And which of these approaches will dominate? Well, that simply depends on how you want to play the game.
Some of these items have more than one purpose and can also be combined to create a new piece of equipment or upgrade one of them. Granted you characters are skilled enough. The most basic example of this would be a laser pointer that can be attached to a weapon in order to improve your precision when it's dark.
GB: Does the six character party maximum in The Fall include the main protagonist, or is it possible to recruit six characters aside from the primary character? If a player decides to drop an existing NPC to recruit a new one, will the discarded NPC stay at the spot the player removed them or will they return to the original area they were acquired?
Carsten: Yes, the number includes the main character. If one of the other characters decides to leave the party for whatever reason, he or she will return to the place where you originally met them.
GB: Have you decided on a total number joinable NPCs that will be available to a player throughout the game? Will any NPCs refuse to join a player, based upon his or her previous actions or perhaps because of another NPC that is already in the party?
Carsten: Altogether there will be 15 characters that can join your venture. You're not going to encounter all of them if you don't explore the world of The Fall. They don't mind becoming a member of your group, but different past and attitudes might lead to tension between certain party characters. The player will occasionally encounter situations in which you have to take care of arguing persons. If one of them gets really annoyed and if you don't make it to calm him or her down and maybe provoke that character even more, you're running the risk of losing that character.
GB: Will you be using voice actors for any of the dialogue in the game? If so, what percentage of the dialogue will be voice compared to text?
Carsten: Yes, we're going to use voice actors. As for the percentage: 100%! That's really vital to maintain a certain level of immersion and credibility. I think having only parts of the dialogue voiced really would hurt the atmosphere and the feel of the game.
GB: Tell us about some of the environments players will travel through during The Fall. Any favorite areas or cities you'd like to elaborate on?
Carsten: The Fall takes place in the future Southwest of the USA. More specifically, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. The landscape is being dominated by deserts and wastelands. All bigger cities were levelled completely by natural disasters. So, people live in small villages or towns. The look and feel of these locations and the buildings as well as some of the names are based on towns you can find in that region.
GB: We've read there will be vehicles available in the game, but will players be able to drive/fly/use them on a real-time basis? Or will a player simply jump inside a vehicle and be instantly transported to another location? Will NPCs join the protagonist inside such vehicles?
Carsten: Yes, there are vehicles in the game and the line-up even includes a tank. You'll control them directly and it works and feels like a driving sim. We implemented some very nifty vehicle physics in our engine and a car will respond the way you'd expect it to do so. Suspension and other aspects are being simulated accurately. So, NPCs can join the player inside the vehicles.
GB: From what we've read, you're planning on adding a cooperative multiplayer mode to the game. Will such multiplayer be available only to those who purchase a future expansion, or is there a possibility that multiplayer will be available at the game's launch?
Carsten: It definitely will be part of the add-on. Fully focussing the development resources on making The Fall a very enjoyable singleplayer experience and then producing a multiplayer component afterwards has always been our plan ever since we started working on the game.
GB: Since you already mention a possible expansion on your website, can you tell us what content you'd like to add to The Fall in the future? Although it's a bit early, have you considered developing a sequel to The Fall, or would you prefer to work on an all new game instead?
Carsten: Well, the cooperative multiplayer mode is a substantial part of the expansion. It will also include mod tools for the community, e.g. a map editor. As for the content, it's a bit too early to talk about it yet. ;)
GB: Other than the setting, what do you feel will set The Fall apart from other RPGs available to gamers?
Carsten: Well, on the technical side of things there surely are a few ideas and techniques that are rather uncommon for RPGs. I already mentioned the vehicle physics, but there's also the character motion/animation which is realized through so called Inverse Kinematics. Ensuring that the limbs are positioned correctly, characters can turn there head into a specific direction and that they're aiming their weapons precisely at their targets instead of having premade but limited poses.
Our approach for scripting and NPC simulation, called Living World Architecture (LWA), also goes beyond what current genre representatives feature. Every single NPC has different activities he can and will follow depending on the circumstances. We're also trying to make sure that what is supposed to be a community will also look and feel like a community to the player.
You'll also face some large scale battles that might take place on the whole map. Combat isn't limited to a range of let's say 40 yards. Don't get me wrong though, it's still an RPG and you won't spend most of the time on the battlefield. And, of course, often enough there's an option to avoid battles by being diplomatic or sneaking your way around the enemies.
Other than that there also are the Survival, Driving and Speech skills. And we're trying there's content for players that beat the main story line. You'll run across some new characters, quests and other 'nuggets' afterwards.
All in all we're going to give the players a bunch of quite unique RPG experiences and I'm sure they'll really appreciate them.
Thanks Carsten!
