Queen's Wish: The Conqueror - Jeff Vogel Interview
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Jeff Vogel, the mastermind behind Spiderweb Software and their old-school RPGs, recently had a chat with the folks over at VentureBeat, discussing Queen's Wish: The Conqueror, his latest project that should be kicking off a brand new Spiderweb series. The resulting interview covers the game's new features and ideas, its humorous moments, story elements, and more.
For example:
GamesBeat: How is this world for Queen’s Wish different than what you’ve done with Avadon, Avernum, and some of the other games you’ve made?
Jeff Vogel: There’s a lot of differences, both in the game setting and the game system. For this, I really have been pushing hard to try to do a lot of new stuff and innovative stuff.
It started with the idea that I’m always a sucker for games where it lets you build up your town, and you can build shops and sell things and make money. I always just got a big kick out of that. But I wanted a game where that was a major part of it, where you’re trying to build an empire and build industry and have all of these miners and craftsmen and artisans or whatever working to serve you, and that’s where you get your power from. If you’re a person wandering around in the wilderness, you’re sort of powerful. If you have this gigantic industry behind you, then you become way more powerful. That was the core idea for it. And then I thought, well, where does that setting come from? Why do you have that much authority?
The other thing about it is, I wanted it to be in part about a family story. I have a family now. I have kids, teenagers. I don’t think computer games deal with that very much, in a funny, interesting way. In the game you’re the youngest prince or princess, the youngest child of the family business, and you’ve always been a layabout, a ne’er-do-well. At a certain point your family says, OK, you need to join the business. You need to do your job. You need to earn all of this wealth you’ve been given. They kick you into a magical portal and you fall out in this wilderness, and you can’t come back until you’ve proven that you can join the family business.
Of course, our games always have tons of choice and options. Once you get there, you find you don’t have to do it. You’re free now, and you can start exploring and doing your own thing and making your own choices. But there will always be people in the world who have their own agendas and uses for you, and they have their own ways to bribe you. Everyone’s going to be bugging you and trying to get you to help them in their own way. When I started this game I wanted to do a bit less dialogue, because I find writing dialogue really exhausting. For the last year I’ve been doing nothing but writing dialogue.
I’m really happy with how this game turned out. I think it’s a cool story, cool characters. The way your character advances and the way he gains power really feels innovative. I’m excited about this series. That was a long monologue, but that’s a lot of what’s on my mind about it.
