Demigod Interview
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Chick: Let me preface this next question with a comment. I think one of the brilliant things about Demigod is the theming that complements the gameplay so well. For instance, Lord Erebus is a vampire. And you guys have managed these gameplay mechanics based on vampires turning into bats, sucking blood, and turning into mist form. It's a great marriage of theme and gameplay mechanics. Like the Rook building towers. You want a power that lets you build towers on the field, so naturally it's something the big walking fortress can do. Tell me about the evolution of theming and gameplay mechanics with these demigods. Was it difficult? Or did everything fall into place?
Marr: It was probably the funnest part of the project. It was a huge focus. At one point I had two designers-slash-content engineers, and we did nothing but iterate on the demigods. The Torch Bearer, for example, that's about his 30th iteration. We redid him, seriously, 30 times to get what we wanted. Regulus? The same way. Regulus initially was an entirely different kind of character. He set down sentry wards. He'd set down his mines and then remote-detonate them. He didn't have the wings. He didn't have snipe. The characters dramatically changed, and our whole philosophy was, "Let's just keep trying it. Let's keep trying it. Whatever we think is going to be good, let's do it. Let's do it." We were given the resources to make that happen.
Lord Erebus is probably my favorite character in that example. When I came on the project, generals operated completely differently. Generals didn't have abilities. They only controlled their troops and they had auras and things like that. We felt like that wasn't active enough. So we had to make a pass to flesh out the design of all the generals. I designed Erebus in the car. I was on a car trip. I was like, well, there's the whole mythology that they turn into mist. They turn into bats. They turn other things into vampires. And they suck blood. So let's sit down and figure out all the different ways we can use those as gameplay mechanics. And we had to iterate on it, and iterate on it, until you get something that you feel is thematic but that also works in the game.
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Chick: Tell me about the favor system. There's persistence between the levels with favor and favor items. Favor items tweak the game. Favor ties into the Achievements. How did all that evolve?
Marr: That was one of my hare-brained ideas. I just came up with it one day. I tossed it out to some people, and it was very well received. Okay, you want to know the true history of how this came about? This is game design at its best. If you look at the HUD, I had locked up seven slots: four for abilities and three for items. That's an odd number. It didn't look symmetrical. We were in discussions there. We just needed to add one more item slot. And I was, like, well, let's do something different. What if that was some other kind of item that persists? Because that was one of the complaints that was lodged against Demigod. This idea that there's no persistence. There's nothing that lasts through the whole game, OK? And I came up with this idea that, hey, what if these were persistent items that you buy with this whole other currency system that's persistent. And that's how that started.
