Game of Thrones Interview
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Was there a specific gameplay element that they wanted to embed throughout the game to begin with? I point out to Veauclin and Sechi that I noticed the gameplay of Game of Thrones was strongly reminiscent of Dragon Age: Origins, especially with regards to power cool downs, talents, skills, specialisations all of that. Did the fantasy setting dictate that they follow a specific form of RPG gameplay, or did they feel that it could have gone in any direction and that they could just throw ideas together?
(On a very global scale, Game of Thrones is a lot about reflection,) Sechi suggests, (Actually, some of us probably wanted an action combat game because it's mainstream and players buy it. But we didn't feel that it had the look and feel of Game of Thrones, which is more about reflection and using your brain. Players should have to think in this game's combat. So, it looks like action, people die, and you've got a lot of animation and motion capture and all that stuff, but you really need to plug in your brain, to make good strategic decisions in combat.
(Actually,) Sechi confides with a grin, (one of our big references was the Knights of the Old Republic, which was a game [BioWare] did before Dragon Age. We really loved it, but you ended up doing the same thing all the time. So starting from there we tried to add some elements which really felt mediaeval. Like putting types of weapons against types of armour. like when you use a crossbow or a bow you can pierce chainmail very easily, but you don't even damage plate armour. And it's this type of stuff we managed to put into the gameplay to give more strategic choices. At every single moment in combat we wanted the player to make choices.)
