Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Update Q&A
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Q: Can you please outline the single-player mode in Age of Conan? How long will it be and what kind of features and encounters can the players expect?
A: The single-player mode in Conan lasts for exactly 20 levels, or between 10 and 25 hours of solo gameplay depending on your skills and pace - longer than Fable. ;) It is a story-driven RPG with a strong combat and quest focus, as well as taking you through some amazing sceneries and locations. The game is split into four different story arcs, one for each arch-class (Mage, Warrior, Rogue and Priest), and these arcs weave together to form a unique single-player story.
You can expect many different types of creatures and characters from the Hyborian universe Conan. To explain more about this, I need to give your esteemed readers some background information about the unique Hyborian world.
Robert E. Howard, the American fantasy author who wrote about Conan back in the 1930s, was greatly inspired by actual history. You can thus liken Hyboria to the Eurasian continent in pre-historic times, with a twist. He took the areas, and periods he liked the most, and threw them all into a melting pot. Roman history became Aquilonia, Egypt became Stygia, and so on. Into this pulp, he threw darkness, evil, loads of scantily clad men and women, and then he put the lid on. The whole thing was then put on the fire to simmer and stew. This makes Hyboria come through as a volcano about to erupt, exploding onto the player / reader and dragging his or her soul down with it! Everything in Hyboria has a dark twist, an edge, something sensual, decadent, lush and heroic about it.
I tell you this because I want to explain that to list names of monsters and NPCs will not do justice to the vileness and terrible fear Hyboria tries to impose on you.
The philosophy of the game is to let features gradually come into play, not to dump them all onto the unsuspecting player at level one! The main gameplay in the 20 first levels will thus be part of a story-driven adventure - doing quests and fighting for your life. I hope you understand, though, that saying this tells you little of the reality of the experience.
