This week’s edition GameMAG.ru had the opportunity to talk with the general director of the studio 1C Entertainment by Nikolai Baryshnikov and PR manager Ilya Svanidze… The reason for this was very interesting – gameplay demonstration of the game King’s bounty ii…
Released 12 years ago, the cult King’s Bountyfrom which the legs and arms of the series grow Heroes of might and magic, marked the peak and at the same time the decline of the domestic gaming industry in its usual sense. Due to the financial crisis in the market and globalization, tectonic shifts have taken place, as a result of which large notable games practically ceased to appear, and teams that survived the hardships took up outsourcing, projects for mobile devices and social networks, as well as the ubiquitous F2P. Time did not spare the Heroes of Might and Magic series, which, under the control of Ubisoft, slipped into some kind of indecency.
But 12 years later, the company 1C decided it was time to kick down the door with her feet in order to make “Russian gamedev great again.” And its flagship will be King’s Bounty II, on which a team of 85 people and 50 outsourcers are working.
The developers call their brainchild an AA project, which will compete in the same weight category as Kingdom Come: Deliverance… At the same time, the concept of the series has been completely updated. Yes, it’s still a role-playing game with tactical elements, but each component has been re-assembled.
What he saw most resembles Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle… The character moves in real time across the large “corridor” world, while the camera hangs over his shoulders.
Why isn’t the world open? This is due to the gameplay, since tactical arenas, consisting of hexes, are inscribed in the location itself. Battles take place in turn-based mode and are divided into two phases: movement and attack.
The battles began to look in more detail due to the tightened visuals: a detachment of soldiers looks exactly like a detachment, and not a lone warrior in an open field. However, the stronger the units, the less they fit on the hex (the dragon flies alone).
The tactical elements have also been revised as the player has to consider the environment. These same archers need a clear line to fire at the enemy, so a piece of a broken wall can create problems. Some hexes are generally only accessible by flying units.
Verticality is also present, so it makes sense to place distance shooters on some hill. Also, support can be provided by allied units under the control of AI. Heroes are habitually out of the battlefield, where they help the army with skills and magic.
In what he saw there is only one serious disadvantage – the fights are not distinguished by variety. In fact, the task is one – there is an enemy detachment that must be destroyed. There are no missions with a limit on the number of moves, defense, goal defense, and so on. No interactive elements were delivered either. However, it is the role-playing component that has received increased attention from developers. As part of the demonstration, an episode from an extensive training was selected, when the protagonist released from prison needs to get to the castle through the winter forest.
At the beginning of King’s Bounty II, players are asked to choose one of three characters. On the stream under the direction of Ilya Svanidze, a warrior named Aivar was puffing, in whose voice acting the honorary witcher of the Russian Federation groans with a weakness for golf clubs Vsevolod Kuznetsov (unfortunately, he will not be allowed to read ditties).
The character is a conditional archetype, which will then be allowed to develop in any way (there is no division into classes). To do this, you will have to spend one of two main resources: gold and mana. The latter is no longer restored, so you will have to look for it, spending wisely on buying and pumping spells.
The nuances do not end there. The fact is that King’s Bounty II pays great attention to moral choice, but the system is not implemented in a very typical way.
Making a decision, the player will receive Order or Chaos points, which can be spent on the acquisition of additional skills. And this choice affects the world around us. Some characters will not communicate with the anarchist hero, some tasks and units also have restrictions.
The alignment also affects the units. There are about 50 units available in the game (each has three levels of development), which are divided into factions. And they have a moral scale. For example, the morale of the Order units decreases if the hero follows the path of Chaos. The exception is the main enemies – the “Les Miserables” faction, whose units, in principle, cannot be recruited.
But the choice is not limited to only two ways, because the character has access to the paths of the Mage and the Warrior in parallel, which also greatly change the game (some places are inaccessible to mages and vice versa).
Due to all this, replayability is achieved. According to Baryshnikov, King’s Bounty II can be completed in 40 hours. But to try all the content, you will need to go through it again.
Stylistically, the franchise has also changed. “King’s Bounty. The legend of the knight“was an ironic tale with a simple plot, but King’s Bounty II is positioned as an epic fantasy, in which the emphasis is on the story, and the degree of humor is reduced. However, you should not count on blood, dismemberment and sex, because the rating here is 12+.
The world turned out to be large and detailed, and players can always find something interesting for themselves: merchants from whom you can buy equipment (a huge number of variations and sets of armor) or units, secret places, alternative paths, and so on. By studying the locations, you can greatly facilitate your passage: discover valuable loot, weaken the enemy squad, or even bypass the battle.
Visually, the game looks very nice, although there is no need to expect any graphical breakthrough. The snowy forest turned out to be beautiful, but best of all the developers succeeded in the dungeons, where fog spreads across the floor, creating the right atmosphere. And the fact that the surrounding space can turn into an arena adds variety. For example, one of the skirmishes took place in the streets of the castle.
King’s Bounty II is due to go on sale in the spring of 2023, so development is in its final stages: fixing bugs, adding animations, adjusting lipstick, adding a cinematic camera, and so on. At the same time, the demonstration for the press turned out to be unusual due to the peculiarities of production. The fact is that Ilya Svanidze launched the game on a not very powerful laptop. This is due to two factors. First, the developers pay great attention to optimizing King’s Bounty II, which will work even on weak PC…
The second factor is that for 1C Nintendo Switch is the leading platform (no port to mobile devices is planned), and a separate team is working on this version, in which the people who have had a hand in the port of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice work. The specificity lies in the fact that developers need to completely rework some of the assets for weak hardware.
King’s Bounty II will also be released on Xbox one and PS4 (control is sharpened for a gamepad), but the owners Xbox series x and PS5 it is not worth counting on any improvements yet. However, there should be no problems with backward compatibility either, which is due to the policy of Sony and Microsoft.
The publishing house is a partner of 1C Deep silverso the game will be translated into 11 languages. The demo version used English subtitles and Russian voice acting. According to representatives of 1C, due to COVID-19, they had to replace several English voice actors.
Most of the employees now work remotely, and an exception was made for the mocap studio. In addition, problems with the supply of equipment complicate the work. For example, PS5 devkits are now simply impossible to get.
1C relies heavily on King’s Bounty II, which will serve as a platform for brand development. As a benchmark for development, the publishing house calls Paradox Interactive… The release window was also carefully chosen so as not to collide with Cyberpunk 2077, which takes over all the ad slots.
If King’s Bounty II works, then the company has several proven brands in stock. While talking with journalists, Baryshnikov mentioned several episodes: “Space Rangers“,”Truckers“and …”Vseslav the Sorcerer“.
According to the top manager, 1C bought the rights to Vseslav from Snowball Studios. However, he himself would have been more interested in doing exactly “Space Rangers 3.”
King’s Bounty II will be released in March 2023 on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch.
Author of the material: Vadim Syedin (Vadimeys)
Read also: The Knights of the Round Table in reverse: The first details about the game King Arthur: Knight’s Tale…
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