Fatherdale: The Guardians of Asgard is an intricate RPG/Adventure for the PC where the battle between the Gods and their eternal enemy unfolds in the true medieval world of AD 1072. As one of the few immortal Heroes who protect the ancient artifacts of knowledge, you take on the reins of a warlord in a secluded northern valley of Fatherdale just days before it becomes the Battlefield of Fate to experience a story-driven multi-genre gameplay focused around RPG, RTS and Adventure. With over hundred and fifty unique characters, thrice that much in hand-crafted inventory items, more than sixty locations in steppes, woods and swamps, on plains, river banks and even inside the wooden Keeps of the Guardians, you have a whole world to explore, protect and die for -- and seven full-fledged Episodes to play through a number of styles and genres before you face your real Enemy.

Sergei Klimov, lead designer for Fatherdale gives us his views on things with this series of development diaries. This time he expands on the sometimes narrow views some publishers have.

"DEATH ROW"

So, Lord of Destruction or Yuri's Revenge?
I don't know, they all sound too bad. Why can't we buy him a good book instead, or something?

(a dialogue in Moscow's games store,
parents looking for a birthday gift)

Certain game designers often say how pissed off they get when people from the 'outside' (oh, that great "outside" that covers everybody stupid enough not to know all the peculiarities of a particular trade! :) say games are not "art". However, let's face it - most titles still appeal to the immature youth in us, and you can hardly call a combination of huge breasts and bloody monsters a valuable contribution to the exploration of the inner workings of human being.

The jewels like Thief or Outcast deliver a complex vision with a story and atmosphere, building up the motivation and thus providing entertainment for the mind. They immerse and trigger emotions, deliver suspense and leave you pretty much in the same condition as a good book does - they enrich you with new experiences.

There are also fine specimen of games that needn't compete with the other forms of entertainment, and these are pure games - take Age of Empires or Arcanum, they allow you to interact in a way no other form of entertainment short of getting your neighbors to stop by and play some toy soldiers or do a round of pen-and-paper RPG would make up for.

Yet the sad majority of titles is still driven by the instincts and that's as close to being art as switching on the TV.

And hey, playing to pass the time is perfectly fine, just don't call it art - it's craft. It's more predictable, it's what strengthens the stock price and provides more than 50% of the jobs in this industry, so it'd be stupid to complain (art, on the other hand, was never a profitable thing to engage in unless you have some 50 years to wait until the public recognizes your talent - and, pardon me, given you really do have that talent :).

It was a perfect afternoon when they entered the new village. Reinar felt a little nervous since Korazin, his other party member, felt a bit sick lately. Some testers played with his skills and values to make him "more mass-market" -- people at Fathertown failed to explain whether this was a new useful skill or a peculiar perk, and Reinar felt uneasy about the constant thirst in Kozarin's eyes and his decision to unsheath sword at every occasion...

However, as more publishers voice the idea of moving towards "mass market" to recoup growing budgets, the trade papers put forth some rather perverted ideas -a broader appeal (so that the game's theme and motivation would touch the heart of a Swedish investment banker as well as American student and German store manager) is replaced with licenses (the property is paramount and the software is there to support it, not the other way around) and "core instincts" which stands for blood, sex and (as funny as it sounds) lots of magic once you put the letters "RPG" on the cover.

The reason for this issue of diary is that we've just got a comment from one of the publishers who's seen Fatherdale and recommended us to add more violence and especially death scenes to "improve its sales potential". In the marketing sheet we have for the game it says "easy to get into = familiar medieval atmosphere", which we translate as "swords, heroes and adventures on the road" while he has taken it for "chopped hands, shiny armor and evil dwarves".

See, in Fatherdale you can't normally kill a character or get killed yourself since your opponent's motivation is rarely to eliminate you - he can rob you, or hit hard enough to knock unconscious, or force to retreat from his territory, but I can hardly imagine how a Guardian or a Nomad would knee down to finish off the wounded enemy and then proceed with the reputation of a fearless warrior (yes, yes, that was a normal act during the war and I'm not naïve enough to think that when you fought for your life with intruders, you would immediately recall the convention of care for prisoners of war - but in a simple run-into at the tavern?).

Personally, I think it's fun that you can take captives or lose your own party members when they're knocked out to save them later from the enemy camp. I think it's fun that certain characters have lesser loyalty and actually desert your flanks upon regaining consciousness (they feel for the strongest, and if they've lost at your side than maybe they would have more luck at the other?).

Yes, the two lads didn't look like your typical villagers and yes, they could have been more polite. But Kozarin's idea about killing anything in sight left no room for negotiation and taking the sword out in front of two younger, stronger characters isn't the best idea anyway. Father Odin will confirm that for him it was easy -- he got killed fairly quickly. But Reinar's in trouble now, and the gods below and above will attest to his oath not to take anybody with that "mass-market" sickness any more -- if you strike everything that moves, your bones will never make it farther than the first vermin camp.

I think it's fun that you don't have to go through loads when you've encountered too strong of an enemy while taking a lone walk in the forest - you'll have your butt kicked a little and most probably robbed, but it's not the aggression of a madman that kills everything in sight. I think it's fun that the characters panic and run or get scared and give up and I think it's fun that at the end of the game the death count would be quite realistic and you won't have to slay 120 enemy characters just to get to the final - we're talking about medieval glory here, and victory is made by the leaders and their decisions, not by the tons of canon fodder.

But that comes at a loss when a publisher, an organization that has to know more about the market and see further when it concerns developing properties and long-term value of the brand, tells us we'd rather switch to hack and slash and appeal with "how many dwarves have you killed today" motto - if they would be producing Mel Gibson's Braveheart, they would probably make battle scenes a major selling point and skip the intrigue for the sake of nude females :).

In the world of games that are too much like each other, in the trade where the majority of scenarios can be summed up as "good military guys save the land from bad-looking evil guys, and there's that third anonymous party that we added for the playability" we look for the publishing partner that can appreciate the difference and look at Fatherdale as a game of its own "fun factor" rather than a comparison chart of the differences with Diablo. Hey, we're not into massive killing at sight - but we're still fun! Yes, you can actually kill your enemies, but you can also rob them, take captives and force to retreat. Maybe in the next episode one of these chaps would become a member of your own party - who knows? And just tell me, why the hell should I kill such a good chance? Oh well, never mind. Some producers are like war children - seeing that massive player killing sells, they see it as core feature for consumers and so the circle of damnation goes on and on and on. But one day we'll announce the publishing partner here and you will know that it's someone with a broader mindset :).

Best,
S.

Sergei Klimov
Lead Designer Fatherdale
Snowball Interactive