Titan Quest Interview
Suzie 'Kalia' Ford & Brian 'Dhruin' Turner, 2006-03-16

While there have been many action/RPGs that have followed the path laid down by the Diablo series, none has seriously challenged Blizzard's standing as King of the genre.  Enter Brian Sullivan and Iron Lore with Titan Quest.  As co-creator of Ensemble's seminal RTS, Age of Empires, Brian has plenty of experience with highly successful game mechanics.  We had the chance to send some questions to Iron Lore to find out if this experience can be leveraged to create a landmark action/RPG.

RPGDot: Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about Iron Lore.

Brian Sullivan: I am Brian Sullivan, the Lead Designer on Titan Quest and co-founder of Iron Lore Entertainment. I was also a co-founder of Ensemble Studios, and a co-creator of the Age of Empires series. Iron Lore is a small studio situated in the Boston area, and dedicated to making great action / role-playing games. Titan Quest, our premier title, is now nearing completion.

RPGDot: Can you provide an overview of the game? What are your high-level design goals?

Brian Sullivan: Titan Quest is an action / role-playing game set in the ancient world. You quest in ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon and elsewhere on an epic adventure to save the world from an ultimate evil. We wanted to create a game that was stunningly beautiful, fun, fast, and addictive. I think we've done that - and raised the bar for the entire genre!

RPGDot: Diablo II is often acknowledged as the best in this genre - yet, despite the seemingly simple design few followers have come close to its success. Do you have a view on this and what do you think what makes an exceptional action/RPG?

Brian Sullivan: I don't know why there are not more quality games in the action/RPG genre - Diablo was a truly great game, and it had a fan base that reflects this. I think that the "Diablo knockoffs" we've seen were just that: poor imitations. To make a game as good as, or better, than Diablo, you have look at why action-RPGs are fun, what makes them works, and build up from there.

RPGDot: You've avoided discussing the story so far - what are you able to tell us about it? How important is the story to the core gameplay?

Brian Sullivan: We are still holding off on the details of the story, but it is epic in scale and was written by quite an accomplished writer.

RPGDot: How is Titan Quest structured? Is it a series of linear maps or do players have some freedom to move around the game world? How important is exploration?

Brian Sullivan: Titan Quest is a technically a linear game. It has to be in order to tell a great story, and maximize the delivery of great new content. But the game is huge, so exploration is still very important because there are plenty of interesting things in every corner of the game. In addition, to enhance exploration on repeat playings, we have a lot of randomized content such as loot and monsters, so the game is never the same.

RPGDot: You have revealed that there are 28 different class combinations, based on combining 8 "mini-classes". Can you elaborate on this system? What are the 8 mini-classes?

Brian Sullivan: We have 8 mini-classes or skill masteries, of which a character will eventually be able to select two. This gives 28 total class combinations, and allows for a lot of character customization and replay fun. We have class combinations that support archetypal character classes such as warrior and mage, but we also provide for many mixed classes where you can be a warrior mage, or a warrior with a pet, or a healer rogue, etc. We also unlock higher level spells through the application of skill points instead of gating them by character level. This allows a player to put skill points in unlocking higher level skills early, or putting a lot of points into lower level skills instead.

The skill masteries are: Defensive, Earth, Hunting, Nature, Rogue, Spirit, Storm, and Warfare.

RPGDot: What about character development as the game progresses? Do characters have attributes that improve and/or skill trees to move along? All things considered, how diverse are the character possibilities?

Brian Sullivan: There is a lot of character development in Titan Quest. Players can improve on their character's attributes, skills, and equipment. With our 28 classes and the ability to strategically unlock skills, there is an incredible number of ways to make your hero unique - and powerful.

RPGDot: How important are NPC interaction and quests? How simple - or complex - is the quest structure and are they typically story-related or is there a range of optional side-quests?

Brian Sullivan: We designed Titan Quest so people could play the game as they want. If they want to focus on the story and questing, we have provided a great story with story quests, as well as many optional side quests. If they want to focus on pure hack and slash and loot, they can skip most of the quests and just go monster hunting.

RPGDot: Combat is obviously critical to an action/RPG. What have you done to keep the combat interesting and engaging? Are there combo or special attacks you can tell us about? How differently does combat play out for different character builds?

Brian Sullivan: We've put a lot of work into giving the player many ways to fight, and also into giving enemies ways to fight back. We have what we call "weapon pool" skills that give you a chance to automatically perform a cool-looking and lethal attack. We also have skills that replace your primary attack and build up a charge of increasing damage or strike a piercing blow every fourth hit. We have lots of incredibly cool skills, divided into the 8 mini-classes. Of course, we've given your enemies skills too, so you'll have to watch out or you could get a fireball or a poison dagger or a net snare thrown at you.

RPGDot: Equipment is also important in an action/RPG. Beyond the typical gear, does Titan Quest feature matched-sets (such as armour that provides bonuses when every piece has been collected), socketed items or any other form of item improvement or crafting?

Brian Sullivan: To begin with, we have over 1000 unique pieces of equipment - on top of our common and randomized magical loot. The chances of finding an item no one else has seen will be pretty good! Some of those unique items do belong in sets, but we designed them so that you won't need the set for the item to be any good.

We also created something we call Relics. A Relic is an ancient fragment - of Achilles' spear or Artemis' bowstring, for example - that you can attach to one of your own items, absorbing some of the power of the god or hero that the Relic comes from. You can also find magically imbued parts of animals, like a tusk or a feather, that work like Relics do. We are calling these Charms.

RPGDot: In past interviews, you have mentioned that magic in Titan Quest comes in the form of skills. Can you elaborate on the magic system? You have mentioned that points can be spent to modify spells - how does this work and what can be achieved?

Brian Sullivan: Many skills in Titan Quest can be enhanced with a few modifiers, which are essentially related skills. The system is quite simple. Once you have the skill, you can unlock its modifiers. These modifiers will do things such as add deadly fragments to fly off of your fireball when it lands, or give your arrow a chance to pierce through one enemy and hit the one behind it. Most pets have modifiers that give them new abilities, better armor, and so forth.

Our main goal has been to create a system where early skills never grow obsolete. I think the modifier skills do this beautifully.

RPGDot: Multiplayer - we know you will feature co-op - what other modes will you support, how many players and will you be using a service like GameSpy or your own technology? How important is multiplayer to the game as a whole?

Brian Sullivan: We designed Titan Quest from the beginning with multi-player in mind. We have always thought that questing and killing with your buddies is the most fun. Coop is the only multi-player mode in Titan Quest. You can play the main campaign single player, multi-player, or a combination of the two. We are still finalizing the number of players at this time. We are using GameSpy technology and service for multi-player.

RPGDot: Moving on to the toolset - what facilities will ship with the game? It was mentioned that scripts won't be included - what does this mean, exactly?

Brian Sullivan: We will be shipping the level editor and the quest editor. The level editor is an incredibly powerful and easy to use tool, allowing someone to create an incredibly beautiful world in a relatively small amount of time. These tools will allow players to create their own levels with quests or a full campaign.

RPGDot: Can the toolset be used to create self-contained adventures or is it primarily designed to modify the existing campaign? What about multiplayer maps or campaigns and is there any possibility of the community creating persistent worlds?

Brian Sullivan: The tools are designed to let players create self-contained adventures. All maps/campaigns can be played single or multi-player. We did not design the game as a persistent world (but if someone keeps a multi-player game running long enough…).

RPGDot: What is the current status of development?

Brian Sullivan: We are crunching like mad and a couple of months away from going gold.

RPGDot: Is there anything you would like to add in closing?

Brian Sullivan: I am pleased and proud of what we've created here at Iron Lore. It has been a lot of hard work. I can't wait until we put Titan Quest into the hands of gamers everywhere.

We'd like to thank Brian and Iron Lore for their time and wish them the best with the development. As always, we'll keep you up to date on the latest news.