Ashes - Two Worlds Collide Interview
Namirrha, 2005-11-28

Geocentric Software's Ashes promises to bring players that "old school" RPG charm, drawing on Ultima VII, Drakhen, and Demon's Winter as its spiritual predecessors, but in 3D and with boundless new adventures. Two vastly different worlds of magic and technology are destined to collide. Here, we took the opportunity to peer into the minds and hearts hard at work behind Ashes.

RPGDot: Please introduce yourselves, what you've done previously, and tell us a bit about Geocentric Software.

Resle: Hi, I am Andrea, 28 years old from Roma, currently living in Verona where I work as r&d executive in a local company. In the past I've written as a hobby a myriad of little games, none of which were ever completed. "Geocentric software" was nothing but the name a couple of friends and I used for our little pastime coding group J. Unfortunately they grew up, while I didn't.

Shadowmoses: Hi, I'm Olly Brown, 24 years old, currently living in Manchester, UK and I'm doing the graphics on Ashes (learning as I go). I'm self employed and err… I used to be in a rock band \\m/ _

RPGDot: How did your idea for Ashes begin? It looks like it's been a long time in the making.

Resle: Ashes is a transposition of twelve years of a paper rpg I did with some friends as DM. During all that time we shaped whole worlds into incredible detail, I could name the life and deeds and play the voices of over 100 unique characters, for example. The first attempt was done with "Unlimited Adventures", the SSI rpg creation kit. I pushed it to the limits of the engine, but it was really too static for my needs, so I began coding my own.

RPGDot: Your website mentions three RPGs in particular-Ultima VII, Drakhen, and Demon's Winter-have inspired and influenced the design and philosophy behind Ashes. Ultima is much beloved among older gamers. What do you love in these older games and which elements will find their way into Ashes to interest gamers old and new?

Resle: Ultima VII has something which no RPG had before: life. Living npcs and a breathing world which immersed you completely. Plus, there were a lot of items and activities which weren't really important to the plot or even to the gameplay itself, but which subtly added a lot. What Ultima VII missed, was in Demon's Winter: the combat and magic system. I think that an RPG just needs turn based combat and magic, otherwise it's crossing its own genre to become something else: a fantasy beat'em'up. Finally, Drakkhen opened the way to 3d fantasy worlds - that's where I took the inspiration to move Ashes from 2d to 3d.

RPGDot: Would you say the game is more focused on an epic storyline, exploration, action, or a good combination of all?

Shadowmoses: A good combination sounds like the ideal answer! ;) But seriously, storyline and exploration are very prominent features. Action depends more on how the player decides to play rather than the game forcing a certain playing style. In terms of combat, action is slow and tactical - it's certainly not a high octane click fest.

Resle: 65% exploration, 30% storyline, 5% action.

Shadowmoses: Or like that ^^ ! J

RPGDot: Peace is a fragile and precious thing. Could you explain some of the history and background story behind Pangea?

Who are the three emperors and the three empires? What are some of the locales players will encounter?

Resle: To answer both those questions at once, I am narrating to you what could be defined as the Ashes prequel, or "Episode I", if you like ;) Pangea is a fantasy world which was initially split into a myriad of little and relatively peaceful kingdoms. Magic existed, but it wasn't very well developed, and still played a minor role. This was until a self-declared tyrant appeared from nowhere with the power of a still unheard form of magic, Death Magic. He challenged many archmages and monarchs individually to prove his superiority, adventured to the deepest dungeons and vanquished all his foes - gathering a growing crowd of fanatics around him. Only a few years after the appearance of this dark messiah, the whole world was at war with his forces and almost succumbed - until a party of three adventurers raised from anonymity and unexpectedly succeeded in banishing him forever from Pangea. A very rude and unfriendly warrior named Beth Sil, a visionary priest who worshipped his own imaginary cult, Radagast - and a shy yet schizoid named Vegas. After a brief era of chaos and anarchy, Pangea almost autonomously split into three empires, each one under the control of one of the three "saviors". You will have the chance to meet them and to witness the way people have been shaped by their dominion in each one of the empires.

RPGDot: "Eyes" and "gifts"-these sound ominous and foreboding. Could you tell us a bit about the world of Damocles?

Resle: Damocles is a high tech world. Enough high tech to build powerful telescopes and space satellites yet not enough to actually travel through space. The intelligence of Damocles governments knew of the existence of Pangea for a century, spying it by any means, sending probes, and planning a first contact with it. During this century the resources on Damocles began to lower dramatically, and the "first contact" policy has changed from a peaceful exchange of knowledge to a well planned invasion and colonization.

RPGDot: Where does the player fit into the clash of these two worlds?

Shadowmoses: Slap bang in the middle!

Resle: Yes, exactly, caught in the events - and finally trying to prevent the invasion by... ahem, that would reveal the very core of the plot, which incidentally also brings a little socio-political message with it - I think ;)

RPGDot: Could you provide us with a sense of the size of the worlds and game? Is the game seamless and continuous or is it broken up into individual maps? And what are the limits of player freedom?

Resle: Trips to Damocles will be very limited. Pangea, instead, is *huge*: to have an idea, the one-room houses you can see in some of the screenshots take 1 "world unit", and the engine supports a map of 600,000 world units... being completely seamless.

Shadowmoses: Yes, one of the main features is the seamless world which includes the transition into buildings and caves. It adds to immersion and allows for continuous gameplay. Seamless houses also allow for NPC's to move between interior and exterior - allowing for a more real and alive world and prevents gameplay loopholes such as escaping combat by walking through a door.

Player freedom in terms of movement is not limited beyond the natural terrain, locked doors etc. Creatures don't level up with the player so certain areas are best avoided at early levels. In other respects lets just say that freedom includes the possibility to attack and kill your own party members.

RPGDot: What is dialogue like in the game? Is the game dialogue heavy or light? I notice from screenshots there are books of many kinds, from histories to humorous stories. Could you tell us about those?

Resle: Dialogue is very very important, and it will be as rich as it is possible. Of course intensive dialogue will be written for the main NPCs only (which should be 100 more or less).

Shadowmoses: The book system is very versatile and is used for scrolls, books, tombstones and anything that might have some writing or images on it. In terms of gameplay it adds to the backstory of the world, brings more depth to characters and adds interaction. Perhaps more importantly is the possibility to open up quests and learn little details that may aid you. For example, having obtained some info from a book a party member could say something like: "that "book" said there was a crack in this wall" which could lead to opening up a hidden dungeon.

Resle: And there's more… as each book can contain plain text but also trigger specific events by clicking on parts of it (for example a tombstone may have a hidden button which makes a wall shift).

RPGDot: Could you please tell us about "Pancake," the engine behind Ashes? I remember when Ashes was barely announced and it was 2D. It has evolved from 2D to 3D. Could you tell us about the transition and what you hope it will bring to the gaming experience?

Resle: Going from 2d to 3d was possible for us since I "met" Shadowmoses J The pancake engine was infact 3d from the beginning, but while I could only find or create some (sucky) 2d graphics by myself, 3d modeling was inaccessible to me. The gaming experience is richer now, for several reasons: the camera can change position to reflect some situations or to give you a better view or reveal hidden items; we can project shadows, stack objects, paperdoll-dress npcs, and more.

RPGDot: You mention Ashes will be a complete RPG experience through a number of features. What are some of these features?

Resle: All the things we mentioned up to now. Hell, you're hungry for features, aren't you? :D

RPGDot: Ashes goes against the trend of real-time combat and opts for turn-based combat. Could you please describe this in more detail? How do "smart turns" work?

Resle: Going against that trend isn't easy. Especially because I couldn't stand the modern implementation (i.e.: Squaresoft) of turn based combat, meaning that the world will "phase-out" to bring you in a separate combat arena... so, about the "Smart turn" system - it's fairly simple…

Shadowmoses: ... If someone or something is intent on attacking you and within a certain range, the game will switch to turn based mode. Similarly, when the danger is over it will switch back to real time. Of course the player can initiate combat whenever they want providing there's a valid target. Ashes combat is turn based for the simple reason that it allows for a more tactical approach. Good combat allows for the possibility that tactics can prevail over might. Real time and the notion that it somehow adds to immersion seems to be more of a myth than anything else. In our minds at least it removes the player somewhat from the experience by offering less control. Of course you could argue that real time adds to the immersion in first person games but Ashes isn't that kind of game… and twitch vs. role-play is another debate all together! ;-)

RPGDot: How will players develop their characters? It seems members of our party will have their own personalities and "social attitudes" which we can select. Could you explain this in more detail? Will it also affect dialogue and quest outcomes? How is reputation handled?

Resle: The basics of character development are the same as other rpg's: XP, levels, etc. Yet there's more: skills are very important in the game, you begin with only two or three skills, but you can learn more later. For example each "school of magic" is considered a skill for Mages. A Mage in your party may begin owning the Water Runes skills, thus being able to use the Water spells. Later, by spending XPs in the Air magic school, he may learn that skill as well, and cast Air spells. Warriors can learn new attacks, and so on. The "social attitudes" feature, instead, is focused on mixing the two types of party we've seen up to now: in games like Ultima VII it is nice to see your members dialogue with other NPCs on their own, or say witty remarks now and then - yet they are pre-made characters which you didn't create, whose class/physical aspect/name/gender etc. you didn't choose. While In most of the other party based RPGs you decide everything about each member of your party, but then they behave as a group of speechless dolls without any character. Social Attitudes allow you to assign a behaviour to each one of your custom-created party characters, so that they may play an active role in the game depending on it, while still being your creation. (For example: the party's "wrangler" may meet someone he/she knows in a pub, insult him and start a combat - no matter if you assigned the wrangler's role to a female character or a little weak mage - It can make for some amusing scenarios! J ) Finally, reputation is just like Grand Theft Auto's "stars": kill innocent people, steal objects from houses, and it will grow and grow until you're constantly followed by guards trying to kill your party.

RPGDot: The Ashes team has poured a lot of love and time into the project and the community. Do you have a release date in mind? And do you have any additional concluding thoughts?

Shadowmoses: We're sure the readers of RPGDot are wily enough to know that release dates are never to be trusted…so we will be releasing the game at 12:00 on Monday the 18th December 2006 ;-)

Resle: Heh, honestly - as you can see there's just two of us for now, and working on our little spare time only, so we can never know when we'll be able to release something - be it screenshot, a demo or the final release. I can say we *hope* to have Ashes ready for download before 2007. Lastly, given the recent happenings in my life, I can't avoid dedicating all of this to Jessica…

Our thanks to Resle and Shadowmoses for answering our questions and we wish them the best of luck with the development.