Eon of Tears Interview

2002-12-03

We had a talk with Jonathan Croteau and Olivier Jasmin from Evillusion who are working on Eon of Tears, a game with a biblical setting, which makes it different from many other games.

Jonathan Croteau and Olivier Jasmin: We are Jonathan Croteau and Olivier Jasmin. Jonathan Croteau is the founder of the company. He is responsible for the development at Evillusion Inc. Olivier Jasmin is in charge of public relations, financing and marketing.

EVILLUSION is a game developer created in 2000 and located in Montreal, Canada. Our team is composed of 35 professionals from France, Quebec, Belgium and Sweden. After developing a prototype game written is DOS, the company decided to specialize in PC Games. We are presently working on our first title called EON of TEARS.

RPGDot: The bible as part of a game. Aren't you afraid people will see it as a mockery of the bible?

Olivier Jasmin: At first, the idea can be seen as if we wanted to make fun of the Bible. By no means we are trying to offend people. We just want to make the best game possible. We try to come up with something fun, entertaining and addictive for players. You’d be surprised to see how well we illustrate various interpretations that many consider only to be a better understandings of the Bible's texts real meaning.

We are more concerned about being labeled as moralistic and promoters of religious values than offending people. This game is not meant to promote any ideologies. Yes, people will learn something about Christian History but this is not the meaning of the game. As a matter of fact, people from any religion beliefs and background will enjoy the game .

We are aware that this game will provoke some negative reactions, but we won’t be the first company to do so. After all, this subject was covered several times in movies or music, why not games. As long as gamers buy the idea and become avid fans that’s all that matters.

RPGDot: How close to the contents of the bible is the story of the game? Are we visiting the cities and places that existed then? Do we meet the people we know from the bible? And by influencing things in the game, do we influence events as written in the bible?

Jonathan Croteau: The script is based on several critical events from the Old and New Testament of the Bible. It also covers more recent events relying on the different philosophies and modern theories of Christian history. If we could sum this up in one sentence, the story base starts at the beginning of Creation and finishes at the End of Time.

One of the main preoccupations we had once we started the designing of Eon of Tears, was whether we would respect or not the historical architectural aspect of the Bible. Therefore, we had to pay attention to the smallest details of places like Jerusalem of Babylon, to only name these two. However, as far as mythical elements were concerned, like the destruction of Sodom and Gommorh, we let our creativity lead the way. We always kept in consideration that we are after all developing a video game and it is our job to do our best to make it as interesting and attractive to the players. We could affirm that our game is a mix between historical images and some more suitable for a video game.

Obviously, players will in EoT run into famous characters from the Bible who will help or stop them in their completion of the different quests of the game. The influence we might have on the gameplay will also influence some minor elements of the Bible, but without being able to stop bigger events like Jesus' execution.

RPGDot: Does the game go through the entire bible, or only a subset of it? Where does the game start and where does it end?

Olivier Jasmin: The game goes through a lot of the most important parts of the Bible. It starts at the beginning of the Bible with the "Adam" chapter and it ends with the Apocalypse.

RPGDot: Is there a party or is there only a single character? Which characters can we play and how do we change from one character to the other?

Jonathan Croteau: Of course, we will be able to accomplish the quest of the game with the cooperation of parties where each have their own personalities, skills and specifications. Players can become different characters from the Bible like Jesus, Moses, Cain, and will also be partnered with other characters from the Old and New Testament. The changes in characters are made through archetypes, taking different forms (while using the same skills and personalities) from one period to another. In other words, a member of our party living at Moses’ time can comeback at the time of Jesus for example. Instead of being an Egyptian merchant, he’ll be one from Jerusalem.

RPGDot: When we play as a character from the bible can we play it different than the way the character is described in the bible?

Jonathan Croteau: As mentioned above, to a certain extent, it will be possible to modify some parts of the story. It would be quite boring to force players to play exactly according to the historic attitudes of the characters of the Bible. We would like to emphasize on the fact that players will have the choice to set their missions towards the "Good" or the "Evil". The way they'll control their characters affects their destiny. However, in order to avoid drastic changes of historical facts, the curse of destiny will start operating at the next level. In other terms, if the player decides to use Moses for bad intentions, well the next character played would be Judas instead of Jesus (this is just an example and is not intended to reflect the actual game). You can conclude that it won’t be possible to play Jesus as a bad character, for obvious reasons. Imaging what a controversy that’d be.

RPGDot: What is gameplay like, can you describe it please? Is the emphasis on story and quests or more on hacking and fighting?

Jonathan Croteau: Our gameplay is based on the idea that several questions will remained unanswered between the time players turn their consoles off and restart the game. Traditionally, RPGs are third person oriented. EoT, is a first person game simply because the player incarnates a character. He is The Character. This approach enables us to bring a greater synergy between the player and his hero. We’ve decided to guide our gameplay towards what is used in Survival Horror games so we could add the suspense rarely seen in traditional RPGs but often felt in game like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, … Therefore, you find the best of both worlds. Still, as far as the fighting is concerned, they’ll occur at the third person, in a semi-turn based and semi real-time based mode so we can enjoy the magnificence of the different scenes.

RPGDot: Which opponents do we meet? I assume there are no standard goblins and orcs...?

Jonathan Croteau: Of course not. We’ve decided to avoid overexposed “cliches” like dungeons and dragons with an original concept and script. Therefore, you won’t find any of these orcs, goblins etc.. We used the great creativity of our 2D/3D artists to conceptualize and create innovative new types of monsters and creatures. You’ll also find enemies proper to the Bible like, angels and devils.

RPGDot: And how does combat take place, there is combat, isn't there?

Jonathan Croteau: A game without combat? Of course not. Combat is a big part of this game, as the Bible is surely one of the most violent books ever written. We might just imagine how great the scenes will be. As we said before, combats will take place at the third person in a "home made" mode, where defensive and offensive strategic tactics are more than welcomed. Characters can interact directly with obstacles coming from the ground like trees, water, rocks … In order to have superior graphic environments, we load a new combat scene using less polygons than you would find in an entire village scene, so we can elevate our polygon standards attributed to monsters and characters and our particle effects to standards never attained in gaming. The difference with scenes loaded in Final Fantasy, is that ours are regenerated with great respect to the original scene where the combat takes place, but without the heaviness of the original site. We manage to do so by using innovative techniques in programming and computer graphics design.

RPGDot: And magic? Or something similar? Is there something like that? How does it work?

Jonathan Croteau: Eon of Tears includes magic and great special effects. Since our game concept relies on the Bible, it would be logical to think that magic is from God’s powers and other divine creatures. However, how boring would that be if it only came from them. That is why we came up with a gameplay where skills and aptitudes influence directly the power of magic used by characters. Therefore, they become mortal as if they were gaining their power from the hands of God.

RPGDot: Is there a character generation? Can you describe the RPG System? What skills & attributes are there?

Jonathan Croteau: There is not actual character generation. Still, it is possible to improve certain traits, aptitudes of characters during the game quests. The characters evolve according to our own system of skills where the player may decide to increase his characters’ skills according to his goals. The players may also learn different techniques, actions and behaviors with their different skills. The more XP are attributed to a skill, the more powerful these associated actions will be.

RPGDot: What else does the game offer? A journal, a quest book, automap, a real inventory, multiple choice dialogues, etc...?

Jonathan Croteau: The player can be helped by automaps and find the answers to several questions and sub-quests, by searching in sacred books and non sacred ones. They’ll definitely be an inventory that will enable the player to answer different issues in different manners, as far as dialogues are concerned.

RPGDot: Is there a multiplayer part and if so, what gamemodes does it offer?

Jonathan Croteau: No. At the present time, not multiplayer part is planned, except for the on-line transactional site where players can trade, buy magic powers and weapons. People will be able to make their own weapons and magic (with the help of powerful editors) so they can sell, buy or trade them through a Web Server. We hope to start an Internet community with this functionality, but without having something too complicated. In other words, users will be free to use this on-line mode or just play the usual way on their PC.

RPGDot: What are you trying to accomplish with Eon of Tears? Just a game? or something else?

Olivier Jasmin: We want to make the best game possible. The idea behind Eon of Tears is purely video game oriented. If people can learn about religion, fine, but it is by no mean our goal. We’d like to get recognized as an innovative development studio that was able to produce a game of superior quality an that managed to attract the attention of the gaming community and gamers. Another goal of ours is to make a video game that will interest the RPG fans as much as the survival horror ones. Finally, we hope that this first production will lead to many other ones from developed by Evillusion.

RPGDot: What part of Eon of Tears do you like best?

Olivier Jasmin: What I like about Eon of Tears and one of the reasons I believe people will enjoy it is the fact that the game is replayable. Though, some of the missions and paths come back game after game, the gameplay changes depending of the decisions you make and the paths you choose. What also attracts my attention is that it uses the best of Role Playing Games combined with the suspense normally found in Survival Horror Games.

RPGDot: When do you think the game is ready to be released?

Olivier Jasmin: Our goal is to have the game released by Spring 2004. Fortunately, the engine we are using called Intrinsic Alchemy developed by Intrinsic Graphics enables us to work much faster than we did in the past while using other engines. A game teaser, some cut scenes and previews are planned to be released as the production goes along. At the moment, you may find some on our web site: http://www.evillusion.com.

RPGDot: Do you have anything else to add?

Jonathan Croteau and Olivier Jasmin: We hope that people will enjoy the game. After all, it is a game that contains superior graphics, a great script, challenges and actions. We can just add that Eon of Tears offers the best of RPGs and Survival Horror Games. What else can we ask for.