Warriors: Legends of Troy was announced by KOEI shortly before E3 2009, and Gaming Union had the opportunity to sit down with Hiroshi Kadowaki and Michael Bond to discuss the game.
Both are senior figures at KOEI Canada, an offshoot of KOEI that was formed in 2005. Hiroshi Kadowaki is the Manager of the Software Development Department and Michael Bond is the Lead Creator for KOEI Canada, so they're the perfect people to talk about with regards to Warriors: Legends of Troy, and the new direction they're taking the Warriors franchise in.
Gaming Union: First off, for our readers, how would you describe the gameplay?
Michael Bond: Well, it's a tactical action game, third-person melee combat, in the same spirit as the previous warriors games. This game though we're focusing entirely on bring it to the western market, so it's redone from the ground up on the combat, story, basically everything.
GU: How far into development is the game?
Hiroshi Kadowaki: It's hard to describe (laughs). It's already in the production stage, so it will be released by Spring 2010.
GU: Are there any online components?
Kadowaki: Yes.
GU: Can you give us any details on that? Multiplayer? Downloads?
Bond: Up to four players online.
GU: Will that be co-op? Or multiplayer?
Bond: Co-op and competitive, but aside from that we're not supposed to say anything yet (laughs).
GU: What's inspired this game?
Bond: Well, we've been looking to bring the series to the west, so what better than one of the greatest epics in western culture.
GU: So is it going to have similar gameplay to the rest of the Warriors series then?
Bond: To a certain level, but we're reinventing a lot of it. This is the first real attempt to bring Warriors to the rest of the world.
GU: Does that mean there's going to be loads of different characters as well?
Bond: I don't think we're actually saying how many characters, but more than one (laughs). More than one, but not quite to the same level as previous Warriors games.
GU: Yeah, Dynasty Warrior has got loads now.
Bond: Yeah, and I mean, in the Iliad, in the Trojan War, there are many many characters, but we feel it's better to focus on a small number to tell a more coherent and more fulfilling story.
GU: And you can focus a lot more on the gameplay of those specific characters.
Bond: Yeah, and make them feel unique, and telling a story that can center around those characters more, get the player a little more involved in the story.
GU: So how are you looking to innovate on the traditional Warriors gameplay?
Bond: In a lot of areas, of course in the style of the story, the story telling, and the visuals of game obviously. The music and everything is going to be very different from Warriors, but the action itself, we've got a lot of varied combat and stuff that wouldn't have appeared in previous games. So first of all you have a melee weapon, like a sword as well as a shield, so you're using both of those equally, shields aren't just for blocking, but you can smash people in the face with them. You can pick up stuff off the ground like spears, and throw them or use them as a melee weapon. You can pick up rocks and heave them at people, break shields, you can even grapple with guys and throw them and kick them and punch them. So it's more brute force style combat than finesse, so rather than kung fu action style, it's just like, fists.
GU: Some of the Dynasty Warriors games have a fantasy element to them, is this game going to focus purely on realism?
Bond: This is much more down to Earth, but in the spirit of the Iliad, there are supernatural elements. These characters themselves, many of them are demi-gods, they're offspring of some of the Greek gods. So they are larger than life, they're strong, as Homer says, "stronger than any man today". The gods themselves and the mythical monsters do play a role in the game, but they're not a common occurrence in the world; when a character encounters them it's a big scene.
GU: So does that mean you'll be able to play as these demi-gods? Or is are you just playing against them?
Bond: The heroes themselves, for example, and we can't say exactly who the playable characters are, but many of the characters such as Achilles, who is probably one of the most commonly known heroes in the story, his mother is I believe an offspring of Zeus, as most of the gods are.
GU: Are you looking to change the story of the typical Greek mythology to your own?
Bond: Ever so slightly in the pursuit of gameplay, but we're trying to keep the game fairly authentic to the source material. So I mean, there's the Iliad, and then there's many other epics that tell different parts of the story, so we're trying to stick as close to that as possible. As well the feel of the world is going to be very authentic to late Bronze Age Greece and Turkey.
GU: So I presume as well that many of the characters and locations the fighting will be are from Troy?
Bond: Yeah, so we traveled to Turkey and Greece (laughs) and took lots of photos the sorts. A lot of the missions are right in the area around Troy, and you'll be able look into the horizon and see Mount Ida, you'll see the islands off the coast that are in their proper positions and everything. They may not play a role to much in the story, but they're there for people that care. It'll feel like a big continuous world as well.
GU: You said this is the first Western branch of the franchise, do you see any more happening? Or does that depend on the success of this one?
Kadowaki: For the Warriors series, this is the first step to go into the Western market. We keep on planning to go to the global market, but this is the first step that where we specifically targeted the Western market.
GU: Are you looking to really push this in Japan as well?
Bond: We don't even know when it will be sold in Japan.
GU: But it will be?
Bond: Maybe (laughs).
GU: Are you enjoying development? Any problems?
Bond: Oh no, it's been great. I really especially love the research element, not only reading the Iliad, but all the other sources and reading all the interesting changes to the story over the years. Like, many of the other pieces of the story were written in later centuries, and of course Homer himself, the Iliad is several hundred years after the war had supposedly taken place. There's many different versions of the story, different chronologies, different versions of events, so yeah, it's interesting reading through all that and finding out what pieces are historical and what pieces are mythology and then picking the piece we want for our game.
GU: Will there be any differences between the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 versions of the game?
Bond: I don't think we can really say anything at this point.
GU: Not necessarily in the graphics, but any sort of features in one and features in the other?
Bond: Certainly when it comes to the online stuff, like leader boards and the way things are structured, I mean there are certain requirements for each console. So far we're trying to keep both the same. The naming of things in the menu and the slight order of things will be of course change.
GU: Any plans for downloadable content?
Kadowaki: As of right now we can't disclose any details (laughs).
GU: So you're thinking about it (laughs).
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