Survival crafting games are a dime a dozen nowadays, so it takes something to set it apart from the crowd. Traega Entertainment is hoping Dawn of Defiance, with its take on player progression and mechanics infused with inspirations from Greek myth, will do just that.
Set to release into early access on Steam and the Epic Games Store on August 15th, Dawn of Defiance sees up to four players take on the role of the Defiler, striking out on a path to transform from a lowly soldier to a "god-like anti-hero," taking on the trials of the Gods, building your base and more.
We were able to chat with Traega Entertainment's Casey Bradley, the design director on Dawn of Defiance, to talk about its inspirations steeped in Greek mythology, as well as its approach to survival crafting games to stand out among the crowd in today's market.
What led you to land upon Ancient Greek Myth as your main inspiration for Dawn of Defiance? What about Ancient Greece drew you there, and how does the mythos that dominated the region play a role in the story and setting of DoD?
We explored a number of themes at the beginning of DoD’s development in order to find the right fit for the game. What excites us about Greek Mythology is the wide variety of interesting characters, locations, creatures, and stories available for us to choose from. I feel this setting is unique within the genre and we hope it is one that entices potential players. It serves as an excellent source of inspiration for the look, feel, and core gameplay elements available in the game. Our hope is this focus on Greek Mythology results in a game that is fresh, both in look and in gameplay, for fans of the genre.
Survival games are a dime a dozen nowadays. What do you think sets yours apart from the crowd?
As mentioned in the previous question, we feel our Greek theme creates a vibrant and compelling game world that players will enjoy spending time in. Godly powers provide unique gameplay abilities for players to enjoy. During our initial EA release, players can look forward to using abilities such as Dash and Glide to aid in their explorations of the Forgotten Crossroads.
We are looking to smooth out some of the frustrating edges found in other games in this genre. For example, our build system is very user-friendly. You can build the base of your dreams without feeling like you are fighting frustrating edge-cases of the build system half the time. We are also looking to smooth out the grind players must go through to get to the interesting stuff, especially in the early game. Yes, you still need to chop down trees to gather the wood you need to build your base. We just want to make sure you’re spending a bit less time gathering that wood, so you can spend a bit more time building that base.
Finally, we are looking to embrace player expression and customization. Players are able to select style and color options for their buildable pieces from very early on in the game. On the equipment side of things, we have really put a focus on separating the stats of an item from the aesthetics of it.
The game centers on the player as a Defiler, can you elaborate on what that means for the player, and how the narrative impacts the moment-to-moment gameplay of Dawn of Defiance?
I’ll save most narrative details for players to discover through gameplay, but yes, the story centers on the player defying the Greek Gods. Hades is the players’ initial target and much of the early EA experience focuses on the player growing in power so they can take the fight to the Underworld in future early access updates!
As for how much the narrative impacts the moment-to-moment gameplay, that is really up to the individual player. If the player wants to pursue the main quest line, they’ll find plenty of Quests in support of that. If the player just wants to spend their time building or fighting things, that is fine too. If you want to improve your equipment, for example, just explore the Forgotten Crossroads for stronger materials, mine those materials, and set your base up to process them. You don’t have to wait until you reach a certain point in the narrative to gain access to those materials.
Player progression – how does this work, and what sets it apart from other survival games on the market? To add onto this, the crafting system seems pretty robust, with players able to craft unique items with ingredients they choose – can you expand a bit on what this means and what it looks like? Is this just for armor and weapons, or does this extend to any crafting, like potions or even building materials?
Players progress by using improved materials to craft their equipment and by discovering powerful item blueprints or abilities. Do you want your spear to deal more damage? Build it out of iron instead of copper. To do this you’ll need to hunt down iron ore in the world and improve your base’s infrastructure to handle the refinement of that ore. You do not, however, need to discover or unlock some special Iron Spear recipe. Once you know how to craft a spear you are free to create a spear out of any material your base can process.
What you will unlock (through exploration, quest completion, or the use of our in-game merchant) are blueprints for unique styles of items. Examples include different aesthetic sword styles or a heavier cuirass that grants improved armor at the expense of stamina regen.
What is important to note about these unlocks is DoD focuses on a positive community experience, first and foremost. We want to make it easy for players to hop in and play with their friends, regardless of the state of the server you are joining into or the amount of time you have to play the game compared to your other friends. What this means is the item unlocks are shared with the server. If you unlocked a blueprint for a trident, your friends can now craft a trident at the Armorer as well. If you join a friend’s server a week late, you won’t be relegated to some lower-level section of the map until you grind to catch up. Just hop in, gear up, and go meet up with your friends to have some fun.
As I’ve mentioned before, we separate progression and equipment power from aesthetics within a given item category. If there is a specific looking sword you prefer, you can craft a sword of that type without having to worry about giving up a certain statistic that is important to you. If you then want to craft the sword out of Iron for the stats that material provides, but then want the blade to look like it is made from gold, you’ll be able to achieve that result.
This concept of materials driving stat progression, with aesthetics being separated into styles, themes, and color palettes, extends into weapons, armor, tools and building pieces. Things like potions and other consumables are a bit more straightforward right now. Our goal with these is to provide the player with a lot of power, but niche options for players to select between at a given time.
The player’s base: how important is building up and upgrading a base to progression? How robust is the building system (it looks pretty expansive based on some community builds you’ve showcased)?
The base, as a whole, is pretty important to progression because your facilities drive the materials you can process for use in building and crafting. Most of these facilities need to be built on a foundation and benefit from having a roof over them.
You won’t need a massively complex base to meet these facility needs though. Beyond that, your base is what you make of it. If you just want a simple base that is enough to get by so you can focus on other areas of the game, that is totally fine. If you want to spend the majority of your time building an epic base, that is cool too! Our building tools provide you the flexibility to build whatever you can dream up. Our initial thatch building kit is a little restrictive in the pieces it provides, just to help players learn the ropes, but as soon as you unlock the wood kit, the sky's the limit!
The description also highlights your rise from a “weak soldier to god-like anti-hero.” Can you talk a bit about that progression, and why we’re ascending to an “anti-hero” status when most games put you squarely in the role of the savior of the world?
We definitely feel like the Greek mythology theme provides avenues for long-term power fantasy that other games in the genre fail to reach. If the player is going to eventually take on the gods, then they’ll need to be quite powerful. We are excited to explore the concept of the player tapping into god-like abilities as we continue to build out from EA towards a 1.0 release.
As for the “anti-hero” perspective, to us it’s more interesting to have shades of grey within our narrative. It isn’t as simple as “the gods are good” or “the gods are bad”. It's more complex than that. There’s discontent brewing in this mythic world, and a group of mysterious figures want to make a change. You’re being pulled into this situation without a lot of input on your end, so how do you handle the situation? Are you willing to support this plan of defying the gods and to do what it takes for that plan to succeed?
Right now it looks like the plan is for a four-player max server – what is the reasoning behind this player limit, and are you open to larger servers to slot squarely aside your competitors in the space, like Conan Exiles and Ark?
We officially support four-player servers. What this means is we’ve been testing game balance and performance up to this player count. If you want to overrule this cap and launch a server for you and 50 of your closest friends, you’ll be able to do that. Just don’t be surprised if you run into performance or game-balance issues.
Since this is a game steeped in mythology, magic looks like it’ll play a role in combat alongside just standard melee and ranged weapons. How does the magic system work, and how does all the various ways you can tackle the trials balance with each other? Is there an incentive to use magic over melee, and vice versa? Could someone specializing in a sword and shield opt to swap to a spell in mid-combat, or are there classes/archetypes restricting that kind of gameplay?
We definitely don’t have classes or any gameplay restrictions on the player based on archetype choices. Players can mix-and-match items and equipment as they see fit.
With that being said, we don’t really have magic in the way this question seems to be implying, at least not for our initial EA release. We’ve played around with some of these systems and think there is some long-term potential there, but our focus on EA is on imbuing your items with cool abilities. Defying a shrine to Zeus could allow your bow to fire lightning bolts, for example.
Where we do give players access to more magical abilities in EA is through our movement mechanics. Players will have access to Dash, Glide, and Hardfall early in the game. These abilities play very nicely with our combat systems, making fights feel more exciting and dynamic.
God Trials sound like they could be particularly challenging for players – can you talk about the inspiration behind these trials, and some of the rewards players can earn by tackling them?
These were inspired by the stories of myth that see great heroes performing great deeds. The Labors of Heracles is a great example of this. The lightning arrow I previously mentioned is a good example of a reward you can gain from these. Not all rewards are specifically combat related, however. Rewards also consist of powerful potions and cool items you can build around your base.
What does your early access roadmap look like? What are you hoping to get out of your early access period, and how long do you plan to stay in EA ahead of a full launch? Are you also looking at other platforms like Xbox and PlayStation down the road?
In the short term, our roadmap will look towards expanding the content that exists on the Forgotten Crossroads. This includes adding more playable space on the map, new godly trials, more mythological creatures, more equipment, more buildables, and an expanded narrative.
In the long term, we are trying to leave a lot of flexibility in our roadmap right now. Our ideal time in EA is around two years, but we want to make sure we take the time we need to build the game our players want. This involves analyzing player feedback and adjusting our long-term roadmap to prioritize features and content they find important.
