The latest newsletter is out for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. In it, readers are informed about what the team has most recently been working away on. In January, for instance, animations have gone under the microscope as well as the foundational phases for the Faerthale zone, though not much will be revealed...yet. In addition, there is a lengthy look at the foundation of the game world itself and a Q&A with Brad McQuaid.
The interview with McQuaid targets his long-running career in games development and how it's been foundational to his creation of Pantheon. McQuaid also speaks about the creative process behind Terminus, the game world, and delves into development challenges and his role in the dev process. It even provides a peek into his thoughts about fans hoping that Pantheon will "see it as a chance to relive elements of [his] past games".
Q: Some Pantheon fans see the game as a chance to relive elements of your past games, while others see it as a chance to improve on them. How do you determine which elements of gameplay to retain and which to refine? What can you do to please both voices?
A: It’s a bit tricky but I think we’re doing an admirable job. The key is to break down and refine the core elements that make an MMO like Pantheon work. This foundation has to be solid and it has to be fun. And I’m happy to say we’ve achieved both, validated by our pre-alpha sessions. Players find themselves in a familiar and fun game. And to be completely transparent, if the foundation wasn’t solid and fun, we’d go back and make sure it was — it’s that important. But we are also determined to move the genre forward, so to speak. We have a long list of features, mechanics, and ideas that give Pantheon its own identity. As happy as we are with the foundation and that the game is already a blast to play, we simply wouldn’t be content to release a generic MMO — we need to break new ground. So one of our major challenges and goals since late last year has been to shift focus to implementing the new features we think will establish Pantheon’s unique identity. This is the road to Alpha and I’m really happy with where we are. This is the fun part of MMO development. Lastly, because we are now building on a solid, proven foundation, if a new idea needs to be tweaked or even completely removed, we can do so fairly easily. It’s not like a house of cards, which is one of the big reasons we are building Pantheon the way we are.
Check out the full letter on the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen site.
