General:N-Page Shadowkey Interview

:This interview, conducted at the end of 2004 by N-Page.de, asked Greg Gorden about the development of Shadowkey.

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N-Page: Could you please introduce yourself and Vir2L to our readers?

Greg: I’m Greg Gorden, the game designer for The Elder Scrolls Travels games. I designed Stormhold and Dawnstar for J2ME/BREW, and am now focused on Shadowkey. I started designing   with pencil-and-paper games like Star Wars and Torg, and have worked on Internet and mobile gaming titles before designing Stormhold.

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Vir2L Studios provides wireless J2ME/BREW, handheld, and online content. Vir2L also publishes and develops franchises of its sister company, Bethesda Softworks. Bethesda Softworks has been a developer of interactive entertainment content for over 15 years, with a long history of PC and console games (PSX, PS2 and Xbox). With broad panoply of games in role-playing, racing, simulation, and sports, Bethesda Softworks major franchises are distributed worldwide.

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:N-Page: You are developing Elder Scrolls for the Nokia N-Gage. What do you expect from this game?

:Greg: We expect to have reproduced the true Elder Scrolls experience on a mobile device. This will consist of open-ended and deep game play, a detailed world to explore through a first-person perspective, and an intriguing storyline. Players can choose from the classic races and character classes from the Elder Scrolls games, and will also find new abilities, items, and monsters. We hope Elder Scrolls aficionados will enjoy this latest tale from the Elder Scrolls, and that novice RPG players will enjoy the richness of the world and the exciting game play.

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N-Page: How far will the gap be between the "big-versions" like Morrowind and the N-Gage version?

Greg: The game was originally conceived as being similar to The Elder Scrolls: Arena, but the capabilities of the N-Gage encouraged increasing the scope of the design. The feel of the game is now closer to Daggerfall in terms of sprite characters, but the character models are closer to Morrowind than they are to Arena. Story depth is somewhere between the two. Presentation is different, of course. You really cannot have dozens of lines of dialogue on a mobile device screen without being tedious. However, Shadowkey includes as much Elder Scrolls as it is possible to fit on this new generation device.

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N-Page: How will the Multiplayer mode work and will there be a cooperative mode?

Greg: The multiplayer mode will allow cooperative play via Bluetooth, with two to four players adventuring together. The host sets the adventuring area and the other players can join his game. The adventuring party must stay within one adventuring area, but can wander freely within that area, with or without the other players. Adventuring progress that players make in the multiplayer mode transfers back to the single-player game.

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N-Page: How long will it take a normal player to beat the game?

Greg: When the project started, the goal was to develop one of the deepest games ever for mobile devices. The original target was fifteen hours of game play. The game is still in testing, so we don’t have an average number of hours the game takes to complete, but Nokia testers have relayed it will take longer than fifteen hours to play from beginning to end. In terms of size of the game world, Shadowkey will be among the larger N-Gage games.

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N-Page: Is the difficulty degree set as high, as the older Titles of Elder Scrolls?

Greg: We made a design decision to have the initial adventuring environment a bit less difficult, to help ease players into the game, particularly those not familiar with The Elder Scrolls. However, as the game progresses, players face the challenges and difficulties expected by fans of the series.

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N-Page: Is one able to travel through the world freely or are there any restrictions?

Greg: Most of the world can be explored at any time, although that means a player can find himself in over his head if he is not careful. Some areas are altered by the results of quests, so while a player can go there at any time, what the player finds there depends on quests completed or ignored. While adventuring, players will also want to gather the Shadowkeys that unlock game content. In each main dungeon there is a Shadowkey. Shadowkeys are obtained via quests or defeating bosses. Once a player has retrieved a dungeon’s Shadowkey, that may unlock additional dungeon areas, open bonus spells or treasures.

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N-Page: How many magic-spells, opponents and weapons will there be?

Greg: Shadowkey has over 25 magic spells, more than 60 opponents, and over 100 weapons and items.

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N-Page: Which kind of N-Gage Arena functions will there be?

Greg: The primary Arena function will be to get bonus game content once a player has the appropriate Shadowkeys. There will also be chat, in open rooms or associations, such as guilds.

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N-Page: What do you think about the N-Gage and how will the system compete in the future against Nintendo DS and Sony’s PlaystationPortable?

Greg: We like the N-Gage QD very much, it will be now priced competitively and more gamer friendly. It is evident these days that a large number of people will pay $100 for a new phone. The graphics on the new screen are considerably more vibrant as well. The device meets the design goals – a mobile platform with enough power to play potent games on small screens. The DS and PSP are different platforms with different aims, and not to be confused with the N-Gage. Games built for those devices will have different parameters, performance, and development costs.

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N-Page: Where will the N-Gage be in the next year?

Greg: Of course, as developers we are not at liberty to discuss confidential information. We can say however, that we believe Nokia is a strong company with products that have a shorter release cycle than most console manufacturers. We can therefore expect Nokia to make improvements on cycles based on handsets rather than the several-year cycles of consoles, and these improvements should be significant because mobile technologies are moving quickly. In terms of our own internal speculation, however, the architecture and hardware of the QD also speaks volumes about the potential of eventually using applications for the N-Gage on a wider array of mobile handsets/devices.

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N-Page: What is your favourite N-Gage game besides Elder Scrolls?

Greg: Sonic the Hedgehog and Monkey Ball

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N-Page: Which game would you like to see on the N-Gage?

Greg: We would like to see a networked multiplayer The Elder Scrolls Travels game or perhaps something based on Call of Cthulhu.

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N-Page: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?

Greg: We’ve very excited about Shadowkey and hope you will be as well.

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The interview was held by Kevin Jensen for N-Page.de