» Wed Jun 29, 2011 5:23 am http://www.rpgitalia.net/news/oblivion/andoran-the-interview/
"RPG Italia’s Staff had been very lucky, having the chance to interview Andoran’s team. A lot of new information and tons of new screens are also available thanks to their leader.
RPG Italia: What are the RPG’s elements? How players can develop a PG ( Oblivion style, Xp-leveling…)? How much you stressed choices and morality?
A. Team: Skill training system remained unchanged as compared to the original game. Nevertheless we introduced a lot of new elements that will give you additional freedom for roleplaying, i.e. extended dialogue system.
Gameplay outside the dialogues is also built on somewhat different principles. For example, in Andoran you’ll have an opportunity to clobber or bind any NPC (as a variant: to bind sleeping NPC, provided you have enough agility and sneaking skill), then put him into a sack and carry somewhere. This trick can be actively used when passing quests, though you can invent some more creative approach in other cases. Moreover, now citizens adequately react when they see a bound NPC lying on the ground: the passerby can free him if they are on good terms. Imagine a situation: you have imperceptibly kidnapped some citizen while he was asleep, bound and blindfolded him. The relatives may grow bothering about his absence. And here comes our hero, you know riding a white horse and so on, and suggests to retrieve “the missing one” for reward. If your speechcraft is properly high, you’ll be able to persuade the captive (provided you didn’t use violence to him) that it was someone else who kidnapped him while you are a noble savior. The profit is yours.
Moral dilemmas will surely take place, as there will be plenty of ways to solve the certain problem. You need to get some item? You can kill the owner, you can steal the desired thing, you can dress like a guard and penetrate the house. A representative of the fair six, as long as she has proper skill, will appease the owner with women’s charm and steal the wanted item while he’s asleep after the stormy night. What other options? Be ingenious and find them for sure.
RPG Italia: Will story, plot and atmosphere be linked to Oblivion’s or older TES?
A. Team: Andoran holds strictly to the canons of the original TES lore. The only pre-condition not from it is the archipelago itself, the rest is rooted deeply in the Elder Scrolls history. The game is more oriented on Morrowind’s atmosphere than on Oblivion’s: we want to create an unusual world that would be interesting to explore, finding something new every time.
RPG Italia: What are the main differences between Andoran and Oblivion vanilla? Do you change something in combat and magic system?
A. Team: We’re not changing combat and magic systems drastically, we’re just adding some new spells and possibilities. The key Andoran’s difference from Oblivion is large freedom for roleplaying and deep plot component, we try not to focus too much on combat as it’s not very amusing in the original game.
RPG Italia: Surely you know Nehrim, the other famous Oblivion’s total conversion. How much did it influence your work?
A. Team: To tell the truth, few of our team have played Nehrim. However, we’ve heard much of it, seen screenshots and we respect the skill of the German modmakers. At least their level-design is really up to the mark.
RPG Italia: What’s Andoran’s longevity? About main quest and full game…
A. Team: That’s hard to tell. If you thoughtlessly follow all the advice given by the other characters, the main quest will be passed relatively quickly but with deplorable results. But if you constantly anolyze the situation, consider variants and be on the alert, the process will most likely be prolonged twofold or more. You also need to keep in mind that Andoran’s “questline” is more of a “questtree”: there is hardly ever a strict sequence of quests, part of them can be passed in different order or not passed at all.
RPG Italia: In the trailer you had released we saw several animations and graphical effects that we had never seen before. Did you create everything on your own or you implemented third party’s mods?
A. Team: We made some of the graphic improvements ourselves, though not without the help of our foreign colleagues. The base is OBGE.
RPG Italia: Will every NPC be dubbed fully? Everyone will have his own voice?
A. Team: Every NPC has a name and a unique biography, all the dialogues will be voiced, but finding a personal voice actor for each of them surely is an absolutely impossible task.
RPG Italia: Where the idea of creating a total conversion comes from? How many people work in your team and how much time have you spent on Andoran?
A. Team: The idea of the game belongs to me but many teammates have contributed in it on the fly. Originally it should have been a mod for Morrowind, but after the release of Oblivion modmakers’ attention has switched to it, so we decided to make a mod on the newer game in the series. Maybe that was to no purpose, maybe not. The list of the people who anyhow helped Andoran is immense, and that’s apart from the authors of the resources used. The team was being formed little by little, over a hundren people has come through it. At the beginning they were plain fans of the Scrolls world, but the more the project was gaining momentum, the more experienced staff joined us. Currently half of the team’s backbone are gamedev professionals. Of those who were at the source only three remained.
RPG Italia: Do you already have an idea about the release date? Will it be closer to Skyrim? Don’t you fear the new TES could in some way “obscure” your talented project?
A. Team: The estimated release date is autumn 2011, it’s impossible to say anything more precise right now. Some of our team were afraid of our “rivalry” with Skyrim, that’s why I decided to release the trailer right now so we could watch the reaction of TES-community. This reaction was to determine whether we would throw all the forces to finishing before Skyrim, albeit shortening the number of the gameplay hours, or continue working as planned, risking to be released later. Well actually, Skyrim and Andoran have different accents, though they are both open-world RPG’s: while the former concentrates on action and visual component, the latter stakes on RPG-depth and quests’ nonlinearity, as well as on the untypical for most games approach to missions.
In most RPG’s the characters seem helpless idiots, because they cannot solve their small problems without the help of the hero, and
the hero is the sort of the center of the Universe. We try to move away from the habitual concept of “mission” as far as possible: the player will often encounter so called “scenes”, these are events that happen before his eyes, he can either interfere or ignore them. The non-interference may sometimes bring problems upon the player himself, e.g. if he noticed a thief running away with a purse but couldn’t catch him, there is a probability that he is a victim next time. Getting together, I don’t think Andoran and Skyrim will anyhow mess with each other: we do have what to interest RPG-fans with. People who measure games by budget or “special effects” are not those who we count for.
Anyway, I address to everyone reading this: if you liked Andoran’s trailer, show it to you friends and kith and let them show it to theirs. The more support we receive from you, the more inspiration and willingness to work our team has.
RPG Italia: Can you give us an idea of the size of Andoran, compared to Cyrodiil? How many cities, NPC, monsters and dungeons did you create?
A. Team: Andoran isle is about the same length as Vvardenfell, though it’s narrower. On its territory we have four major towns, several settlements, forts, camps and dungeons of course. NPCs and monsters are of many, and their amount keeps growing because we are currently settling the terrain. By the way, most of the monsters demand a special approach and tactics, you won’t kill them hurriedly at once."
