Evil Islands: Curse of The Lost Soul Preview

And as promised, we continue our in-depth coverage of Nival Interactive's RPG / action / strategy hybrid, Evil Islands. We talk with Nival's President Sergei Orlovsky and reveal lots of cool details about the game:

ActionTrip: The games you've developed in the past (Rage of Mages I / II) were very successful. What can you emphasize as improvements in your company that will make your development even more successful today?

Sergei Orlovsky: Since the time of "Rage of Mages" we've been constantly looking for new talented artists, programmers and game designers, and we have accumulated a team of about 50 brilliant specialists. We now have several projects under development. We can distribute our art team's talents between several projects so they don't have idle periods, and they may participate in projects they like most. This allows us to give more attention to details in graphical design of our projects. Another important improvement is a very successful and long-term cooperation with our publishers, Fishtank Interactive and Ubi Soft Interactive, which makes us feel even more confident and gives us more creative freedom.

AT: This is your third strategy RPG. In your assessment, what's the most alluring feature of this particular genre?

SO: In my opinion, it's a very immersive combination of personalized characters that you can develop and associate with your own personality as a gamer. Also, the game features a strategic element - you may combine a party of several characters so that they interact most efficiently together.

AT: Rage of Mages offered many hours of exciting gameplay. It had a wide variety of characters, NPC's, and a well-balanced plot to hold the player's attention. In relation to that, what will Evil Islands bring?

SO: In "Evil Islands," you have a small party of only three members. Apart from certain special abilities, each member has equal opportunities to develop magic, combat and stealing skills. The purpose of this was to give the player an option to develop his skills through free distribution of experience points and as a result, create the most effective combination of characters that are best suited for a particular role. Depending on the way you develop your characters, you can receive very different combinations and create your individual gaming style. As for the NPC's, they are positioned in the game a bit differently from what we used to have in classical RPG's. The intention was to create an impressive world that is very independent from the player and the hero, and evoke a feeling of a hostile, very "thing-in-itself" environment where your hero is just a passerby, challenged to survive. As a result, you will not find NPC's in towns all the way at your service and always there for your needs - they have their own complex relations, intrigues, quarrels, and you will have to find out who is a friend and who is waiting to stab you in the back. Strong storyline is one of the key elements of "Evil Islands'" gameplay. Your character has amnesia and finds himself on an unknown island, one of those left of the once integral planet after the drastic magic-driven cataclysm. The rest is a journey through three very different islands on a quest for your hero's true identity, and the results can be very surprising. The game has both a detective story and a love story in it. The storyline is non-linear so you will be able to choose which story branch to follow and which to miss.

AT: The game will have about 80 quests. What are these quests like? And how are they significant to the gameplay?

SO: The quests are covert operations, differing in difficulty and strategy. For example, you need to get stuff from a very powerful warrior. You can simply steal it, or you can stab him in the back of the head. This sometimes takes away half of the hit points, even with a very powerful enemy. To think of an appropriate strategy or to give orders to your party, you can pause the game at any moment. Quests are very significant for the gameplay, as they give you a major amount of experience points which you need to augment your character's skills and acquire new abilities.

AT: Evil Islands has a huge 3D environment. Explain the full 3D high-end technology engine that the game will use.

SO: The basic concept while creating the "Evil Islands" engine was to allow maximum real-time visualization of everything that happens to a character on the battle screen, as well as in the game 3D interface. The most interesting feature is the morphing technology that has not been previously used in games. Roughly speaking, it means that each character model in the game can be scaled in real-time to allow various degrees of muscle size, height and "grace" (between fat and slim). This not only allows great versatility of characters in the game, but also makes it possible to recognize at first sight the strength parameter of your enemies or your own characters. For example, if you cast the 'Weaken' spell on a monster, you will not only feel its power waning, but you can actually see it as the monster will immediately become significantly smaller right on the battle screen. In the same way, you will see your character's body becoming more muscular if you increase his strength parameter. This morphing feature also adds fun to multiplayer game. Not only can you choose a face of any NPC in the game for your multiplayer character, but also modify his body in strength, height and weight to create a real individual. Some battle visualization extras: if a character's arm is damaged, you will immediately see it bleed; if you intended your blow at the enemy's head, you will be able to say immediately whether your blow struck home. If you step into a bloody spot on the ground, some will stick to your shoes and you will leave bloody stains on the ground for some time. Another important thing is that you can see the armor and weapon that your character wears in detail right on the battle screen, because 'changing clothes' not only affects textures but also parts of the model itself. Another important feature of the engine is the free camera that can be rotated and zoomed in or out for a better view. The camera can also be adjusted to a set position comfortable for the user, or centered on any character at any time.

AT: Tell us about other visual possibilities such as weather conditions, day and night changes, and so on.

SO: Among other eye-candies in the game, I should mention smooth day-night change within a mission. During a day cycle, the lighting changes not only on the lighter-darker scale, but also in color. Morning, afternoon, evening and night all have their specific color palettes. There are also 3D weather effects, such as rain, fog, snow, and sandstorms. Different weather corresponds to different islands. The waves, smoke, and even swamps are animated and the soft, dynamic shadows move along with the sun.