Rune Preview

Thick Woods covered with snow; the air is bitter cold... Sounds of heavy horses and of icy winds spreading through the land... Two men sitting in front of a guard post, chatting. For now, all is peaceful, but as soon as the fog clears, a group of wild northerners is off to kill, pillage and burn another unsuspecting European coastal village...

You know, that could’ve been just another "good day to die" for the dreaded "Northern Men", better known as the Vikings. Who would imagine that today’s peaceful countries of Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland (amongst others) were once filled with ruthless savages, terrorizing most of the European continent? Even today, some of the strongest men of the world are from the "North", carrying the legacy of the Viking days. But besides being extremely unfriendly to their neighbors, Vikings had another side to them. They have managed to cherish and preserve, passed on from one generation to the next a great cultural wealth in their mythical Norse stories. I had the unlikely pleasure of learning about it through numerous Marvel comics, representing the tales of the God of Thunder -- Thor, his battles with his father Odin, and of mythical hero  Conan (not an actual northern legend), spilling blood in the name of Crom. I was always fascinated by those characters, especially because of the way Marvel’s skillful artists drew their images -- huge guys with powerful weapons kicking ass all over the place. Everything about the Viking Gods/mythical heroes was spectacular, and it captivated my imagination as a young boy. Sadly, today’s youth is turning to WWF, NWO and all those other steroid-pumped wimps, that are supposed to represent what Viking Gods once represented to young northerners. And if I sound unrealistically nostalgic that is because I am --- try placing one of those 300lbs goons on -25 degrees Celsius with only a robe, a sword and his courage to save him from the cold, wolf packs and wild bears. I don’t think many of them would last very long...

This is Ragnar people...

Fighting with the beasts.

That is why I was pleasantly surprised, not only to hear that Human Head Studios is working on a Viking game, but also to actually see from the current media the way they are handling the design... Ted Halsted, a mapper/conceptual artist and co-owner of Human Head talks about the game’s storyline and the main character -- In Rune, you play Ragnar, a young Viking warrior who is thrown into an ancient conflict far beyond his experience; a conflict in which he discovers that the legends of his people are terrifyingly real. Viking villages along the coast are mysteriously and methodically being destroyed by unknown forces in the night.  When Ragnar sets off on an ostensibly diplomatic mission with his father aboard the longship Sleipnir to question the prime suspect; a powerful mountain warlord with aspirations of conquest, a chain of events is triggered that envelopes Ragnar in a race to stave off an impending Ragnarok...

Rune is a 3rd person action adventure, based on the stories from the Norse mythology, and powered by the already tried and proved Unreal engine. When asked about if the game will feature some RPG elements, like character development, Ted told us that the weight of the title is definitely on the action and adventure end of the scale. However, folks at Human Head are keenly interested in seeing Ragnar’s character develop as he goes through the game. This will be attended to through the story, through weapons and shields upgrades, and of course, through player experience. Designers will not be stressing a heavy-handed RPG-style of player advancement/maintenance. Rather, they very much want to keep the game as "non-interfacey" as possible to allow for greater action/adventure immersion. The action in Rune will take place in an equal mix of indoor and outdoor environments (Unreal Engine being known to handle outdoor scenes rendering well). Viking villages, ancient ruins, giant caverns, vast plains, the works. Human Head wants to give the player something new—yet integrated—every few level sets to keep things visually interesting and flowing. Rune is also the first Unreal powered game, which I’m aware of, heavily focusing on the melee style fighting. That aspect of the game alone poses many questions concerning the title. Naturally Vikings, or rather our lead hero Ragnar will carry the usual Viking battle accessories like a huge axe, sword and a powerful hammer.

The real hardship on the part of the designers will be to implement an entertaining, yet simplistic melee combat system, which will be easy to use, have a great "feel", so that the action could flow, and yet be challenging enough to force the player to work on his skills and get better at it. Besides from being able to chop off various parts of your opponent’s body, and even use the chopped-off limbs as a weapon, enemies in Rune will feature various hit areas, some of which will carry more hit points than others. We were kind of speculating how much of an influence the weapon’s weight will have during combat. If the axe is heavier than a sword, and would that mean that the lighter weapons have less power, but can be wielded more frequently. Ted was quick to dish out a few facts on the subject - He said that the basic logic behind that suggestion is one of the foundations of the Rune weapon system. Hammers are the heaviest, and swing the slowest. Axes are a hybrid of heft and blade, and are factored accordingly. Swords swing the fastest. The creatures and their armor types have to be considered, as well. Many creatures move quickly enough to warrant unsheathing your sword. Other creatures bear certain types of armor that would justify unslinging your hammer or axe. And there are of course weapons of certain abilities, which may or may not work best in certain situations.  The hit-detection system is well ahead of anything out there and should provide a satisfying hacking, slashing, and pummeling experience.

Character variety and design represent one other distinctive feature of Rune that is to heighten our gameplay experience and immerse us even further into the mythical world of the Vikings. Much like its Marvel comic predecessors, Rune will feature plenty of human and non-human characters, some of which will have huge proportions in comparison to what we are used to seeing in 3rd person action titles... Having large models in a game will not only serve as a novel trick to bring out a few sighs of amazement from the gamers, but will also carry on the tradition of tough Viking warriors, and fantasy beasts that are epical in proportions, and fitting for long, story-telling nights over a camp fire. Ted told us that some of the non-human creatures have already been "outed" on screenshots—these include the goblins and the snowbeasts.  Not only will there be an abundance of other creatures in the game, but within a creature "species" you will see varieties between individuals—different body paints, different physical proportions, etc. Ragnar will face off against a considerable variety of Viking warriors, but you can bet there’ll be plenty of non-human critters to allow for variety and "wow" factor. This doesn’t mean of coarse, that we’ll need a 1Ghz Athlon/GeForce DDR rig to run the game smoothly. On the contrary, due to the dynamic level of detail system, and some skillful engine code optimization Human Head is promising a smooth performance necessary for a hardware-stress-free gameplay experience...

In fact, Human Head has gone to great lengths to add their personal touch to the Unreal engine code. The Rune editor has a number of advancements that have been integrated into the original Unreal Editor, and many of these advancements are targeted toward creating a high-energy, multi-opponent combat experience while keeping frame-rate high. As mentioned earlier, RuneEd features a dynamic level of detail system, as well as a full skeletal system, improved creature movement and detection AI. Even without path nodes in place, Paul MacArthur’s goblins can chase the player through a maze of uneven surfaces and twisting corridors, and jump up and down across and over multiple ledges to get at the player character. According to Ted, it's actually kind of creepy. Rune’s characters, human and otherwise, have distinctive attributes that go beyond their visual appearance. Goblins fight a certain way, Vikings another—and there are combat classes within the Vikings-- and Wendols (snowbeasts) in quite another way. Ted didn’t want to disclose the full creature set (and character inter-relationships) at this point—so as to leave some surprises—but he added he was very excited about the combat; and in particular how the creatures look, behave, move through the world, and interact with Ragnar in combat.

And as for the non-AI, multiplayer mode gameplay, Rune will ship with a number of deathmatch-style maps that will give players the opportunity to chop a few bits out of one another. The multiplayer maps will be strongly themed, and may involve interactions with other creature species from the single-player game.

So there you go, all I can add here is that I am very excited about a prospect of playing Rune. I have a hunch that this game is going to feature some very addictive melee combat that no action gaming buff would dare miss. Throw in a chunk of the unexploited and compelling Viking mythology for a good measure, and what you get is a game that many of us can’t wait to try out at E3. According to Ted, Rune will be released in Summer of 2000. There will be a playable demo at E3—and as to a publicly released demo; that date has not yet been set.