GDC Interview: Age of Conan Game Director Gaute Godager

By Steven Crews | March 5, 2008 | | Filed under: Events, Features, Interviews

It was Monday morning, the first day of GDC, and I was starting things off with a bang: A live showing of Age of Conan, followed by an interview with Gaute Godager, the game’s director.

If you’re already familiar with what the game has to offer and don’t need a refresher course (or aren’t interested in reading my commentary on the demo), you can click right here to proceed directly to the interview.

This was my first time seeing the game in person, and, like most MMO players I know, I had been eagerly anticipating it. So of course, Funcom had my full and undivided attention.

Having said that, once I was in the door, the game was nearly overshadowed by some of the people I met while at the demo.

First, I ran into Erling Ellingsen, the game’s product manager. In one of those “it’s a small world after all” moments that we all sometimes experience in life, he happened to be the creator of the international smash-hit title Era Online back in the late nineties, a game I used to GM for.

Then, after catching up on old times a bit with Erling, I happened to bump into a fellow reporter.

Glancing down at her shoulder bag after sensing movement out of the corner of my eye, I was somewhat surprised to see the head of a toy Chihuahua poking its way out from between the zipper.

“Is that thing real?” I asked, incredulous. I found it hard to believe that anyone would actually do that in real life. It was supposed to be just a gimmick Paris Hilton did while fawning for the cameras.

“Of course!” she assured me. “What did you think?”

“I was wondering if it was a doll…”

“No way,” she said with all seriousness, “that would just be weird!”

Shaking my head, I took my seat as the demo got underway. Gaute began talking us through some of the finer points, while Erling managed the demo character, and half a dozen staffers in the back of the room filled out the roster in the team areas, and occasionally shouted helpful troubleshooting advice when the game hit a few rough spots.

The demo consisted of four main areas, begining at the logical starting point: creating a new character.

1. Character creation, and the first fifteen levels.

If you’ve ever watched an AoC video before, you’ve likely seen character creation in action. You’re on the deck of a heaving ship, surrounded by a cast of rowing galley slaves, who, unlike you, are not fortunate enough to be able to pick their own face and hairstyle, and have to settle for a loincloth in place of the loot you will no doubt be collecting within the next ten to fifteen minutes.

They began by emphasizing the level of detail available to players, such that no character in a thousand would look the same.

I actually ended up sitting through the demo twice, back to back, and the character ended up looking very similar both times. Take from that what you will. Either as disproving the one-in-a-thousand claim, or simply proving that Erling is keen on recycling.

But, if everything they said regarding character creation it is true, it could do to customization for fantasy MMOs what City of Heroes did for superhero costumes.

Our dog-in-purse reporter seemed to take issue with the fact that it was a male character on screen, and she began shouting at Gaute, while pounding her fists demandingly on the sofa, “Make a chick! I heard the women were topless in this game! Show me boobs! I WANT TO SEE SOME BOOBS!”

She followed this up a bit later on by cheering at the spurt of blood every time a mob was decapitated.

And people wonder why the gaming press has a reputation for being immature.

Out of respect for her privacy I won’t reveal what network she was from… other than to say that it was part of an extremely large corporation which could probably afford to have me killed with roughly one second worth of advertising profits.

Moving on…

Somewhat unusually for an MMO, once you are in the game, you have the option of going through a long narrative quest chain alone, at your own pace, and offline, for the first fifteen levels. Or, if you choose, at any time you can jump on the network to play with friends. But, the implication I got was that the quest chain would only be available during offline play.

The story of Conan begins to unfold immediately once your character sets foot in the game, as a conveniently-placed NPC lays out your story for you: You are a slave, with amnesia, no less. Your ship has gone down, and your former master has escaped into the jungle interior. It is up to you to hunt him down and kill him like the filthy dog he is before he can make it to town. Slaves are forbidden entry there, and if word gets out you happen to be one you will be locked outside of the gates to rot.

The demo didn’t get any further into the early story than that, as Erling turned on noclip mode to fly us expertly through the painstakingly detailed jungle. Clearly, no expense was spared in the design and implementation of the starter area, which is exactly how it should be.

My only concern was that it appeared extremely linear… though, I suppose there could have been branching paths I just didn’t notice.

Along the way during the flight Gaute pointed out various points of interest, such as the Picts, who it would seem will be one of your primary foes during at least the early portion of the game, and an active volcano which, he promised, you could cause to become even more active by scaling to the top of it, and setting off an eruption which will burn two cities in the game to the ground.

2. End-game PvE.

The next area of the demo on offer was Onyx Chambers, billed as an end-game PvE instance. Gaute filled us in on a little background:

“This level is found in Kishata, which is the end level of the game, the darkest epitome of evil. It is the evil city where the ancient evil who was one of Conan’s nemeses resides!”

I was starting to feel more evil just looking at it.

It seemed to be fairly standard dungeon fare at first glance, but, one of the more interesting aspects of the art design in Conan is that the lower you go, the further back in, what I suppose you could call the archeological record, you travel.

You start out in the upper levels, which are relatively recently built, and, when you descend further into the dungeon the layout and architecture begins to change, as you travel through successive empires and regimes who have built on top of each other through the years.

It reminded me a bit of Diablo… and I began to wonder if you hit lava after going down far enough.

I couldn’t really get a feel for the combat, watching someone else go through the motions, but I got the impression that it was not quite as fast-paced as I had hoped.

There seemed to be more of an emphasis on choosing the right skill at the right time, and

then waiting for that skill to complete. Also, positioning, in particular seemed to play a major role. In fact, it was mentioned that due to the game’s collision settings, you would need a longer weapon, such as a polearm, if you wanted to attack from behind someone else in your party.

Stealth was also shown to be a prominent feature. Every character in the game will have the ability to hide, and from there you’ll have to deal with a sort of Sam Fisher minigame if you want to stay that way.

3. Mounted combat.

Next up, was mounted combat.

Among the mounts shown were the war horse, the war mammoth, and the war rhino (which they said they had to include, because they just loved 300). War camels were in the works as well, apparently, but not yet ready for primetime.

All of the mounts had different rates of acceleration, top speed, and handling characteristics, which Gaute compared to Grand Theft Auto: “If you think of the horse as the sports car, then the mammoth is the garbage truck.”

They also possessed different attacks and special abilities. Though, the only one shown in the demo was the horse’s ability to buck, knocking down anyone standing behind it.

And, of course, the whole point of mounted combat is that your character can attack from the saddle, which they demonstrated in fine fashion by literally mowing down a group of NPCs who had been set up specifically for that purpose, their heads popping off along the way like champaign corks (much to the delight of dog-in-purse).

Though, Gaute was met with groans when he mentioned that the head-chopping had been turned up to “spectacular levels” just for the media, and they wouldn’t quite be that frequent once the game went live.

It was also stated that larger mounts, such as the mammoth, would have the ability to be used as siege engines and knock down walls.

4. City building.

And, of course, to knock down walls you first have to put them up.

The ability to build a city from scratch is among the game’s most touted features. It’s an ambitious goal, one that many developers have desired for their games, and few have achieved. Vanguard comes to mind as one prime example of such plans not coming to fruition.

But, from what I saw, Conan may be the first title in recent memory to actually pull it off.

We were taken through most of the steps of creating a city: From guild formation, to founding a barren plot of land, to purchasing buildings, shops, and walls.

A minor disappointment was word that every city would have the same basic layout, and

the only thing you really had control over was which order you bought the buildings in (which would likely be heavily determined by how many resources you had available to build them with).

Then, a major disappointment came when I asked about whether cities would be instanced or in the world. Gaute had seemed to indicate that space for cities would be limited and competition high, so I assumed the latter. Instead, the reply came that that they would be instanced, in a large map just for your guild, with all the resources needed to be collected to build the city up within its limits.

He expanded on that:

“When you build a player city, it opens up the ability for you to make a siege keep, or battle keep, as we call it. You need to upgrade your city, and when you’ve done that three times you can build a battle keep which is off in a different area, and actually in the world in a way that cities aren’t. Cities are basically part of the crafting system, which is why they’re instanced, so that all the great big guilds can get them.”

Asked how big a great big guild was—in other words, how many people you needed to start building a city in general: “Thirty. And you’ll need to be level forty, and mine a lot of resources.”

When I asked what benefits a rival guild might get from taking an enemy city, the reply came:

“Money, first of all. And power, prestige. And then, of course, there’s just the joy that comes from destroying other people’s things. That’s always fun.”

The man definitely had a point.

Shortly thereafter I had the opportunity to sit down with him for ten minutes to discuss some of the finer points of the game, and Funcom’s philosophy behind it, in detail. Read on for the transcript and audio on the following page.