Interview: A Chat With Mortal Online’s Creative Director

By Siam Choudhury | December 2, 2008 | | Filed under: Events, Features, Interviews | Tags: gc08, Interview, Mats Persson, Mortal Online, Star Vault

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The MMO Gamer had the opportunity to talk to Mortal Online’s Creative Director, Mats Persson about the ambitious MMOG title. Hit jump to read the interview!

The MMO Gamer: Could you begin by introducing yourself and telling us what you do at Star Vault?

Mats Persson: I’m Mats Persson, I’m the Creative Director at Star Vault and also involved in game design. My main focus is to keep the graphics quality and concept consistent.

The MMO Gamer: Could you tell us a little bit about Mortal Online? What is it about?

Mats Persson: Mortal Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that I believe is one of the first in its genre which is entirely in first person. Mortal Online is also a sandbox game as opposed to a theme park game. We want our world to be free and we want you as a player to do as you like. We have no levels and the game is entirely skill based. That’s about it, I would say, as an explanation.

The MMO Gamer: Could you tell us more about the sandbox aspect of the game?

Mats Persson: I would explain the sandbox versus the theme park [difference] as the theme park being based on you getting into the theme park and standing there in line, waiting for the attractions to open, waiting in line for your turn. Then you ride the ride and they’re fun, often based on a short theme of concept, a quest. When the ride’s over, the game is almost over, there’s not much to do in between the rides.

The sandbox game is based on you having the tools to do whatever you would like to do. Like for instance if you want to set up an arena and taking bets for fights? You can do that. Or do you want to be a horse tamer? Do you be a woodcrafter and sell your stuff through markets in game, that is also possible. The world is free for you to do whatever you like in a much wider aspect I would say, than in a theme park game.

The MMO Gamer: The game trailer says that it uses the in-game engine, what engine is the game based on?

Mats Persson: It’s based on Unreal Engine 3 together with Epic Games China with their Atlas system for the network and MMO engine.

We also collaborate with Growm for creating terrain, large scale terrain.

The MMO Gamer: Star Vault is a public company in Sweden. How is the development of Mortal Online being funded?

Mats Persson: It’s funded by private investors, just like any other public company. We don’t have a publisher and we’re not looking for a publisher. We want to be owned by ourselves and want to own our own product. We are tired of getting interrupted midway in a production or changing directions because some marketing guy somewhere decides that “Oh no, this graphical style is not the one that is popular right now.” So we want to take this product from start to finish by ourselves.

The MMO Gamer: So you are going to self-publish the title?

Mats Persson: Most likely, yes.

The MMO Gamer: How far along is the development of Mortal Online? Is there a release horizon?

Mats Persson: Yeah, we’re talking about releasing in Summer 2009. It’s actually hard to tell when Mortal Online’s development actually started. We started the final production of Mortal Online in 2007 but work has been done on Mortal Online for several years now. It was not until 2007 that we officially acquired Unreal Engine 3.

The MMO Gamer: Okay. The website talks about a very complex combat system with mounted combat and a skill based combat system. How would those work?

Mats Persson: We want the player experience to depend as much as possible on your own input and not by pre-scripted attack spawns. It’s a first person game and as such the combat has to be more [high] tempo; it will still be a bit slow compared to the bunny-jumping in other first person titles. It’s not an action game in that aspect but we have managed to keep a pretty high tempo in our combat. And we say that it is player skill based as opposed to character skill based meaning that the character can only evolve that much in [their] skills, it’s more important what you as a player brings to the game.

I think you could say that you have to find the right balance for your own playing style, meaning that if you’re more of a tactical player with good coordination, maybe you should go for a spell casting type of skill setup. If you want brute action from start to finish, then you could go for a melee combat, or stronger character build. A good action player will be a good action character in our game because the game is based on player skill more than character skill.