Interview With Big Huge Games' Brian Reynolds
We have a chat with legendary developer Brian Reynolds and dicuss Big Huge Games' upcoming release, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends.
|
We recently had an opportunity to speak with legendary designer Brian Reynolds of Big Huge Games. He is currently heading up the sequel to their popular real-time strategy title Rise of Nations, and has previously been involved with other industry defining strategy titles such as Civilization II, Colonization, and Alpha Centauri.
GamingExcellence: Let’s start off with a little background, how did you get into the gaming industry? What are a few of the games you've worked on that you're most proud of?
Brian Reynolds: Let's see, I've been the industry for 15 years now. I started in 1991 at Microprose, having decided to leave graduate school at Berkeley to make games. I started initially as a programmer (I was lead programmer for "Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender" (!), the first game I worked on). My first strategy game was Colonization, which was also my first game working on the design side.
Some of my best stuff since then has been Civilization 2, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations (hey wait, that's pretty much ALL of my stuff since then).
GamingExcellence: When you're not working on Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, what other games do you enjoy (video games, board games, or otherwise)?
Brian Reynolds: Oh all kinds of games, I live to play games. My favorite thing to do with family & friends is play what we call "German Board Games" (e.g. Settlers of Catan, Ra, Amun-Re, Transamerica, that kind of stuff). As far as video games I love strategy games and role-playing games. Most recently in the strategy department I'm up to "Captain" level in Age 3; although BFME2 is waiting for me if I ever get a chance to install it. I also love RPG games... did my year of World of Warcraft (60th level priest), and Oblivion is sitting on my desk opened but not installed because I've just been too busy finishing my own game.
GamingExcellence: For the record, Cosmic Gender Bender is just about the best title for a game ever devised. On the topic of Rise of Legends, how would you consider its development to be progressing? What elements do you feel really help to define Rise of Legends as a top tier real-time strategy game? What aspects are you most proud of at this point?
Brian Reynolds: At this point we're in the final final part -- the game will be available in stores May 9th! So yeah I think the progress is going well at this point . I think the key things about Rise of Legends are the innovations in gameplay that we're known for from the Rise of Nations days (now taken in new directions), a brand new 3D engine to compete for the title of "best looking RTS of 2006", plus a fresh new fantasy world that gives players something different from all the "Tolkien clones".
GamingExcellence: Why did the team at Big Huge Games decide to take a different direction with Rise of Legends, shifting the focus to a fantasy world instead of a historical one? How did the concept for Rise of Legends come about, and how has it developed over time?
Brian Reynolds: Okay so we got to the end of Rise of Nations which of course goes from the dawn of time right through the modern era but is an historical game. And the thing is, once you've done a game about "all of human history", I've always felt like you need to do something else next, it wouldn't make sense to just go right back to the same topic again. So anyway we started looking for some other ways we could let our imaginations run wild and at the same time take our game concepts in new directions. And at the same time we felt like RoN was very well received for gameplay but people just thought the graphics were "fine" and we wanted to be a heck of a lot better than "fine". As we started working on our new 3D engine we also started realizing that some of our "fantasy" ideas were also going to lend themselves to some really great looking graphics. Obviously we didn't want to do more "orcs, elves, goblins" that everyone has already seen, so we looked for some fresh new ideas that would take fantasy into new directions. That meant a LOT of concept art, and a lot of concept art review meetings, and a lot of "no...no...no...no...no...maybe" pointing at different pictures.
GamingExcellence: As a designer, do you consider yourself more of an artist or a storyteller? Why?
Brian Reynolds: Gosh I'm not sure I've ever seriously thought of myself as either. Clearly there's an artistic element and a storytelling element, but really what I've actually thought of myself as is a creator of "gameplay" -- using math & logic in clever ways alongside story & graphics to challenge the player with lots of interesting choices. I've always thought one of the most useful courses a prospective game designer can take is "Probability".
|
|
|
|
About Auracore MediaWorks | Advertise On This Site | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use 
