Phil Shenk exposes Mythos

Flagship's online action-RPG discussed

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Intrigued by talk of an online action-RPG revolution, Thomas Ryan lured Flagship's Phil Shenk, Creative Director for Mythos, onto his sofa for something of a heart-to-heart...

Firstly can you fill us in on the back story and the land of Uld?

I wanted to create a fantasy world that felt familiar, but was also unpredictable... something that could be anything we wanted it to be. I always believe that it's good to use certain archetypes that people will easily understand, particularly in the fantasy genre. I'm not a huge fan of fantasy games that make up weird races out of thin air. I'm not saying it can't work, because one of my favorite fantasy novels breaks that rule (Perdido Street Station by China Mieville), but for the most part I think fantasy is so popular in the mainstream because everyone already knows the archetypes. We "know" what an elf is, a goblin, a giant, a dragon, etc. We don't have to work and take time to learn about a "Hurfalump" or a "Bogwando" (I'm making stuff up). Fantasy archetypes are right there in our minds, ready to play with. But I also like to take these familiar archetypes and run with them... use them as a starting point, and then do something unexpected. Uld came about, out of this desire.

I think this was part of what made Diablo so successful. The world seemed familiar, a medieval Scottish town, a church above a dungeon that was infested with demons. But then we took it and ran with it. We never mentioned real religions, angels were similar to what we think of, but they were also different. We deliberately didn't set it on "earth", or in a real historical context, so that we could use all those strong, familiar archetypes, but not be a slave to them. This is my favorite way to create a game world. It's familiar, yet different.

Anyway, the story of Uld takes place after a long, dark period that covered the whole planet. I don't mean dark literally, although that was part of it, but magically, spiritually, physically, everything basically broke down. The land became corrupt, and warped. Nothing was reliable. For example - crops wouldn't grow at all, or if they did they grew wildly, to enormous size, sprouted legs and thorny tentacle-arms, and went on a killing rampage. Everything was wonky. Nights would sometimes last for weeks, and then suddenly it would reverse and it would be high-noon for days at a time. Magic and technology were completely unreliable. What used to be relatively straightforward and predictable was now random and incredibly dangerous. Simple things like wheels still worked (most of the time), but something more complicated like a blunderbuss was just as likely to spew forth acidic ooze as it was to fire a bullet. The land itself would warp and twist, as if in a dream. A road that lead through a forest one day, might shift and lead through a wailing cavern or a vortex to a demonic underworld the next. As a result of all this chaos, the previously great Kingdoms of the civilized races crumbled. It was almost impossible to travel anywhere, and only slightly less dangerous to stay put. People lived in uncertainty, fear and little hope.

As the Kingdoms fell, the forces of Discordia grew. These were the chaos races, the malformed progeny of distorted reality. They seemed to thrive in the warping landscape... some appeared out of nowhere, some were always on Uld, but grew stronger, and some seemed to arrive from some other time or another place, through the tears in the thinning boundaries that define reality. The once-great and ubiquitous gods of Uld mysteriously vanished, and over the centuries, were forgotten. The Dark Age lasted so long that history was lost. Something as simple as writing didn't even work, the very words on the page would fade, or fail to even come forth in the mind of the scribe. The centuries of the Dark Age were like a shifting, warping nightmare. Whatever life was like before was largely forgotten and only the faintest recollections remained, passed down unreliably through oral myths and legends.

No one is certain what caused the Dark Age, but there are some prevalent theories held by both the races of the Kingdoms and of Discordia. Some say it's a planetary thing, that there is a great astral cloud that engulfs the Uld every few millennia. Some say that the old gods had a great war, and as a result the fabric of reality was torn apart. Some say that it was the result of some enormous metaphysical engine gone haywire, some kind of cosmic device that powers the cosmos. Some speak of an ancient underground race of hideous demons that found and corrupted the roots of the world. There are almost as many theories as there are theorists, and discovering the truth will be one of the things that we'll explore in the game.

It has been reported that Mythos will be a free to download and play 'casual' MMO, why have you opted for this route and where will the revenue come from for the game?

It will indeed be free, and if we can do it right, you'll be able to experience all of the content without paying a cent. We do plan to make money, and there will be opportunity to pay us. We really have the goal to make this as painless and sensible as possible, and make sure it's incredible value. We have some good ideas, but I'm not ready to go into great detail about it.

In keeping with the Diablo experience players will control the game via an isometric view and a point and click interface, will players be stuck in a single viewpoint or will they have the ability to zoom and rotate the camera?

The game controls are almost exactly like Diablo. Right now, you can zoom the camera in pretty far, but it stays in the same overhead perspective. The game is designed to look at the world from that view, and that's the way it will stay. It would be easy to add in camera rotation if we want to. The topic has come up, and there are different opinions on the matter. My own opinion is that some option to rotate the camera might be good, if it looks like we need it. Right now, it doesn't feel like it's needed.