Blackguards 2 Interview

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Written by BuckGB on July 9th, 2014

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The guys over at RPG Codex managed to catch up with Daedalic Entertainment's Kai Fiebig in order to pick the brain of the Blackguards and Blackguards 2 producer about the forthcoming tactical RPG sequel.  Here's a bit of what to expect:

Could you talk a bit about the inspirations behind the first game, and how they have changed (if they have) for the sequel? One of our reviewers compared Blackguards to "a European version of Final Fantasy Tactics" - to what extent was that one of your inspirations, and to what extent do you intend to keep your inspirations the same for Blackguards 2?

My personal inspiration for Blackguards was mainly good old pen & paper combat, with the ambition to put as much of the diversity of tactical options and creative use of the environment pen & paper combat can offer into a video game.

Ideally, every single battle fought should tell a small story in itself, with the player 'žwriting( the part of his heroes. The game presents only the challenges and a huge variety of abilities, spells and environmental interactions the player can choose from, combine and improvise with, to overcome those challenges.

This ideal remains an ideal, as video games cannot accomplish the same level of interactivity as pen & paper games. But getting as close as possible is a great motor for making these kind of games.'‹

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During the beta, you received some criticism from our users because the game lacked proper documentation and textual feedback on what was happening "under the hood". Eventually, you included Felipepepe's fan-made guide as part of the game, but are you going to improve on that aspect in the sequel? Would you consider adding something like Temple of Elemental Evil's combat feedback, or a contextual "Player's Handbook" like the one in Knights of the Chalice?

We hope with the changes to the character sheets and leveling systems we won't need as much explanation text as in the first part. Also the first three levels of the game will be tutorial levels but in a different way than in BG1.

In regards to Felipepepe's guide, it was a great help and we must thank him for his permission to use it. We might be a bunch of dedicated game designers but we lost track of the documentation. Also, to be honest, when we reached Early Access, we thought that all necessary explanations were already in the game. We were wrong though as we learned during EA. So in some way Felipepepe saved our day and we owe him.'‹

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