SpellForce Interview, Part Two

RPGVault has dished up the second installment of their interview with Volker Wertich, team leader for the RTS/RPG hybrid SpellForce. A snippet to follow:
Q: What were your primary considerations in the area of level design? How much do they vary in size, layout et al? And in terms of world interactivity, are there many objects to find and use?

A: We have a lot of different objects and items to find. We have scrolls, armor, all types of weapons etc. In each city, you will find merchants where you can trade those items.

Our major considerations for the levels were to make them as diversified as possible. We do not have the typical RTS maps that are very plain and symmetric. Instead, we have real living worlds with forests, rivers, hills, mountains and everything else you can imagine. Some of the maps are quite large and you will want to visit them several times to solve all quests situated there, and some quests span several maps at once.

There are many stories woven into the main quest that shed more light on the goings on of the world, and we tried to develop an understanding of the world alongside the development of the quest.