Age of Decadence Interview
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About the combat system : it will be turn-based with action points, once again a lot like Fallout or Arcanum. Why turn-based ? Do you think turn-based combats adds "value" to the gameplay ? What do you think of real-time combat in RPGs ?
Why turn-based combat? Because it's vastly superior to real-time combat and we think that our audience deserves the best. We wouldn't want to offend their delicate sensibilities by offering them a real-time clickfest. It's like serving cheap wine-in-a-box in the Restaurant du Palais-Royal, if you know what I mean.
Seriously though, I like real-time combat. I love shooters, I love RTS, I love Diablo games and am eagerly waiting for Diablo 3. I just don't think that RT adds anything to RPGs or should be there in the first place.
RT combat is (combat simplified). It fits perfectly into the (even a 10 year old should be able to beat the game easily) mentality championed by publishers. TB combat is a (chess party). It's about taking your time to consider different tactics and go over all available options. If done right, TB combat is about presenting the player with a combat puzzle and giving him a wide range of tools to try to come up with solutions that may work.
Here is an example:
I've decided to replay excellent Realms of Arkania: Star Trail. I made a party of different characters and went adventuring. A few minutes after I left the starting town a text message popped up informing me that five orcs are attacking a priestess who wouldn't mind some help. Five orcs? Hah! They've gotta be kidding me. Must be a tutorial. I have six capable party members. We should be able to stop at least two orcish armies and maybe even invade a small country. I join the battle feeling bad about ganging up on poor orcs like that. Five minutes later my party is dead. Dead. Orcs 6, me 0. That's turn-based combat in a nutshell. You either think and plan carefully or you are dead.
AoD combat system offers a lot of different attacks and options: aimed, normal, fast, power, special attacks plus throwing nets to entangle your opponents, acid to burn through armor, rare neurostimulants, liquid fire, black powder bombs, etc. Fights are hard and are not designed to make sure that you win (in fact, they are often designed to put you back into your place), so you'd need the turn-based system to have a fighting chance.
