Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance Interview

Following the recent launch of Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, Tuque Games' Jeff Hattem had a chat with VentureBeat. The resulting interview primarily focuses on the game's lore and world-building, so if you'd like to know more about D&D's goblin language, the Crystal Shard acting as the game's villain, and so on, you should definitely check it out.

For example:

GamesBeat: One thing I liked about where the cult fit in, you’ll hear these comments about how maybe the cult made a mistake bringing back Kessell, or why are they wasting time with him? I paid a lot of attention to the stuff that would lead into combat, what the enemies were saying. Was it intentional to try to have all these different races and factions working together in some ways, but they’re still sniping at each other?

Hattem: Totally. That’s where we get our title from, the Dark Alliance. It’s this semi-formal agreement between all the monsters that are descending upon the Dale to claim the Crystal Shard. They forego their grievances so that the best monster can claim the Shard for themselves. They don’t trust each other. They’re always at each other’s throats. I’m glad you paid attention to the banter. There are tons and tons of lines of banter in the game. We decided that it was a better vehicle for our kind of game, for players such as yourself that want to get into the lore and hear what’s going on. If you pay attention you can hear a lot from the monsters that are bantering, as opposed to cutting the flow of the action mid-combat to tell the story. But if you want to do it, you can take your time and listen in on what’s going on.