It has been a few days since Kingdom Games came forth with their latest creation: FIVE: Champions of Canaan. The second in the FIVE series following the action-RPG Guardians of David, Champions sees you returning to Canaan to take part in relentless arena combat. You’ll create your character, take up numerous arms, and gain respect as you attempt to quell the tides of war in service of King David.
Kingdom Games was kind enough to invite us out to the studio where we had the opportunity to sit down with Director of Marketing Eric Daniels and Design Director Brian Lucas. In this extensive interview, we talked purpose, character creation, and the future of the FIVE saga along with some surprisingly awesome bits on the way for Champions of Canaan.
GameWatcher: FIVE: Champions of Canaan is the follow-up to Guardians of David, an action-RPG that follows the five greatest warriors of the biblical King David as they journey across Canaan. What’s the set-up in Champions of Canaan? Where do our heroes find themselves going into this second entry?
Brian Lucas: We decided to change it up a bit with Champions of Canaan. It’s not specifically a follow-up in terms of a continuation of the story of King David. We’re kind of branching off a bit by allowing the player to create their own character based on the lineage of the five heroes in the original game. It’s around fifteen years after the events of the first game. That said, we’re not basing it on specific stories from the Bible as much as we’re introducing a new style of gameplay more focused on action and entertainment than storytelling. We want players to be able to take on these arena fighting pits and play their character however they see fit. The story is there, but it’s loosely based on a what-if scenario of what could have happened after King David took control of Jerusalem and wiped out all the different tribes. It’s not based on anything specific.
Eric Daniels: We had an existing story for Guardians of David that came out of the Old Testament, based on the famous stories of King David like the underdog story with Goliath. What we wanted to do with Champions of Canaan was branch off and explore some fiction. What we end up focusing on instead of historical accuracy is the lineage of the Five. We felt a lot of people are curious about where they came from and it makes for an interesting storyline and element for character creation. You start in selecting your lineage from one of the Five warriors. That informs some attributes and advantages in different weapon choices, but moreover it informs the set-up for Champions where you’re still in Canaan, there’s rumors of war, and this shadow of potential conflict. So you’re sent in to participate in these gladiatorial-arenas where not only are you trying to prevent war, but you’re also fighting in these proving grounds that train potential soldiers for the possible conflict and the terrible things that go along with it.
GW: Each hero had a distinct playstyle in Guardians of David. You mentioned choosing lineage sets up some basic components of the character a player creates. Are created characters tied heavily into their lineage or do you make a playstyle all your own?
BL: At character creation, your lineage choice will have some specific passive attributes that are heavily tied to that character from the past. For instance, if you chose the Jashobeam lineage, there’s critical hit, evasion bonuses, and other specific passive attributes that are applied to the character from the beginning. We wanted to create some replayablity in that way by enticing players to explore all the lineages. That said, once you get into the game, we pulled away from locking you into a specific playstyle. Players can equip any weapon in the game and any armor type and each weapon-type has abilities associated with it. The more you use a weapon, the more abilities you unlock and coupling them together with different lineage abilities allows players to build tons of playstyles down the road.
ED: There’s also a story element in lineage selection. Depending on the parentage you choose, your character’s father and mother make appearances based on the choices you make in the game. It’s our way of supplying a connection between games and driving home the importance of legacy.
GW: In a way, the combination of innate character or lineage abilities combined with unlockable weapon abilities reminds me of another action-RPG. Square’s Secret of Mana series allowed players to change weapons and it would change the way they play and what they could do in addition to have innate abilities regardless of equipment. Can we say this is similar to that?
BL: (laughs) That’s a deep reference, but yeah, that’s a really good way of looking at it. There’s rounds in the arena that will start with enemies coming at you and at the end of that portion, there are boss rounds where you have to deal with a specialized enemy and whatever minions they have with them. There’s a number of enemies that are fast and can engage you quickly and archers that will hit you at range. They create environmental hazards where you might need to consider a weapon that will help you dodge threats or stay at range or consider a weapon that will allow you to close range and attack quickly. If you’re faced with a big enemy with a huge hammer, you might have to use different strategies. We tried to include an increasing variety of enemies as you progress that force you to make weapon choices on the fly. Each weapon has positives, negatives, and abilities that will influence how you decide to deal with the current stream of enemies coming at you.
GW: This is a much more focused experience, too. Where Guardians was a dungeon crawler with large stretches of world to go through, this is centered entirely on arena combat. What informed the decision to jump from a sort of dungeon crawler aesthetic to the arena style we see here?
BL: Our biggest desire was to create a game that was much more systematic in terms of gameplay and less story-driven. Story games take a long time to get right between voice over support, the creative hooks, and all the scripting. For this particular release, we wanted a shorter turnaround, so our focus turned to the question of how we could make a highly replayable video game where we could change certain elements, provide a little story, but mostly focus on a ton character progression. So we put a lot of effort into character creation and builds, providing different combinations against enemies, and having constant progression. Those were the main reasons why we wanted to go with an arena game. We can achieve all of those goals with this style of gameplay and in comparison to the time and effort that went into Guardins, this was much easier to do.
ED: Guardians of David was an epic in every sense. It’s 20 to 25 hours of story-based gameplay with lots of terrain, lots of different scenarios and settings, and a lot of different game mechanics. To do another epic, we’re talking about years of investment. We’re still a small studio. So something we wanted to do was try something fictional where we could control all of the story elements, but also supply a connection to the characters from the previous game that people like by way of family. With the arena setting, I think it gives us a unique platform to provide a lot of different scenarios and a lot of flexible gameplay interaction where you can tweak strategic elements. You go in, play one of these arenas, and there’s certain enemy types to deal with, so you develop some techniques you can be successful with, but then you move to arena to arena and environments, enemies, and the weapons they use change, so your playstyle has to evolve with it. Furthermore, with what we have in place, it provides us with a lot of flexibility to expand upon it and bring in additional features and elements to continue to grow the experience.
BL: I would say we’re at a point now where we have a fantastic foundation built to allow the plans we’re executing upon currently and the additional layers we want to add in to pursue our larger vision of the game. That’s going to have long-term effects for both both FIVE and Kingdom Games as a whole.
GW: So this could be considered to be a stepping-stone to a much bigger picture?
ED: Yes, exactly. And that’s not to say that Champions of Canaan is some small inconsequential thing. We think that it is an amazingly fun, complete, and totally encased platform as is, but it also gives everyone here at the studio that platform to continue to expand and build into another epic game experience, though perhaps not a linear one.
GW: You mentioned that progression is a big focus here. That isn’t necessarily confined to the arena correct? Are there any other forms of progression outside of regular combat?
BL: Right. The story elements that are present are tied to what you’ve done within the arena. These elements unlock as you gain notoriety or fame. You find out early that there’s an architect attempting to build an uprising and the idea is to prevent that without David having to engage with an actual army.
GW: One of the top lines of this game is these enemy commanders that you’re trying to earn the respect of as you fight through the arena. Is that to say there’s a certain currency or accumulation as you play through the game in regard to these factions outside the arena?
BL: I would say technically it’s less of a currency and more of just the way things play out as you continue to fight.
ED: Right, there are no respect points or anything like that going on. However, as you progress and as you show higher competency, it will trigger events as your enemies start to take notice of your presence. It’s not trust. They still consider you an enemy, but they will treat you differently because you earned their attention through your triumphs in the arena. Furthermore, the triggering of those events equates to things playing out differently in the arena as well.
GW: As of this time, Champions of Canaan is a single-player experience, but this kind of game is one that lends itself very well to multiplayer and co-op. Would it be safe to assume that’s on the way?
BL: Right. That is something that we are actively developing now.
ED: Absolutely, although it’s not something we’re ready to give a date to just yet. It’s definitely one of those ways we intend to expand upon the game and I’m confident that it’s something we’ll be able to do with this game in the future.
BL: Specifically, our studio has a lot of people that come from backgrounds in multiplayer development, so it’s not so much a matter of if as much as when. I would also mention that we’ve talked about player vs. player. The setting would be cool for it, but PVP is much harder to develop than co-op. It’s a possibility, but we’re definitely going to be sure to get co-op right before we even think about trying to tackle PVP.
GW: So co-op is big on the agenda. Certainly online, but have you also thought about local co-op? What’s the possibility of couch co-op for a game like Champions of Canaan?
BL: We’ve dug into the idea of couch co-op considerably and we can safely say that won’t come before online co-op. There’s so much to change in the user interface to make it work that couch co-op brings up unique problems and obstacles it wouldn’t make sense for us to tackle right away. A good example and parallel would be to look at the user interfaces on Diablo III’s PC and Xbox 360 versions and you can see just how different they are. We do have controller support for Champions of Canaan and working out the correct responsive inputs for that already complicates things so much. Adding the problem of trying to account for every character playing at the same time to the heads-up display makes for a lot of work. It’s not off the table, but we’re definitely putting focus on online co-op for the time being.
GW: We’re a few days removed from the release of FIVE: Champions of Canaan, available on Steam now. You alluded to this as a platform you intend to expand upon. Is there anything in the future for the FIVE series that you’d like to talk about?
BL: Long term, we do certainly want to continue working FIVE, the saga. The story isn’t finished with FIVE and we have a number of story options that we can move into if we decide we want to move onto another story event-driven game. That said, none of that’s happening before we finish out Champions of Canaan first. We’ve got a number of things that we still have yet to do in supporting Champions and as we get closer to the tail end of those plans, we’ll probably re-evaluate our plans for another FIVE game or something else.
ED: I think it’s important to consider purpose, what we’re doing, and what we’re trying to provide to players. There’s story in Champions, but it’s not the purpose this time around. The purpose behind Guardians of David was to world-build and tell a story whereas the purpose of Champions, what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to provide is much more focused on entertaining gameplay.
BL: We’ve mentioned co-op is definitely on the way, but there are some pretty great immediate and long term plans in the works as well. We’ve got an upcoming patch that’s going to allow players to be able to use multiple load-outs more easily to tailor multiple fighting styles into their process, but sort of on scale with the co-op is VR support.
GW: VR support is coming to Champions of Canaan?
BL: Yes. It’s something we’re developing and playtesting right now. We’ve been working on a set-up for all areas of the game from the menu screens to the hub world to combat itself. We can’t set a concrete date yet, but like the co-op it’s not a matter of if as much as when. FIVE: Champions of Canaan is definitely going to see VR support in the future.
This interview took place on-site at the offices of the Kingdom Games studio in Austin, Texas, USA. If you’d like to learn more about Kingdom Games or its ongoing projects you can find the studio on Twitter and Facebook or you can find videos like the one below at their YouTube channel.
FIVE: Champions of Canaan is available now and can be found on Steam for PC.
