age of wonders: planetfall amazons dev diary

There are two different types of player choices that you will find in the Age of Wonders Planetfall campaigns, though the same distinction could be applied to many other games.

and she is not amused when her requests get turned down. And like in many open RPGs killing the quest giver is always an option. This starts with the open semi-random map layout that invites the player to explore the planet in all directions and ends with the AI players that often act as NPC quest givers, offering the players optional side quests – or alternative paths to complete their main story goal.

If we compare previous AoW campaigns to old-school RPG stories, then what we opted for in Planetfall can be best described as an open world RPG experience.

In Planetfall we wanted to use RMG-based maps as a basis for our campaign stories and consequently approached the mission design with an entirely different ideal in mind. Something I write with the greatest respect by the way, as I enjoyed all my campaign runs of previous Age of Wonders games as a player before I ended up joining Triumph for Planetfall. This way, all effort could go into polishing and optimizing the experience of that one linear story experience. The map was divided in areas that could often only be reached one after another, so that the player would always trigger the series of events relevant to the main story in the same order. Back then, maps were completely hand-crafted, fine-tuned and scripted to let the player experience the story carefully built in by the campaign designer in the best possible way. When you go back to the campaign missions of Age of Wonders 3 or 2 and analyze them from a high level perspective, you will notice a high number of bigger and smaller differences to the campaign missions in Planetfall. (There will be some story spoilers in the following passages, so people who want to explore every bit of the Planetfall campaign by themselves should stop reading here ) Today we will continue with everything that happens within the missions themselves. Two weeks ago we were looking at the player choices on the campaign star map and during character customization (if you missed the dev diary, you can still find it here). Welcome everyone to the second part of our dev diary about player freedom and choices in the Age of Wonders Planetfall Campaigns.

Age of wonders: planetfall amazons dev diary