Work-in-Progress Spotlight

Huidin’s Belief Part III

By Quaazi

For this week’s Work in Progress Spotlight we take a look at the latestproject being made by forum regular Quaazi, ‘Huidin’s Belief PartIII – Domination’. Not only does it promise to complete the story of theHuidin’s Belief saga, there are plenty of interesting gameplay points tokeep players entertained. Despite the fictional setting (which some maylabel as fantasy), Quaazi has gone out of his way to produce a scenariothat does not conform to the stale cliches of the genres. Promising tosimulate what it is like for an army on campaign, complete with supplylines and the problems keeping different divisions in coordination.With the plot taking advantage of playable and non-playable elements,Quaazi promises a unique story with a style of ending that has not beenseen before, but he is keeping his cards close to his chest!

Despite the ending being kept locked away until we actually see the projectin the Blacksmith, we have bene granted an insight into what to expect. Thecountry of Kanthorin has just defeated the country of Ygi’ninn in a bitterlast stand battle, costing many lives on all sides. Using this advantage, theypush into the heart lands of the Ygi’ninn, with a string of devastatingattacks on many towns and cities. The character joins the battle early on inthe campaign, as a man-at-arms freshly recruited to the arm. Assigned tolead the battalion is the young magician Tarkai – with a new view onleadership he lusts for glory. But how will the player fit into thiswell-oiled war machine? Will you be able to cope with the extra depthof traditional RTS gameplay, a Fixed Force style of play and also the styleof macro-management expected from more complex strategy games? It sounds likea game that should be worthy of great acclaim when it is released, but now wecan only wait with excitement.

Taking some time out from slaving away in the editor, I managed to askQuaazi some questions:

You haven’t released a project for while, do you think this put anexpectation on your project to succeed?

Quaazi: Hmh, I actually think it’s a good thing when a designerdoesn’t grind out projects like mad. I trie to do so after Huidin’s Belief1, but Part 2 sucked. So I’ve learned my lessons from that, and I’m takingmy time on this particular campaign. It DEFINETLY won’t be ready before2009, and it might come out as late as summer of the year. It will bereleased before ATW, though.

When working on Huidin’s Belief, did you have the story for allparts outlined before you started working on the first part – or has thestory progressed over time?

Quaazi: The story has definetly been a giant improvisationfrom the top of my head, I’m wondering, if I could change the previouscampaign that doesn’t quite fit into the current kick-arse storyline.As for the development of the plot in THIS campaign, I have the overalldirection complete, but the details are forming throughout the designprocess. Which is a very natural thing in my humble opinion.

What challenges did you face when creating a map based onTolkien’s work – did you think people might of ignored it given the previousattempts of using Tolkien’s work in scenarios?

Quaazi: The main mass of Tolkien scenarios in theBlacksmith are all based off the movies. Given the fact that theman has developed over ten thousand years of history for an imaginary world,I feel people have PLENTY more options for a Tolkien scenario. All of myscenarios have been about something else than the god-awful movies, forexample.

Following on from that question; do you think Tolkien’s work canbe done justice when expressed through Aok?

Quaazi: Yes. Definetly. Tolkien created this mythology to putaside other medieval mythologies, which have some mysticness to them,but still are swords ‘n shields, so to say. The slight amount of”magic” in there can really be ignored. The regular world of Middle-Earthcan be expressed through AoK just fine. In fact, I think AoK is the bestgame to do so, excluding the games specifically madefor the purpose.

Would you ever like to revist Tolkien’s work and makeanother scenario set in Middle Earth?

Quaazi: If I get the time, why the hell not. We’ll see how fast Iwill complete this scenario.

Is this the end of Huidin’s Belief, or will you revist thecharacter after the end of the trilogy, say in a prequel or similaridea?

Quaazi: I’m thinking of maybe making some scenarios in thatsetting that will be developing this campaigns military side. For example,I have already written pieces of history for it, and I am thinking of makinga “battlefield-dominance” sort of scenario in those times, a la World inConflict. Time will tell.

And now for some screenshots: