Stepping onto the burning sands of Tortage Island, one might think you’ve ended up in a tropical paradise. But the island hides great secrets.
When we sat down and started doing the early sketches of the graphical and technical design of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, we spent a great deal of time thinking about what works and what does not work for massively multiplayer online games. At Funcom, we’re all gamers and we draw on thousands of hours of online play experience when we go about designing such a game as Age of Conan. We’ve also made online games before – our previous venture, Anarchy Online was released five years ago – and this gave us an invaluable lesson and taught us a lot about how these games really works.
One of the things we knew we wanted to do differently with Age of Conan was the initial player experience -- those precious first hours you spend in the game, learning the ropes and getting to grips with the controls and the interface. Most massively multiplayer online games puts you directly into the game world where you instantly will have to start relating to other players, and must immediately start playing with the unique game mechanics that we’ve all come to love – and hate – with massive online games. Especially for people who are used to single-player games, the experience can be quite daunting because the game can’t lead you by the hand as much, and the story will never really revolve around your character in the same way it does in traditional games.
With Age of Conan we’re going in an entirely different direction. The first hours of the game is spent in what closely resembles a single-player experience. Even though we have the opportunity to bring other people into your environment, you’ll spend the first hours alone in your own game world where the story revolves entirely around you and your character. This enables us to tell a more complex and interactive story, a story that plays out much like those you find in traditional single-player games. We can do world-changing events and create a level of dynamic and interactive action that is otherwise impossible to do in massively multiplayer online games. Still, you will always be connected to our servers, and you will be able to communicate with other players.
After having completed the character creation process – which takes place on the slave galley where you have been placed as a rower – you will, in the course of a massive event, wash up on the burning beaches of the Island of Tortage. It may look like a tropical paradise when you first bury your feet in the white sands, but you will soon discover the dangers – and the treasures – that the island holds. Equipped with nothing but a broken oar, you must brave the many dangers of the island and make your way towards the freebooter town which also goes by the name of Tortage.
After having met a certain character on the beach – one which will be recognizable by those who know the Conan lore – you will be thrust into a series of interactive quests that will pit you against the savage picts and the vicious pirates that inhabits the island and other islands around it that you will also explore. You will search through the thick, dense jungles of Tortage and discover a world of adventure that will prepare you sufficiently before you are thrown into the massive online world beyond Tortage – where you will finally step up and meet the challenges together with thousands of other players.
Art Director Didrik Tollefsen on Tortage:
Tortage is not easy to find amongst the hundreds of Barachan isles. And if you do, you’re going to have a hard time getting into the main bay outside the city. A maze of sharp reefs in every direction and sneaky fog makes it almost impossible to navigate a ship without knowing the route by heart. The city is a hidden treasure in it self, and one with great depth and multiple layers of discovery. Some of the structures on this island are the remains of an ancient civilization called Acheronian Empire. The large, main keep, looming over the harbour, is one of them. Horrible things took place here at the time when the whole island where covered with this bizarre looking-architecture. Dark rituals and human sacrifice where everyday stuff for the common Acheronian.
In league with the ancient Dark Ones of the deep, this empire dominated the whole of central Hyboria. After its fall, Pirates of Tortage have been looting the riches of Acheron for centuries, some more eager than others. So no wonder the whole city is a large patchwork of different elements. From ancient, heavy shapes, to wreck pieces of the many hijacked ships of these waters. Their wooden, wet skeletons can be seen all over Tortage bay, like stranded whales they linger and make a creepy vista to the south. They take what they can get their hands on, and put it together with crude tools of this age. But despite its mostly shady inhabitants, Tortage city’s infrastructure works quite well for a drunken, violent bandits nest. Its an organic-looking place filled with merchants of all kinds, selling their stolen goods from stalls on the main square or down by the harbour. These colorful elements make an interesting contrast to the rather worn and desaturated structures of the city. You’ll find many interesting little moments as ye explore the many, narrow streets of Tortage. Enjoy the stay, but watch your back. And for Crom’s sake, stay away from the many dungeons below the city!
Quest Designer Andreas Öjerfors on Tortage:
It’s fascinating to stand back and look at the development of Tortage, from the first drawings on a whiteboard to the conflict-filled city we have today. Even when it was nothing more than scribbles in a meeting room, we knew that we were going in the right direction with the isolated and violent nature of the island. It was a great setting for the story we wanted to tell. The city of Tortage is a town of pirates, and we wanted to use that theme to the full extent. The artists created a complete architecture set only to be used on Tortage, with pieces of old ships integrated into houses and a common mariner theme. The pirate rule gets the limelight in story and quests. Factions of pirates and villagers clash, and it is in this conflict that the player’s destiny truly begins. Introducing the player to Hyboria, we had to set the mood from the very first minute.
All throughout the process of designing the quests, it’s been important to give them that certain edge that Robert E. Howard’s writing had. The process of creating an MMO and a single player game is very different, so I went back to playing classic and new RPG’s to get inspiration for the quests. The good thing about being a game developer is that you can tell both employer and girlfriend that you are doing “research” when playing games. When you have been in MMO-mode for a while, I think it’s vital to take a step back to take a look at what the role-playing genre is really about. So that’s what we did. We revisited the classic RPG formula, and used that as a basis for Tortage. We made it epic and cinematic, but the core remains – it’s about combat, character development and story.