Shadows: Awakening is perhaps the most remastered game I have ever heard of - an interview with Peter Nagy

After years of waiting it’s now clear that Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms won’t get a Book II. Don’t be sad though, because Games Farm is working on something bigger and better: Shadows: Awakening, a completely revamped and extended experience in the beloved world of Heretic Kingdoms. Recently I had an opportunity to speak with Peter Nagy, a CEO of Slovakian developer, who told me a lot of interesting things about this project. Read on!

EnklawaNetwork.pl: Released back in 2015 Book 1 of Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms promised a bright future for fans of the world, that had been brought to life by Kult, your very first game. But soon after release of Book 1 it was more and more clear that situation of your newest game is far from being ideal. What happened?

Peter Nagy: Unfortunately, shortly before the release of Book 1 we were informed that our publisher at the time had filed for insolvency protection. It was very unpleasant situation as the game was already out there in Early Access, people were expecting it and we learned that our partner cannot be relied upon to fully publish it. We have decided to release the game anyway. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and the publisher went bankrupt shortly afterwards. We had to nearly close down our studio but fortunately we have survived. After some legal proceedings we were able to acquire the rights back and we started to plan the completion of the game. It was not an easy way; but eventually I believe the game will be much better than it would be possible before.

EN: In the meantime you released Vikings: Wolves of Midgard. I guess it helped you to restore the studio?

PN: It helped a lot to collect experience and improve our position. We learned really a lot during the development of Vikings and we utilize all the experience in our upcoming games – including Shadows: Awakening.

EN: In World of Shadows hub in Book 1 there was quite a place for a few new heroes, or, technically, ‘puppets’. Should we expect to meet more of them?

PN: Oh yes; there will be at least 15 puppets total in the entire game [smile]. So definitively a bunch of heroes...

EN: The story of Book 1 had a bad pacing: very mysterious at first, but then really obvious from around a half of the game. Are you going to put some improvements to narrative side of the game?

PN: This is difficult for me to answer without spoiling content of the entire game [smile]. We are definitely doing our best to deliver more balanced gaming experience and address the negative feedbacks and concerns collected from the players.

EN: The concept of Devourer transforming souls into puppets was very intriguing, but also lacked depth. Can we expect more interactions between the demon and his minions in Awakening?

PN: We were quite restricted by technical possibilities as well as short timeframe. Fortunately, we completely redeveloped the entire game using Unity technology based on improved Vikings. This eliminates any technology bottlenecks. We also have much more experience and capacities to do the magic [smile] Definitively there is a lot more interactions between both realms. To be honest – the games will be different in so many aspects that it may be actually easier to consider them a separated games. This is quite rare situation in the industry overall; but we learned a lot with the release of previous Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and Vikings: Wolves of Midgard. And we definitively want to bring the players the best we can – it is not about completing the game, but making it really anew and complete. The RPG system was very much reworked, including loot, puzzles, interactions, quests, challenges – simply expect unexpected [smile].

EN: Should we expect improvements on a tech side? Better graphics, new sounds or extended music score?

PN: Oh yes, definitely. I actually wouldn’t call it improvement, but it was completely reworked from scratch. In fact, there is almost nothing being used from original Shadows – with the conversion to Unity we had to create completely new models, textures, lightning, scenes, etc. To improve the gameplay, we even changed the layout of the scenes. So it is really perhaps the most remastered game I have ever heard of. [smiles] Performancewise the game has also improved tremendously. And with all the experience from Vikings, the game runs smoothly and looks significantly better than Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms. The original game was never released to consoles because it suffered with low framerate but Awakening is already running smoothly on PS4 and XBOX One, so I think the huge improvement is obvious at the first glance already.

EN: Quests in Book 1 left me with a very mixed feelings. On one hand, there was definitely too much simple, fetching quests; on the other was a brilliant, filled with challenges dungeon Kogog’Aak. I hope in Awakening there will be less of the former and more of the latter?

PN: This was one of the negative feedbacks we acknowledge and we work hard to improve that aspect of the game. Even if some simple quests remain there, we do our best to add more challenges throughout the entire gameplay. We are still restricted with the resources and development timeframe, but we plan to deliver significantly improved gameplay, challenges, including plenty of puzzles and Shadowrealm interactions throughout the game.

EN: Finally, can you share with us some numbers? Approximately how many new abilities, quests, loot or enemies can we expect? How much time does it take to complete a single playthrough?

PN: Gladly! Game contains more than 70 maps and a single playthrough is expected to take around 30-40 hours, depending how much do you engage in your side quests. However, each of the three main characters has a unique personal story, quests and dialogues, so to really experience the entire game you will need to play the game three times with each character. Furthermore, you will not be able to unlock all characters during a single playthrough, some characters are mutually exclusive, so you cannot really experience everything at one playthrough.

We have redesigned the entire RPG system, so expect a HUGE changes in the abilities / skill system. It is important to note that the skills are synergic, so the combinations of the various skills are increasing their effects tremendously. And each character has 4-6 active skills, we have 15 characters, so we are talking of countless of combinations, really a synergic network of skills. It is up to player’s skills to combine them and find the right combinations of the skills. There are more than 100 quests in the game, around 160 enemies – so there is a plenty of content and I believe you shouldn’t be bored. And not to forget handful of puzzles scattered across the Heretic Kingdoms.

EN: Since there are so many changes, I guess we won’t be able to continue our playthroughs with saves from Book 1?

PN: Well, sorry to say so, but no, it isn’t possible. There is simply no way to continue the game from original saves. The changes in the RPG mechanics were very extensive and basically no mechanics were left untouched to improve the gameplay. So there is no way to reasonably convert original characters into the new system. Originally we wanted to maintain the consistency but after detailed analysis of the gameplay mechanics we made severe decision to gut out the original RPG system and recreate it from scratch to ensure the gameplay works the way we want it...

But as we are adding new gameplay elements, new puzzles, enemies and everything, I believe that players will not have the feeling that they are playing the same game. I strongly believe that players will appreciate what we did and will understand the reasons behind backwards incompatibility.

EN: So, what is the current stage of Shadows: Awakening? Can you estimate more precise release window than already announced “2018”?

PN: Unfortunately, I cannot say any more precise window. We focus on the development and want Awakening to be as good as we can get it. So the quality is priority for us.

EN: We’re going to patiently wait, then! Thank you for your time and good luck with the development!