Operencia: The Stolen Sun - an interview with Chris Baker

Nowadays, when on Steam every day is the release day, it's not easy for indie devs to grab one's attention. To make it happen, a concept of the game must be really original. In case of Operencia: The Stolen Sun, it really is! This dungeon crawler set in the world of Hungarian myths and folktales sold me on its ideas from the very first trailer, so I decided to ask its creators a few questions. Chris Baker, Lead Writer and Creative Director of Zen Studios, was kind enough to answer them, so have a fun read!

EnklawaNetwork.pl: First of all, can you explain us what does the “Operencia” mean?

Chris Baker: One of the big ideas behind Operencia: The Stolen Sun is that we’re assuming every Central European folktale that’s ever been told is occurring in the same universe -- much like comics, Star Wars, anything by Tolkien, etc. As Lead Writer, one of my early struggles was figuring out what to call this world. But as I researched more and more stories, I started to see things like “Óperencia” and “Óperenciás Sea” spring up. As an American, I wasn’t sure what these meant or where they were, so I asked my Hungarian colleagues.

It turns out that the English translation of “Óperencia” is literally “Far, Far Away”. At the same time, it’s treated as a location in these tales – things often happen “beyond Óperencia,” for example – so it seemed like the perfect name for our world. We came to like it so much, we decided to make it the name of the game!

EN: Hungarian folklore isn’t too popular in Poland (at least for now!). Can you tell us more about which tales and stories can we expect in the game?

CB: As I mentioned, I’m an American, so I probably knew less going into this project than you do in Poland! A lot of the stories – like Kőműves Kelemen and a castle built by fairies and giants – were already a major part of the game when I joined the project. As was the general idea in Hungarian mythology of “three worlds” – the Upper World of the gods, the Middle World of living things, and the Underworld of demons and general unpleasantness.

From there, I looked to excellent resources like The Folk-Tales of the Magyars, a wonderful animated series called Hungarian Folk Tales, and even just reference websites like Wikipedia to better shape the lore of Operencia. Especially noteworthy is the modern work of folklore scholar Zalka Csenge Virág, whose website The Multicolored Diary was an amazing resource, as was her book Tales of Superhuman Powers: 55 Traditional Stories From Around the World.

Through these resources, I’d find stories like Kampó Táltos and The Astronomer, the Thief, the Huntsman, and the Tailor that inspired things like locations, character traits, or in some cases even the names of certain characters. There are dozens of examples of small stories contributing into the bigger picture.

Another big part of it is general themes in these stories – things like enchanted forests, wise and mysterious old women, talking animals, and other general ideas that often showed up in folktales. You’ll find those kinds of things popping up all the time.

EN: Building grim fantasy worlds with dark, mature stories is very popular nowadays; however, From what I hear from you (and what I saw on the trailer), Operencia doesn’t seem to follow this trend. It looks a lot more lighthearted - like a fairy tale you mentioned several times. Do you agree or is it just my (false) first impression?

CB: I’d say it’s pretty accurate to say the game has a lighthearted tone overall. The Princess Bride was a big inspiration in this regard – a fun fantasy world with memorable characters and fun relationships. That said, the game definitely goes dark a few times. For instance, one of our locations – Deva Fortress – is inspired by a very grim legend behind its construction. Just read up on the story of Kőműves Kelemen, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’ve made a few creative alterations on the tale, but at the end of the day it’s still about sacrificing an innocent person to create a castle – pretty messed up!

EN: It’s already known that Operencia features some historical locations, persons or even events. Can you share more details about them? How will they be melt together with fantasy universe?

CB: Yes, as our introduction states, Operencia is a place “where history meets legend.” In fact, both the Kőműves Kelemen and fairy tales I mentioned earlier are legends attached to actual places you can visit today – fortresses known as Deva and Balvanyos, respectively. Our fantastical takes of each are both in the game.

In terms of historical figures in the game, the most noteworthy example is Attila, whose persona itself extends beyond actual history into becoming “legendary”. Depending on whom you ask, Attila the Hun was either a great hero or “the Scourge of God” and one of the worst people to ever live. Our version leans toward the former – we actually refer to him as “the Scourge of Demons” – but there are definitely hints to things like his ruthless conquering nature and his promiscuous nature. He’s also very deliberately just “King Attila” and never actually referred to as “Attila the Hun”.

Between the legends, the history, and the melting of the two, I think Operencia fully forms into a fantasy world that feels both familiar and distinct at the same time.

EN: Although a dungeon crawler, Operencia seems to have a lot of open areas?

CB: Yes, we do! One of the team’s goals from the start was to offer a traditional experience while also “dungeon crawling” outside of dungeons. This allows us to visit some pretty awesome locations like the Great Forest, the World Tree that connects all three worlds, and one of my personal favorite locations, the Copper Forest of the Upper World. Those familiar with Hungarian mythology will know this as the realm of Hadúr, the god of war…who just might pop up himself as a character in the game.

EN: How big is the game in terms of levels, puzzles, quests, etc.?

CB: We have 13 distinct levels, each with their own assortments of puzzles and objectives to fulfill. We’re finding that it averages out to about two hours or so per level – there’s a lot of game here, but it’s also very digestible for those of us who just want to break away for a couple hours a night.

EN: Are you going to include some choices and consequences? If yes, can player’s choices lock down some content, i.e. specific locations/story paths?

CB: The game’s story is linear, but the game itself is not without choice. Early on, you choose your class of hero character between warrior, hunter and mage, for example. There are also several variations of dialogue that will play depending on your own actions in the game. For example, early on you need to fill a bucket with water to put out a fire. When you get to the fire, you’ll hear different dialogue depending on if you’ve already picked up the bucket or not. There are lots of specific instances of dialogue variety like that.

EN: The player’s party can feature up to seven different characters, right? Do they have personal backstories? Or they’re more like battle figurines?

CB: You’d better believe they all have personalities! Yes, that was something very important to me from the start. Not only do they have personalities, but their back stories are often connected in ways not even they knew about until they get to chatting amongst themselves.

Very often, the characters come to find either that they have met the same people throughout the course of their own lives or that stories they’re intimately familiar with is linked closely to another character in the party. It was an absolute joy to write these characters, and as cliché as it may sound, they really did come to write themselves as things progressed. The way the team’s awesome character designs melted with back stories often derived from actual folktales was absolutely perfect. I hope you agree once the game comes out later this year.

EN: Do you have a main character or it’s more like the whole party is a main character? What’s the purpose that drives our heroes into land of Operencia?

CB: The game’s hero is whomever you want them to be. Before you play as them, you’ll choose their gender and whether or not they’re a warrior, a hunter or a mage, as well as their name and ethnicity. From there, you’ll meet characters in a very “Final Fantasy”-like style, with their classes and personas already being defined when you meet them – though you do of course have total control of how they play as you level them up. You’ll have a total of seven characters once everyone has joined the party, and any four can fight at one time.

And yes, though your adventure begins by following the will of Csodaszarvas, a “miraculous deer” of Hungarian mythology who appears to you in dreams, it doesn’t take long before you figure out what your overall goal for the game is – and it’s right there in the subtitle, “The Stolen Sun”. For reasons you don’t understand at first, the sun has simply vanished from the sky. It’s not a huge spoiler to let you know further that it turns out someone has kidnapped the Sun King, known as Napkirály to Hungarians, and your ragtag bunch assembles to figure out who is capable of such a thing and how to rescue him. So, you’re basically all out to save a god or else the entire land of Operencia will perish – no pressure or anything.

EN: How does the character development look like?

CB: You gain experience points from battles, puzzles and exploration, which leads to level ups. Once you gain a level, you can distribute talent and attribute points and you can unlock more and more active and passive skills. Also you will have better loot as you advance in the game.

EN: How many skills do we have? Are there any “exploration” skills like in a recently released The Bard's Tale IV?

CB: There are 89 active skills, 42 passive skills, 5 party skills in the game at the player's side, and 100+ at the monster's side (which can be used only by them ). There are no exploration skills, but we have 7 artifacts, which have similar effects to the skills in The Bard's Tale IV.

EN: Let’s talk a bit about combat as it’s essential in any dungeon crawler. We know it’s a turn-based system, but can you share some details? Does it have an action points and, if yes, how do they work?

CB: It's as classic as you can imagine. The combat is party based and you can have maximum 4 characters in your party. The turn order is based on the initiative value of the participants, higher goes first, and every character and monster has only one action in a turn. There are 3 basic skills ( melee attack, ranged attack and guard ) which are always available for every characters. You can equip 6 unique skills/character but they have cooldown and they require some energy to activate them. You can also use potions in battles, there are 18 potions in the game. There is a range system in Operencia which defines how efficient is a skill against enemies from a different range. For example: a simple melee skill (bash) is more efficient against closer enemies, but a ranged skill (easy shot) or a stealthy attack is more effective against enemies at the back row of the battle.

EN: Nowadays players often complain about battles being too long in turn-based system. How about Operencia? How long a single, typical battle can take?

CB: The average length of a battle is around 2-3 minutes, but there will be exceptions of course.

EN: What about bosses? Does fighting them require a sophisticated tactics? Maybe you learn about weak points of such bosses while exploring the world?

CB: Most of our fights requires more than just button smashing. You can give it a try, but you'll find your characters exhausted, and eventually dead. So, yes, we've tried to create bosses that requires different approach and sometimes unconventional tactics to defeat them. As you explore the world you'll hear lots of stories and legends, some of them will be about the bosses and their weaknesses.

EN: Overall, Operencia looks like a very ambitious, complex project. Would it be an overstatement to call it the biggest Zen Studios' project yet?

CB: Operencia is Zen’s biggest production yet, there is no doubt about it. Zen has been building to this moment for over a decade and we are fully capable of producing a game of this scope. The game is ambitious and complex, but we love challenging ourselves to go further and bigger than previous titles. This is why we do what we do! CastleStorm was a very ambitious game for its day and time, and we proved that we have amazing capability. The Operencia team has had total freedom to make the game they wanted to, and I am confident that they have taken this and created an amazing experience.

EN: So when we are going to actually play the game?

CB: We have had a limited closed beta that provided really great feedback and results. As you know, the game is now coming to the Epic Games store and Microsoft Xbox One March 29th.

EN: Thank you for your time and good luck with the launch!