by John Gaudiosi

Flagship Studios took the world by storm with its Hellgate: London role-playing game (RPG), a game that showed that the creative group behind Diablo 2 still had plenty of new ideas up their sleeves. With their latest project, Mythos, Flagship enters the free-to-play massively multiplayer online (MMO) RPG space. In fact, Mythos predates Hellgate, in terms of game design (more on that below). The development team has retained the same isometric camera perspective as Diablo 2 to showcase the new dungeons and monsters that they've concocted, but everything else has been designed to take advantage of online gameplay. nZone sat down with Mythos' designer, Travis Baldree, to discuss this new MMO experience.

NVIDIA: What players with the new NVIDIA cards experience when playing Mythos?
Travis Baldree: Mythos was intended to support a wide range of machines, so we’ve eschewed a lot of the latest features rolled out with DX10 cards. That said, anyone with a new video card should enjoy great performance in-game, and should be able to play at high resolution with all features enabled.

What do you think of the visuals the new NVIDIA cards can provide today?
I think we’re getting to the point that the power of the new video cards available can allow us to move away from attempting to replicate reality, and as new features become standardized, developers can rely on them to build worlds that are extremely visually distinct.

What were your goals heading into Mythos?
Our initial goals for the Mythos project were simply to create a test game for the Hellgate network infrastructure – but obviously over time, those ambitions have expanded to develop a compelling free-to-play MMO, which responds directly to the input of its players.

Can you talk about the MMO space and where you see Mythos fitting in?
We are solidly targeting players who may not have enough time to commit to a more traditional MMO. We want you to be able to get in and out of the game in 20 minutes if that’s all the time you have to spend, and we want you to feel like you accomplished something and had a good time. Obviously, we want to offer plenty to do for those with a bit more leisure time, but we think this is an area not particularly well-served in the MMO space right now, and one that we can hopefully do well in.

In a World of Warcraft-dominated marketplace, what's the best way to find your audience?
My hope is that the best way to find your audience in a World of Warcraft world is to find a way to coexist with it. I don’t think we have any illusions about chipping away at the World of Warcraft player base – but maybe they’ll drop in for a short play session while they’re waiting for their raid group to assemble? Who knows?

How much sharing of technology was there between Mythos and Hellgate: London?
We share almost everything with Hellgate – the engine and gameplay code are shared in the same source tree. Our content, and obviously some of the particulars of our gameplay differ, but at the root, they are the same.

What are some of your team's past creations that might have impacted this project?
We have a small but dedicated team – many of us worked together in the past. Most of us have worked in casual games, and Ian Welke, our QA Manager was the QA Manager for Starcraft and several other Blizzard projects. While at WildTangent, I made the Diablo-like game FATE.

Where did you draw inspiration in developing this game?
The obvious inspiration is Diablo, with fast action against hordes of monsters in randomized dungeons. The more colorful, accessible, and social aspects of World of Warcraft also figured into our thinking quite a bit.

What's the basic story line for Mythos?
We’re actually in the process of rewriting it now. Given our odd development cycle, we’re going back and laying in the story after the fact, given that in the beginning the game wasn’t really expected to become what it currently is.

What types of character classes are in this game?
At present, we have three character classes – the Bloodletter (a melee class which can also summon pets from the corpses of fallen foes, or turn their own blood against them), the Pyromancer (a ranged, fire-based class, which can also engage in Melee, and has the ability to summon fire elementals), and the Gadgeteer (who uses rifles, grenades, and gadgets to attack).

What were your goals with these character classes?
We’ve tried with each class to have a lot of flexibility in how you can develop them, so that each build can feel quite distinct, with a focus on very different skills or weapons. We aim to add more classes in the future as well.

Can you talk about some of the unique gameplay aspects that separate this game from other MMOs?
I think our game’s pace, randomization, and the fact that it is free-to-play are its main differentiating features. The ability to fight a load of monsters in a random dungeon, and complete a quest in a matter of a few minutes before going to dinner is pretty nice.

What are you most proud about in this game?
Right now we’re all very excited about the Overworld that we have been working on in our Test Center right now. We have stitched together the randomized outdoor regions into a single contiguous area shared with many players, in an effort to increase our sense of community and place. It was a risky move, but we think it will be worth it!