PixelRage: Please, introduce yourself and tell us something about Ascaron, important achievements accomplished so far, and future plans.

Alan Wild: Hi there. My name’s Alan Wild and I am the Product Manager for Ascaron Entertainment. Ascaron has a history of success with strategic titles such as the Patrician series and Port Royale. Future plans include Port Royale 2, Web Wars Arena and three other undisclosed projects.

PixelRage: Speaking of Sacred, why did you decide to make an RPG / Hack'n'Slash ?

Alan Wild: We’re all huge fans of the RPG genre, and there was so much we wanted to do to add to this kind of game. It made perfect sense to develop our own RPG and create exactly the kind of fantasy world that we ourselves would want to adventure in, and with the features that we know RPG enthusiasts have been waiting to see. So, Sacred was born.

PixelRage: Could you compare Sacred to another RPG, and point out distinctive
features that sets it apart from other games?

Alan Wild: It would be extremely difficult to compare Sacred to any single other RPG title. There is just so much going on… here’s a list of distinctive features to get your teeth into:

a. Sacred has six main characters: Gladiator, Seraphim, Battle Mage, Wood Elf, Dark Elf and Vampiress. As well as a pool of items and skills, they’ve all got a host of class-specific weapons, armors, items and combat arts (special skills and magic).

We’re talking well over 2,500 items here…
b. The Gladiator is the fierce close-combat warrior. His special skills allow him to grab enemies and pick up, throw them, slam them, kick them, stun them, attack numerous enemies at a time… and the Gladiator can use almost all the weapons available in Sacred. Likewise with armor, which he can wear with little or no encumbrance or movement penalties.
c. The Seraphim is an angelic warrior, a skilled fighter who also has heavenly magic at her disposal. She has a range of unique armors, such as Seraphim wings, which as well as having some seriously cool magical and ‘energistic’ lighting effects, add various bonuses depending on just which items you find.
d. The Battle Mage is the traditional magician character, with one subtle difference: he also has some skill with close-combat weapons. The forte of the Battle Mage, however, is his exceptional magic and powerful spells. He can use spells from each of the four Elements: Fire, Earth, Water and Air. Additionally, the Battle Mage is also adept in the healing and protective Life magic. Being able to use weapons as well as magic gives Sacred’s Battle Mage much more scope for playability than previous mage characters in this genre.
e. The Wood Elf is a ranger-class character, with the legendary skills and magic of the noble Elves. Highly skilled in the use of bows, she can unleash devastating multiple, explosive and special arrows from her taut bowstring. Alongside her graceful attacks the Wood Elf’s Moon magic allows her to summon Ancestors and Unicorns to aid her, and to magically trap or transform her enemies.
f. The Dark Elf hails from a race that has strayed from the path of nobility walked by their Elven brethren. Dark Elves are malicious and ruthless in combat, particularly in the use of unarmed combat. They are also renowned for being efficient with their savage and wicked blades. Dark Elf males are trained from birth in such skills, and also in the use of traps.

It is these traps which can make any meeting with a Dark Elf quickly turn into a lethal encounter.
g. The Vampiress is one of the most unique characters to ever grace the world of fantasy RPG. Vampires have always been talked about, and there are many stories about them… and the Vampiress epitomizes the essence of the stories of such creatures. Both honorable and charming, fearsome and deadly, the Vampiress can appear as a beautiful knightly warrior, with graceful movement and speaking with their air of nobility, or she can appear as the vampiric creature of the night, summoning wolves and awakening the dead to aid in her quest, and fighting with animalistic claw attacks, slashing and biting.
h. All the characters are hugely playable in their own right, and each play quite differently which adds to the replayability of Sacred.
i. The characters, as described above, will make Sacred immensely appealing to all RPG gamers.
j. Sacred also boasts the appearance of horses which are an integral part of the game. To be able to ride, fight and cast magic from horseback is something gamers have been wanting for a while.
k. Not only that, but there are different horses available, with varying appearances, skills, bonuses, and riding requirements, as well as horse equipment for purchase.
l. We should also mention the combat arts and how you can combine special skills and spells into spectacular single-click combo moves.
m. Also, the forging of weapons and armor via blacksmiths to create individually customized items!
n. Plus, the believable game and incredibly detailed world creates a superb environment for complete and total immersion in a true fantasy world, filled with all the combat, magic, myth, danger, adventure and legends that fantasy gamers come to expect.
o. I’m sure you’ll agree, Sacred is a vast game. A really playable and in-depth gaming experience.

PixelRage: Do you think Sacred will take you where Diablo has taken Blizzard?

Alan Wild: The evidence so far is that Sacred will be massively popular. These are definitely exciting times for Ascaron.

PixelRage: How many people worked on this project, and what were the major issues you had to deal with?

Alan Wild: The team consists of around 15 people, but that’s just development. You’ve then got to include all the marketing and press people, everyone who helps to distribute the game, all the voice actors, and our music guys, and the hundreds of beta testers and, of course, anyone who buys Sacred!

Major issues didn’t really exist. The localisation was a sizeable task though. There are some 110,000+ words in Sacred, and around 5,000 different speech elements for the main characters, NPCs and enemies, with even more sounds and music for both atmospheric and creature based effects and responses.

PixelRage: Why did you choose an isometric perspective for this game? Will this be an advantage? Why?

Alan Wild: Quite simply, we chose the 2D gameworld complete with fully 3D characters to allow for greater detail and flexibility. To do what we have done in full 3D would have caused the minimum PC spec to be extremely high, preventing a lot of PCs from playing it effectively, and on top of that Sacred would not have looked anywhere near as beautiful, thus losing the atmospheric feel you get when you play it. Anyone who sees Sacred will agree that it is graphically stunning. Our artists have done an exceptional job in building the very visual Kingdom of Ancaria. To solve the issues of disappearing or “getting stuck” behind scenery, Sacred has a cool transparency feature. When you run behind buildings you will see a filtered transparency effect surrounding your character and any active nearby characters/enemies.

It’s a system that works very well. This maintains the level of graphical detail without hindering movement or forcing gamers to change camera angles as can happen in some of the 3D engines around at the moment. With Sacred we haven’t forced the gamers’ hands in any aspect. The whole thing about Sacred is playability. It’s a game for gamers.

PixelRage: You have done some amazing work on the 3D characters. What tools did you use to create them?

Alan Wild: Thank you. We’re pleased with how each of the characters look and feel. We used ‘granny’ from www.radgametools.com for our 3D character system.

PixelRage: What other third party products were used in the development of Sacred?

Alan Wild: All the other in game items were done in-house.

PixelRage: In the final English version, how will the dialogues with NPCs be like? Will NPCs have voices or should we expect even more?

Alan Wild: All the main characters have voices. All of the main NPCs have voices too. There are even some background voices which add even more atmosphere. The voice actors we used were superb, and we had a lot of fun recording all the samples. The Goblins and the Ogers were probably the most entertaining to sample!

PixelRage: On your website you announced 2 multiplayer modes: Co-operative and Hack'n'Slay. Could you give us more information about them, maybe even some tips?

Alan Wild: There are 3 multiplayer modes. The first is the campaign played cooperatively for 1-4 players. This is, literally, the full single player campaign in its entirety.

Secondly we have what is termed “Hack ‘n’ Slash”. This mode supports 1-16 players. All players begin on an island with a blacksmith, combo-master and shop keeper. From here there is a portal which leads to Bellevue, and there is also a tower which leads down into a dungeon area where there are many more portals leading to all the major realms with the Kingdom of Ancaria. This gives all players the freedom to choose what region they’d like to go and “Hack ‘n’ Slash” in. There is no main quest element in this mode, but all sub quests are fully-featured.

Lastly, of course, we have the Player vs. Player (or PvP). In PvP there are ‘safe’ zones, but the purpose of this mode is to go and settle some scores… and maybe win some cool new items.

Tips? How about “Don’t die…” and “don’t wander too far from your party members…” and “Don’t try the Platinum level with a Level 1 character…”

PixelRage: Besides combos and horse riding, what other surprises does the final version of the game reserves us for the main characters?

Alan Wild: That would be telling… No spoilers here

PixelRage: We've encountered some problems concerning the implementation and path finding of the AI of the town NPCs available in the demo ( in the town we’ve remarked NPCs blocking each other or some quest NPCs blocking themselves in other objects like houses or fences). What kind of improvements will bring the final version of the game?

Alan Wild: The demo code is approximately 2 months older than the actual final version. We’ve received a lot of feedback on the demo, and all of the known bugs from the demo version have been fixed and tested.

PixelRage: What is your relationship with Encore Software? What advantages does they offer you and why not another publisher?

Alan Wild: Encore Software is the North American distributor for Sacred.

PixelRage: Will your next game project be determined by the number of copies Sacred will sell?

Alan Wild: Nope. Our next games, Port Royale 2 and Web Wars Arena, are already well under way and both should release in the next 6 months.

However, if you meant “Will there be a Sacred 2?” well, I think everyone at Ascaron would admit it would be a lot of fun to work on…