King's Bounty II is a huge open world, tactical battles, beautiful graphics — it's no wonder that so many gamers loved this game. We decided to talk to the developers and ask questions about the plot, music, gameplay and much more. General Director of 1C Entertainment Nikolay Baryshnikov and PR manager Ilia Svanidze volunteered to talk about their brainchild.
Let's start with a brief excursion into history. Some modern gamers may not have heard of the King's Bounty series, but it was the game released in 1990 that formed the genre of turn-based strategy games and laid the foundation for the creation of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic. Much water has flowed under the bridge since the release of the first part, and it seemed that the title was destined to disappear into the shadows forever. Fortunately, one day a brave knight in shining armor appeared and brought King's Bounty back to life.
That hero was 1C, which in 2008 published the incomparable King's Bounty. Legend of the Knight. Despite the fact that 18 years have passed since the release of the original game, the remake has retained the spirit of the series and recognizable gameplay. Behind the improved graphics and gameplay was the same game about exploring a huge world and turn-based battles with villains.
The reimagining has deservedly gathered an army of fans who fell in love with King's Bounty for its fabulous atmosphere, exciting combat system, enchanting music — the list of the game's advantages is long. And today, many old-school gamers around the world are eagerly awaiting the sequel, which promises to surpass its predecessors in everything. If you are not one of them — join in! And our, one might say, 45-minute movie will help you immerse yourself in the topic.
King's Bounty II is a third-person adventure where players can choose one of three heroes (including the heir to the throne) and set out to explore the vast world of Nostria, empowered to decide the fate of the world. Some might rightly think that the game is somewhat reminiscent of Dragon Age: Inquisition or The Witcher 3, but once you get into battle, the cardinal differences immediately become apparent.
It turns out that the hero has always had a solid army behind him, whose fighters quickly burst onto the battlefield to follow the player's commands. From that moment on, only the strategic genius of the leader can lead the army to victory — and preferably with minimal losses. It is exploration and turn-based combat that will be the main gameplay mechanics of King's Bounty II.
The sequel sounds inspiring, but what will the game actually be like? Let's find out from the developers themselves.
VGTimes: Good afternoon, Nikolay! Good afternoon, Ilya! I know that you have an incredibly busy schedule right now, so we are grateful that you found the time for an interview. We have a lot of questions.
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Good afternoon! We will be happy to answer.
VGTimes: The King's Bounty series was born in 1990, but now most gamers only know the King's Bounty that was developed in Russia. The latest addition King's Bounty: Dark Side was released back in 2014. Many probably have a question: «Why did we have to wait seven years for the continuation of the series?»
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Good question. I'll start a little from afar. There was a company called Katauri Interactive, which made a wonderful series called «Space Rangers». We worked together for a long time. Naturally, the entire 1C team, including me, dreamed of our colleagues making «Space Rangers 3». But at that moment, Dmitry Gusarov for some reason lost interest in space and decided to make a turn-based fantasy game like this. I remember that one day we were flying on a plane, and Dima took out a notebook and drew the first battle screens right there. I liked the idea in general and, probably, I was one of those people who gave the green light to King's Bounty. Although, of course, we persuaded our colleagues to make «Space Rangers 3».
Katauri Interactive made King's Bounty, and then worked on add-ons for it for some time. However, instead of doing another part of King's Bounty after that, we were offered to make a full-fledged MMO. And we started collaborating with them on the product Royal Quest. Accordingly, MMO is a long process, it took many years to make, many years to operate. However, all this time I really wanted to make King's Bounty II. Around the end of 2017, we made a fateful decision: «Let's assemble a new team, let's make a sequel.» We had an internal request, we wanted to do something cool. There was a request from the players too."
VGTimes: The atmosphere of the first King's Bounty resembles an incredible, bright, colorful fairy tale. King's Bounty II has become much more serious and dark. Were you prepared for the criticism of fans who would be skeptical about the changes?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: The question is clear. I can be blamed for the changes, it was my decision. I believe that a sufficiently large amount of time has passed, and King's Bounty II is no longer an indie game, but a truly large Russian project, aimed not only at PC, but also at consoles, capable of showing itself better on the market than the 2008 game. What was done in 2008 fit perfectly into those realities, but if you make a completely similar project, it is unlikely to appeal to a wide audience.
Nobody expected King's Bounty in 2008 to be the same as it was in 1990, it would have looked pretty strange. I thought we needed the next revolution, a completely new foundation. I hope that we are laying this foundation for a long enough time and will develop King's Bounty II.
Whether the fans like it or not, everyone has the right to their own opinion, everyone votes with their rubles. The result will show everything. If no one likes our vision, and the game does not sell in any quantity, it will be sad. It is also worth saying that people change, and their tastes change. Some fans of the first part may have long ago abandoned the games, and over the years new gamers have grown up.
For example, I could not play the games that my children play. I am a fan of ancient turn-based wargames. And when I look at Fortnite and Minecraft... I can't play that.
Ilia Svanidze: However, if you look closely at the development path of King's Bounty II, you will notice that from a visual point of view, the game we showed at the announcement is no longer the same as what we are showing now (screenshots, trailers, videos), and everything has changed a lot. It is no longer as gloomy as some fans might have thought at first glance.
Nikolay Baryshnikov: The most important thing is that we have preserved the heart of the game. Tactical combat, supplemented it with interesting elements of 3D landscape, aiming line, altitude. It seems to me that everything that could be tweaked from the point of view of modern gameplay has been tweaked, while the best has been preserved.
VGTimes: King's Bounty II feels like a huge and expensive game. If it's not a secret, how many people are working on the sequel now? And when did development even start?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Development began at the end of 2017, when we assembled a small team of about 10-15 people. We spent a very long time, about a year, spinning different prototypes. We wanted to understand what the new King's Bounty was, what the combat would be like: we experimented with both real-time and pause.
When we finally decided on the current format, we began to expand the team. At the moment, we have about 90 people on staff. And about 60 people on contract. That is, very roughly, off the top of my head, about 150 people are directly involved in production, but if you count testers, recording studios, actors, some administrative staff, then I can't even count them off the top of my head. By Russian standards, that's a lot.
Of course, we're not yet a project that employs 500 or 1,000 people, but from my point of view (and I've been working in the Russian gaming industry since the end of 1998), when I made our first game «Prince», which had less than 10 people working on it, 150+ is decent.
VGTimes: Perhaps this is an tactless question, but still: how much does it cost to develop such a large-scale game today?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Well, let's put it this way: I can't name an absolute amount, because it's wrong, it's not done that way. But any inquisitive mind familiar with mathematics can calculate it quite easily. You can take the number of people I mentioned, take the average salary for games and IT and multiply by 4 years, adding various expenses for testing, localization, etc.
The game is being translated into 12 languages. This is hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on translations. Therefore, by our standards, the budget is quite large. At the moment, this is the most expensive project we have ever done.
VGTimes: You call the game «The Witcher 2.5». Why?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: I was misunderstood. I called the sequel «The Witcher 2.5» from the point of view of business, the size of the studio and the spirit of the team. Roughly speaking, 400-500 people worked on the third The Witcher at our colleagues in Poland, and the budgets were tens of millions of dollars. I mean, King's Bounty is «The Witcher 2.5» for us, an attempt to move into the AAA sector.
In terms of gameplay and everything else, the game has nothing in common with «The Witcher» for me, there is nothing similar, except, perhaps, the camera overhead. It's more like Dragon Age. Maybe even Fable in terms of that big world. But it's not The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where you can wander around the mountains in any direction for hours.
VGTimes: The game's plot is shrouded in fog and mystery. Is there any synopsis you can share right now?
Nikolai Baryshnikov: We are telling you little by little. After some time, there will be a presentation of other characters. A new trailer is currently in production, which will tell about the world of Antara.
Ilia Svanidze: We understand perfectly well that players want to learn as much as possible about the world of King's Bounty II, but we ask you to be patient. Our team is currently actively working on various materials about the game. So expect new trailers, information about various characters, and much more in the near future.
If fans follow our social media closely, you may have noticed that we have slowly started releasing content related to the Royal Lands, where the game takes place. We will be revealing more information over time. The initial countdown was our teaser, in which we announced the new release date. Without any words, we hinted at what is happening in the game with the main character and the game world. It was a very short teaser, but it gives food for thought to understand what will happen in King's Bounty II.
VGTimes: To what extent will the hero's actions affect the outcome of the plot and the state of the world in general?
Ilia Svanidze: Every action has consequences. Some choices will save the village and all its inhabitants, while others will ruin it. It will depend on the worldview and skills that are pumped up at that moment.
VGTimes: How will it be possible to customize the character? Will it be possible to change their gender?
Ilia Svanidze: We have three main characters prepared in advance. Aivar is a man, a classic warrior, a fighter against evil. There is a female magician. I can't talk about the third character yet. Fans often ask the question: «Will it be possible to put men's armor on a woman»? Plate and other armor will be unified. There will be no equipment that can only be put on a female or male character. We can easily put on everything, and it will be beautiful.
VGTimes: The game has a lot of side quests. Question: will they have interesting, exciting stories or will we have to settle for the usual «bring, serve, kill 10 boars»?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: As in many other decent games, the tasks will be varied: «Come, take away», and «Kill and help». Naturally, there will also be fairly long quest chains, which can consist of a large number of different sub-tasks that change depending on the player's worldview. We have already talked about the system of ideals. Depending on the character's worldview, some branches will become available, and some will not.
There will also be epic quests. King's Bounty II is a big role-playing game. If there's one thing they know how to do, it's role-playing games in Russia. I think we have a very talented team of designers, writers, and «quest makers». Now, when we conduct certain tests with our distribution partner Koch Media, they even say: «There are too many quests, we are tired of completing them.»
Ilia Svanidze: We also have tasks that can be completed in several ways. They are built on the worlds, of which there are four in the game, and when you choose one of the sides, decisions will already be made for you. Or the hero tries to balance on the edge, it already depends on the player. When you choose one of the sides, the other will refuse you or even fight you. The main story quests can be completed in different ways.
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Yes, I want to motivate players to play through the game several times: not only for different heroes, but also choosing completely different ideals in the game, because this affects both the playthrough and the battle tactics: which armies or units interact well with us, and which ones do not. I am sure that in order to fully study the game, you will need to replay it at least 2-3 more times.
VGTimes: At the same time, as you said, the walkthrough will take about 50 hours, if not more…
Nikolay Baryshnikov: We are currently basing our estimates only on the data from our internal testers. We ourselves, knowing how to play the game, fit into about this time, about 50 hours. Again, players often surprise me — YouTube is full of speed walkthroughs, where people complete Half-Life in 2 minutes 30 seconds and solve the Rubik's Cube in one and a half seconds. Some will find content for 200 hours, while others can run through it in 10.
VGTimes: How exotic will the journey in the game be?
Ilia Svanidze: This is a good question. I know that fans really love the previous part for the variety of locations. Of course, each location in King's Bounty II is unique in its own way. For example, in Marcellus you will find the castle of the King of Nostria, and somewhere underground nearby there are catacombs that are very different in design. There are also abandoned swamps and many other territories. The locations are very interesting and picturesque. Visually, I really like what our designers, art director, and the entire team of artists and developers have done.
VGTimes: The game pays a lot of attention to exploration, including searching for chests. What can you find in them? Gold, equipment, or something more exotic?
Ilia Svanidze: There are a lot of things scattered around the map: chests, barrels, boxes, etc. You can find gold, scrolls, items that can be sold, equipment in them. Can you find creatures? I can't talk about it yet. Let it be a little secret.
VGTimes: A hint?
Ilia Svanidze: (Laughs) Maybe, maybe.
VGTimes: Can you tell us about your favorite units, spells, or even quests?
Ilia Svanidze: My favorite quest is related to chickens, it's very funny. At the beginning of the game, the hero gets to the Royal Lands, where the castle of the poisoned king is located. You can walk around the territory and meet a crazy merchant who asks you to find five chickens of an unusual color. Some are easy to find, but the last one will be guarded by a bandit, who will have to be dealt with. When you return the chickens, the consequences will amuse you very much. Even though we went in a more serious direction, a bit of humor still remained.
About my favorite creature... For me, it's a dragon — period. I generally like dragons, and ours are very beautiful. I can't say how many there are yet, but we've already shown one. And now it looks even better. If we talk about regular units, I like trolls the most. They're funny. We'll have several types of trolls, for example, stone ones. They're a bit dumb and more angry than they are, but they look threatening and funny from the outside.
My favorite magic is fire magic, it looks very impressive. We have four schools of magic, but fire strike and fireball are the most impressive.
VGTimes: Will each hero have some kind of unique plot?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Let's say the main storyline doesn't change, all the main quests are the same. But players may have different approaches to solving them. In general, there are nuances. In addition, a third or even half of the game is spent in battles, and the tactics and strategy in choosing units greatly depend on the type and class of the hero.
Ilia Svanidze: The characters are very different: each has their own plot, unique dialogues, their own motivation... They talk differently, they treat everything differently.
Nikolai Baryshnikov: Conventionally speaking, if the hero is a peasant, then he behaves and communicates with factions in a characteristic way. And if the hero is a prince, then a lot will change. Not to mention that the heroes are also of different genders.
VGTimes: Someone is worried about the fact that you can't have a romance in the game. Why?
Nikolai Baryshnikov: Good question. We decided to focus on the story and combat, and romances are not something that should necessarily be in the game. We are not Mass Effect. This is not about King's Bounty II.
Ilia Svanidze: King's Bounty II is an epic adventure in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings, where the heroes have goals, and they selflessly go towards them. Romantic stories are secondary, they complement the picture. They will be, but not with the main characters.
Nikolay Baryshnikov: I literally just completed a quest in the game yesterday, where you need to help one person in love. But in general, our world is collapsing there, global evil! Sorry, «no time for girls.»
VGTimes: Will there be any tools available for creating your own campaigns?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: No, there will be no modding or any other tools. I already hinted that we are building the game as a large new platform. If King's Bounty II goes well, then we will actively develop the universe for the next ten years. We already have an approved plan for the next two years. Will mods and other things appear at some point? I don't rule it out, but not at the time of release.
Ilia Svanidze: At the same time, we listen to fans, read their comments and are interested in what they want to see in the game in the future. If we can implement any of this in the future, we will only be glad.
Nikolay Baryshnikov: It is important to understand that King's Bounty II is not a PC-only project. If that were the case, many of the ideas would have been implemented by the time of release. We understand that modding on PCs is very important. However, this is only one of several platforms. No one mods on Switch or PlayStation. We must release a game that works equally well on all platforms, and not with a bias towards computers.
VGTimes: You said that the game's difficulty will adjust to the player's success. Is there a possibility that it could overestimate the gamer's skills or, on the contrary, underestimate them?
Ilia Svanidze: In fact, we were slightly misunderstood when we said that the difficulty adjusts to the character. Everyone thought that if the hero comes to a location being level ten, then the entire area will adjust to him. This is not entirely true. It's just that the difficulty of each location will gradually increase. The hero comes to a new location, and the enemy, of course, becomes more difficult. But it does not adjust to your level. This is not exactly auto-leveling in the classical sense.
There is just a gradual increase in complexity, like in the classic Heroes of Might and Magic, King's Bounty and all other turn-based strategies, where each new location is a more difficult opponent.
VGTimes: Many people like to spend hours studying the bestiary of units and enemies. Will there be a bestiary in King's Bounty II?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: If I understand correctly, a bestiary is a separate tab in the menu. We will not have a special encyclopedia in the release version. But there is a kind of pseudo-bestiary. We have come to a system where an unlimited number of units can be stored in the player's inventory. Therefore, having assembled an army of spearmen, griffins and other units, you can click on a specific creature and get full statistics. I assume that the «Troops» section in the inventory is a pocket bestiary.
Ilia Svanidze: As for the in-game encyclopedia itself, there are such plans, but not for the release, but in the next updates. Right now we are more focused on tactical gameplay, and most of the units are revealed through the plot and dialogues. If you carefully explore the world, you can hear talk about how «these creatures appeared then.» But the bestiary, which gamers like to read, is also in the plans.
VGTimes: In the «Developer Diaries» you said that the game will have intelligent races: humans, undead, trolls, dragons and someone else, still shrouded in mystery. Is it possible to lift this veil at least a little now?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Unfortunately, no, otherwise we already burned the gnomes. We are currently preparing a bunch of materials on the game, which will be gradually published before the release. In them, we will reveal all the key units and races. For now, wait a little.
VGTimes: Some fans are worried whether the musical accompaniment will be able to compete with the magical music of the previous parts. Can you tell us a little more about the music?
Ilia Svanidze: A favorite question from fans of the previous part: «Is the composer of the same King's Bounty: Legend of the Knight participating in the recording of the new game?» I will answer again: no. We have a new composer: a wonderful person and a professional in his field, who recorded albums for very famous people. I cannot reveal his identity yet, because soon we will have a video diary with a story about him and the soundtrack. Will the music be fabulous, beautiful, light as before? Yes, but with notes of more epic music, because the project has become more serious compared to the previous parts, which means the music should have changed too.
VGTimes: Different heroes have different skills. Are there any skills that can be used in civilian life and in dialogues?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: There is nothing like that, but there will be a role-playing component for four ideals. In essence, this is our passive skill, which changes a lot at the moment when we enter into a dialogue. If the hero is a robber, then in a dialogue with the leader of the robbers, a certain dialogue branch, a certain plot development branch will be triggered. You can call it a skill. All combat skills are also tied to ideals. If we pump «mastery», our magic indicators grow. If we pump «anarchy», indicators related to initiative grow. The global skill affects specific perks in battle, which can give passive or active abilities. For example, a cool unit can have up to four active skills.
VGTimes: And how many active skills can the hero himself use in battle?
Nikolai Baryshnikov: The hero has two global features. The first is his characteristics, which, one way or another, affect the army. If we exaggerate, they give «plus one» to the attack or «plus one» to the defense. The second is that we have a magic book from which we use a spell or scroll once per turn. If the hero develops magic, then he has access not to elementary spells like lightning and fireballs, but more cunning ones: speed up, slow down, weaken, revive, poison.
VGTimes: Let's say, at the beginning of the game I have an idea to create a noble hero who beats up criminals and saves princesses, but at some point I change my mind. Will there come a point when it's too late to transform the hero into a terrible villain?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: There will be. We want to create a system where at some point the character starts to control the player. If we've been a great paladin all our lives, then one day the hero will say: «Boss, I know, the princess is around the corner — we'll figure it out now.» We thought this was a fair system. If you want to experiment, start over with this or another hero and see how everything changes if you're not a paladin, but a scoundrel.
VGTimes: Is it possible to use mana on the global map? Can it affect the solution of puzzles or creatures?
Ilia Svanidze: Mana affects battles more, but it will also be needed in trade. We have gold, leadership and mana. Mana will be needed to buy some creatures and other items related to magic, but I can't say which ones yet. And also, decisions related to mana do not affect the world.
Mana is dying. Have you read the book «The Neverending Story» or watched the film of the same name? One of the sources of inspiration for our main screenwriter Igor Khudaev to create a dying world was precisely this work, where the world was dying because the magical entity was dying.
You will have to think about mana often, because when you activate a magic crystal that stores mana, it dies. When you return to the location, you will see that it has not recovered.
VGTimes: I understand that the main character will have a fairly large magical grimoire. Will there be room for summoning magic?
Ilia Svanidze: Yes, there are quite a lot of entities to summon. Golems will be the first to be summoned. Summoning scrolls can be found at the first location, if you do everything correctly. In general, you can even summon a chimera and other creatures.
VGTimes: Do summoned creatures not affect the number of other units on the map?
Ilia Svanidze: They do not affect the number of other units on the map? You can take five units into your army, and the summoned creature will be the sixth. After the battle, all summoned creatures disappear and do not remain.
VGTimes: Are you planning to carry over the hero assistant mechanic from previous parts or will you abandon it?
Ilia Svanidze: No, but we will have something completely new.
VGTimes: You said that units will change as they develop. Are these some kind of radical changes? For example, will flimsy archers one day turn into elite crossbowmen?
Ilia Svanidze: Units have three ranks. Each unit develops not like in «Heroes», when an archer, roughly speaking, turned into a crossbowman: our units still remain themselves. But they get additional equipment, improved armor, additional items, their appearance changes. We have divisions between archers and the same crossbowmen. For example, 3-4 variations of magicians.
VGTimes: Can there be only one dragon in a squad?
Ilia Svanidze: Previously, King's Bounty depicted only one unit, but under it there was a signature in the spirit of «100 dragons» or «100 spearmen». We abandoned this. Now the units are depicted as they are. If there are 10 spearmen in a squad, then there will be that many of them on the battlefield. This adds realism. Previously, it was simply impossible to draw something like this due to the peculiarities of the engine. The dragon will take up a lot of space.
VGTimes: In November, at one of the press conferences, you said that the game would definitely be finished by March. Do you need an additional six months to polish the game and fix bugs, or do you have any other ideas that you want to implement?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: No, the game is completely finished. If I'm not mistaken, we finished working on the content in the twenties of December. Now we are exclusively engaged in technological issues, such as porting to different platforms. There is a lot of work associated with the Nintendo Switch, in terms of hardware, it is very different from the PC.
I think not all players understand the production cycle. On PC, you can finish the game today, upload it to Steam tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow it will already be sold. But printing boxes with cards for Switch takes at least 8 to 10 weeks. Given COVID-19, many technological production chains have lengthened. In order for the game to be released in August, it must be sent to the factory in the spring. Plus, Microsoft and Sony platforms have very complex certification procedures. Each game is in line for certification and encounters a huge number of bureaucratic and technological red tape.
In parallel, we are, of course, polishing. As soon as we finish work on the console versions, and they go to print, we will continue to polish something for PC. This is the kind of work that is going on... The main part of the team is already working on add-ons. As I said, we have an agreed plan for almost two years. There will be many different add-ons, improvements, and new content. We'll be posting it little by little after the release.
VGTimes: Is there room for story DLCs in the support plan?
Ilia Svanidze: Yes, that's in our plans. However, the plans will come true if the project pays off. The main thing is that gamers want to buy the game on release, and we go into the black. This is the only way we can implement our plans, which include both story DLCs and regular ones. Some DLCs are already being developed. This is not content cut from the game, these are separate DLCs that were invented quite recently.
VGTimes: You said that there are no plans for multiplayer. Has nothing changed since the last statements?
Ilia Svanidze: No, nothing has changed. King's Bounty II is a completely single-player project.
VGTimes: Today, buying your own house and building it is very popular in the industry. Will there be something similar in King's Bounty II?
Ilia Svanidze: We are not a survival game, so we will not have anything like that. Building a house or your own castle, getting married, having children — this is not about us. After all, King's Bounty II is an epic classic adventure in which you will move forward through the world towards the main goal.
VGTimes: In the gameplay videos, you seem to show the interface of the console version. How much will it differ from the PC version?
Ilia Svanidze: We are trying to unify the interface. Of course, the PC version will be a little different, but not much. We want people to have the same experience everywhere.
VGTimes: Will the game implement the ability to market, barter, or auction any monsters or other items?
Ilia Svanidze: In terms of the market, no. There are merchants in the game from whom you buy creatures. All creatures are stored in a reserve, a kind of virtual representation of the entire army available to the player. They remain there until the squad dies. But trading with other living players? No, this will not be possible.
VGTimes: How much has the pandemic affected the production of the game?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: It had a strong impact. It required a significant restructuring of the team. When a group of programmers sits in one place, they can quickly discuss something... And now we have to waste time on endless calls and Discord. And purely technically: we have a huge number of devkits, they need to be picked up from the office and delivered to apartments. At the same time, several guys from the team were sick, some quite seriously. Fortunately, there were no fatalities. Obviously, for us, as for everyone in the world, this was a shake-up and a challenge.
VGTimes: Remember the wonderful game Pathfinder: Kingmaker? It was terribly buggy on release. Is there a risk that something similar will happen to King's Bounty II at release?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: I would say that our game should be cool and polished already at release. We have a serious difference from Pathfinder, which was originally released only on PC. We are releasing on a number of console platforms, and this implies quite rigorous testing. Neither Nintendo, nor Microsoft, nor Sony will allow us to release the game if they find any critical bugs during their internal testing. PC is an open platform, and any indie developer can release something unplayable…
VGTimes: You said that Xbox and PlayStation monitor the quality of projects. How did it happen that one well-known Polish game with a crazy development budget came out so raw?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: Good question. Honestly, I'm very surprised that this happened. It's hard for me to comment on the situation in other companies... Perhaps it was some kind of commercial decision, and some things were turned a blind eye to. But, let's say, in my experience, this is an amazing event. For the first time in my life, I saw how PlayStation simply removed a game from the store. This is not a typical situation. It's unusual for me to see bugs in a console game. I played Cyberpunk 2077 on PlayStation: I haven't finished it yet, but I played for about 30 hours. At the same time, I didn't encounter many bugs. Maybe I was lucky.
VGTimes: King's Bounty II will be released on August 24. Are there plans for a physical, collector's or special edition version for PC and consoles?
Ilia Svanidze: Yes, we will definitely have both physical and digital editions. There are also plans for collector's editions. But no details yet.
VGTimes: Speaking of the PC version, on which platforms will King's Bounty II be sold?
Ilia Svanidze: King's Bounty II will definitely appear on Steam and EGS, we don't have any exclusive agreements with Epic, if anyone is still worried about this after the last announcement. We also plan to sell it on GOG, but maybe not on the day of release. After all, GOG doesn't work with DRM protection, and we have a large single-player project, but we definitely have plans to release the game there.
VGTimes: Should we expect bonuses for gamers who pre-order?
Ilia Svanidze: Yes, we will have cosmetic (and other) items for pre-orderers. We will soon tell you in more detail what exactly they will be provided with — everything will be honest, beautiful and transparent.
VGTimes: Now King's Bounty II is considered almost the savior of Russian gamedev. For a long time, there was nothing of such a large-scale, expensive and anticipated nature. Doesn't this burden weigh you down? And aren't you worried that gamers may ultimately be disappointed with the final result?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: This is, of course, a strong exaggeration. How can King's Bounty II be called the savior of the Russian industry? We have many great games coming out, and there are already billion-dollar companies. Everything is fine in our industry.
Yes, we don't have many console projects. Yes, there have been few single-player AAA games lately. We are trying to do something in this direction. Will some gamers be unhappy? Of course they will. And others will be happy. You can always hear the unhappy ones better than those who play silently and happily.
We released a game Death to Spies, it was super difficult. I couldn't complete it on the easiest level. Once a gamer wrote to us and said: «I bought the game on sale for five dollars. I played it for 2 thousand hours. I completed it on the impossible level, but I think it's crap. Please give me my money back. I'm unhappy.» I personally took money out of my wallet and asked the guy to give it to me. Well, he didn't like our game.
People are different: there will be both haters and fans. I hope that there will be more of the latter. When we started posting the first videos, my favorite comment was: «the graphics are really bad, maybe it'll do for a mobile phone.» And we have Unreal Engine 4, at that time — probably the best graphics in Russia. Now, of course, there are more positive comments.
The Russian-speaking community is generally quite tough. I noticed this not only with King's Bounty, but with other games as well. If French, American and German fans write «cool» in the comments, then Russian fans say «it's good enough for a mobile phone». I also liked this comment: «1C probably won't spend money on high-quality localization, because of this the game will fail». And I just signed a paper on localization even into Japanese and Chinese. The English voiceover was recorded at a top British studio. We are trying very hard.
Will we save Russian gamedev? Of course, we won't. Are we making the game to the best of our abilities? Yes, we are. Probably, this will now be a kind of test: is it possible to make projects of this scale in Russia? What is a game anyway? Is it a set of specialists who do something with their hands? We tried to assemble a very good team in Russia who know how to make games.
VGTimes: Let's look at the past of Russian gamedev: Space Rangers, Allods, Vangers, Corsairs were played all over the world. And what now?
Nikolay Baryshnikov: If we take our games that we have made during my history of working in the company (and this is probably 150-200 projects), then on average, sales in Russia will be around 10-15%. Any modern game is made with the whole world in mind. The Russian gaming market accounts for about 1% of the world market. No one in their right mind makes games specifically for the Russian market. From a commercial point of view, it is impossible to recoup the development of a large project by selling only in Russia. That is why Russian games are still played all over the world. We hope that King's Bounty II and our other games that are in development have such a cultural code that will appeal to any territory.
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VGTimes has been operating since 2011 and during this time has visited dozens of exhibitions and festivals, where our journalists have collected many exclusive materials. For example, in 2019 we got to a closed screening of Cyberpunk 2077 at gamescom, in 2017 we prepared a photo report from WG Fest, in 2020 we were at the largest gaming event in Central Asia CAGS, and also visited IgroMir several times, where we saw Hideo Kojima and other famous developers.