EXCLUSIVE: 40K Eternal Crusade Interview
Executive Producer Nathan Richardsson sits down with BoLS and chats about Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade.
Eternal Crusade Latest Trailer
“Though they once ruled the stars, the proud and ancient Eldar brought a terrible curse upon themselves that sundered their empire forever. Now they struggle against the dying of the light, deploying their few remaining warriors only in the face of the gravest threats. On Arkhona the Eldar fight to reclaim a world that was once theirs, as failure in the Eternal Crusade may lead to extinction.”
Nathan Richardson BoLS Interview
Q: Now that Eldar are in the game (congratulations on that btw) what were the design goals you wanted to accomplish for the faction? Basically, what is the unique Game Play Experience will provide?
NR: Thank you! We’re quite excited and the Orks are just around the corner as well. We will add to them gradually: weapons, variations, wargear, character advancements etc. so it’s all fun and games for us.
Eldar just in their basic form are very unique so the goal was simply to stay true to the lore. It’s important to understand that we are not taking the tabletop game and converting it to a massive online shooter. We’re making a massive online shooter based on the lore and the universe. That’s what defines Eldar and while we certainly do take some inspiration from the tabletop, our goals come from representing the universe.
So they are fast, less robust, their classes are far more specialized, they have more classes than other classes as result and need to play entirely different tactics than other factions. They do not apply brute force. They are incredibly fun even with their limited amount of options available right now and even overpowered in some instances. That’ll change as part of our massive balancing work right now for all factions, with weapon variations and qualities, Wargear, character advancement and weapons modifications coming in.
Q: What were some of the major challenges you faced designing and implementing the Eldar?
This was far more on the technical side than anything else. They have never been used and playable in a shooter before so there was a lot of exploration work with Games Workshop, a lot of retries in animation, the classes, craftworlds, how this all manifests itself on the battlefield and fits into our over-arching philosophy of balancing. We are asymmetric, and we balance faction against faction in that way, instead of carbon copying.
While this might not be so apparent with Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines today – this will become more and more apparent, especially with veterans, advanced classes (ie Librarians) and Heroes/Elites.
Q: A common Table Top critique of Chaos Space Marines is that they are “just Space Marines with spikes” – in Eternal Crusade how have you made Chaos a distinct faction with its own flavor?
We intend to add more spikes! Playing as Chaos though lately has shown that we are adding the more unique aspects to both factions, which is they don’t have all the same classes, weapons and so forth available to them as well as Chaos marks and everything associated. Chaos has a Sorcerer as their basic class while Loyalists have the Apothecary. You will continue to see more of that since we’re an online game and we never stop expanding the game.
Our expansions – or “DLCs” if you will – are free, so you buy the game and what we add you just get, which is why the unique aspects are slowly becoming more and more apparent. From the lore perspective, which the tabletop take it’s queue as well – they both have bolters, as they come from the same source. They used to be exactly the same and there is no changing that.
Q: Now that the Eldar are at a “playable” point – is there any news about the next playable race that you’re going to be focusing on?
Orks are coming in next and most of the character and combat team working on them right now. You’ll see them in a couple of weeks as well as Tyranids, in their PVE Co-op modes.
As for them being too similar to other races, I’m pretty sure we don’t have any problem there and they all have their unique traits.
Q: Currently the game is focusing a lot on the PvP and the war zones between Space Marines, Chaos Marines and now Eldar – What can you share about the Tyranid front? We saw the Tyranid models in the shooting range – do you have any other “BIG/MONSTROUS” surprises for PvE you can share?
I have nothing to share now, as they haven’t entered public testing yet. What you see in the Garrison are dead Tyranids. They most certainly won’t be lying around dead for you when you enter their lairs. And yes, they are big. If you’re wondering if we’ll have more PVE enemies post-launch, that’s quite possible as we have anything from renegade Space Marine factions to expanding on the Tyranids to something super huge.
Q: Finally, on a lighter note, I saw a Thunderhawk Model in one of the “Into The Warp” Webshows (Episode #66)…When Can I fly it?!
Well, a Thunderhawk isn’t very light in any sense of the word, it’s a mushroom cloud laying motherlover. While we want to add it post-launch, it’s very likely it will be in the category of ordinance and deployment options of the battlefield Warlords and as a result more “on rails”, nobody is piloting it but it might have gunnery stations while it circles the battlefield. That kind of stuff we’d love to see but no promises there, as the core game of course has priority.
I might allow you to take my Reaver for a spin though 😉
Eternal Crusade Homepage
Thanks so much to Nathan for sitting down with us and go sign up for your early access Eternal Crusade subscription today!
