Champions: Return to Arms – Dev. Diary Vol. #1

I played Champions of Norrath quite a bit and jumped at the opportunity to work on the sequel. There were a ton of things I liked about the original game, and a few things that I wanted to see improved with the next title in the franchise. Champions has a very dedicated following and we wanted to make sure that we were not only making a game that we wanted to play, but one that improved over the first title.

While I was making the transition from another title, there were design decisions that had already been made, notably, the medal rounds and the branching storyline. Both are great new features that will give our players a new flavor of Champions. I really wanted to focus attention on the multiplayer lobby and address item drop and money issues from the first game as well. So let’s start this off with an outline of the new features.

Mini-Games
The idea behind the mini-games was to give the players smaller side games that they could play after unlocking certain quest requirements. We knew that we wanted mini-games, but the actual creation of the games was slow going.

The real challenge was to come up with unique styles of gameplay that vary from the standard hack-‘n-slash. The different types of games were actually quite fun to create. The designers were able to let their minds run wild and the programmers were very open-minded people. This allowed the designers to make engaging games that could very well stand on their own. We also agreed to set the mini-games in each specific tile type for a uniform look.

What we ended up with was a suite of mini-games that actually have turned into office favorites. Our team members occasionally spend more time playing the mini-games then the actual single-player or multiplayer games. The unlockables from the mini-games actually help your character development in the single-player game. One of our goals was to integrate every part of the game into character development. Players will be able to unlock new maps and attribute enhancements.

Branching Storyline

The branching storyline concept was a great idea that offered varied gameplay and also doubled the replay value. It did create more content for the designers to work on now that the story split. More script, more in-game cutscenes, and lip-syncing made the new split storyline quite a large undertaking.