Horses... spears... all that good stuff in Heroes of Three Kingdoms
Co-Optimus: What are the other games you’re working on?
Sam: There’s a historical game we’re working on called Heroes of Three Kingdoms, which is based on Chinese culture and history, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story. It’s the same story that Dynasty Warriors is based on. So, because it’s an historical game, you can go in and re-enact historical battles through instances you can join in. You, as a player, join one of the three factions and you battle it out. There are going to be forts that you siege, catapults that you build-
Co-Optimus: So it’s like an RTS?
Sam: No, it plays more like a traditional fantasy MMO, but it does have that kind of Realm vs Realm mechanic that was popularized by Warhammer Online and Dark Age of Camelot. It’s very similar to that kind of PvP where you’re fighting against other factions… [What’s different about it] is that the game isn’t race or class based; it’s all about weapons. There are 18 different weapons and it brings a new tactical/strategy to the way you play because all of the weapons have cooldowns on them. So you couldn’t just be an archer and shoot at guys all day. I could use my bow, but then I’d need to switch to a halberd or a grand staff throughout combat; I’ve got to be tactical about the way I use my equipment and how I cycle through it. Also, all of the animations for the game have been motion capped by martial artists that worked on movies like The Matrix, so we hope that will appeal to players as well. So I’m excited about that and excited to see how players will use that mechanic. I should also mention that both of these games will go into a closed beta starting next month..
Not a lot has been revealed about Forsaken World just yet, but based on this screenshot, we can assume there are castles
Co-Optimus: What’s the last game you’re working on?
Sam: The last game we’re a bit scant on details right now, we’ll be talking more about it at this year’s E3, but it’s called Forsaken World. This game is actually a huge undertaking for us because we have developers all over the world working on it, and it’s the one of game that we’ve probably spent the most time and resources on in order to make it acceptable not just to Eastern players, but to Western players as well. We’re really trying to blend the gameplay so that it appeals to a wider audience of people. I can tell you that it will be a fantasy-based game with five different races and eight different classes, with some classes that are only available to certain races. There are a ton of different occupations and crafting-based stuff, but we’ll have more about that at E3.
Co-Optimus: Our final question for you is about a game you published that stands out as a "one of these things is not like the other." Most of the games you do are MMO-based, so why did you decide to publish Torchlight?
Sam: This year is a big year for Perfect World Entertainment. We’re expanding quite a bit and we’re looking into different areas, and I think you can see that with what we did with Runic on Torchlight. We don’t do single-player games, we’re an MMO company, but we partnered with them because we were excited about a great team, you know they’re former Blizzard guys, former Diablo guys, and they’re going to make a great game. They’re working on Torchlight the MMO and that’s what we’ll be putting out for them, and we published the single-player game as well. To answer your question, I think that’s a reflection of who we are as a company these days. We’re looking at new opportunities and if there’s something exciting, we’re going to go after that. I’m excited for this year for Perfect World Entertainment, we’re gonna break outside of our shell of just doing – I mean we’ve had the same three games out for like a year and a half now, and I just told you about three more that are coming out in the next six or seven months. So it’s going to be a big year for us.
We'd like to thank Sam again for taking the time to speak with us about Perfect World, both the company and the game, and look forward to hearing more about what they've got planned at this year's E3.