In the modern gaming landscape, it’s fairly rare for a AAA development team to stick together for the long term. Game cancellations are becoming far too frequent, and studio closures are becoming a disturbing norm. Somehow,Madrid-based studio MercurySteamhas managed to keep its head above water, and its next title,Blades of Fire,is due out in just a few weeks.
Game Rant was recently invited to visit MercurySteam’s studio and saw first-hand what the team of 100-plus developers is capable of. Along with a hands-on preview of the promising Soulslike, we sat down with Enric Alvarez, the Co-Founder and CEO of MercurySteam and Director ofBlades of Fire, and Óscar Araujo,Blades of Fire’s composer, a duo who have been working together for well over two decades.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The Forge System Was Blades of Fire’s Genesis
Q: Could you both tell me how you first got into the video game industry, and what were the first projects you worked on?
Alvarez:We both share our baptism of fire! The gameBlade of Darkness, by Rebel Act Studios. A game that was released in 2001 and is considered to be apredecessor to the Soulslike genre. That was our first experience, me as a level designer, and Oscar as a composer.
Q: One ofBlades of Fire’s most distinct features is the Forge system. Was that always the primary focus of the game?
Alvarez:It was the genesis of everything. The entire game, from gameplay mechanics to narrative, orbits around the Forge. It’s the central idea. When we were first thinking about making this game, we wanted to go back to a similar universe to the one we created inBlade of Darkness20 years ago. For us, it’s like closing a circle, going back to the same kind of dark fantasy, super-precise combat experience. On one hand, it was that; on the other, it was the idea of the Forge.
It started with a very simple idea. What would happen in a fantasy world if steel suddenly turned to stone? You, as a hero, are f****d, essentially! How the hell are you going to battle your enemies with a stone sword? That’s the origin of everything. That gave birth to the Forge.
For us, the main challenge, even today, is to connect the Forge with the combat in the most clear and meaty way so that players feel the weight, balance, and consequences of their decisions and skill in the Forge.
Q:Blades of Firelets players name their weapon after creating it in the Forge. Was that a deliberate decision to try and cement that connection between the player and their weapons?
Alvarez:Absolutely. This is a game that revolves around weapons. Weapons are your sons. You give birth to them, they live with you, and they die with you. So, they deserve a name.
Q: What’s one specificBlades of Firemechanic you can’t wait for players to get their hands on?
Alvarez:That’s a tough question because everything is so connected. For example, the ‘Breath of the Defender’ mechanic, which is active stamina recovery, is a very powerful mechanic. It takes some time to understand, especially if you have a lot of experience withthe Soulslike genre, because people tend to just move backwards to recover stamina. But inBlades of Fire, you don’t need to do that. You defend and strike back.
That mechanic is something I’ve seen most people enjoy, but a few people struggle with. When you’re the most successful in the genre, you own the genre. Sothe Soulslike genre is owned by FromSoftware. We’re presenting a totally different mechanic. And not only that, your attacks are up, down, left, and right. You combine these, and it’s expected that it will take some time for players to get used to things.
But Breath of the Defender is my pick here. Once you understand the mechanic, you are a god in combat. If you don’t use it, the combat might look clunky because you’ll get exhausted, and when you’re exhausted you’ll get slower, your attacks will get more predictable, and enemies will be faster than you. Just like we did 20 years ago inBlade of Darkness.
Having thisquick stamina recoverygives you a new perspective on combat. I’m confident that once people understand it, it will open a new universe of possibilities because you won’t have to move back anymore. This way, we encourage people to use defense, which isn’t always the favorite playstyle for this genre. But this difference plays into about 50% of the decisions in the Forge. When you are making a weapon, you are deciding, for example, how many milliseconds you want for your parry window.
There are a lot of variables when it comes to defense, and encouraging defense through this mechanic is something we feel good about. Holding the defensive stance is natural in combat because you don’t want to get caught by an enemy. But at the same time, you move more slowly. There’s a compromise there. Picking the right moment to use Breath of the Defender is the key toBlades of Fire’s combat.
Q: Do you both have a favorite weapon inBlades of Fire?
Araujo:Hammers. Hammers are all-terrain, all-around weapons.
Alvarez:For me, my favorite weapons arethe Twin Axes. They deliver incredible power, and they’re very fast. I’m the kind of player who loves the dance of combat. Other players prefer to stand, wait, and strike. But I like to evade, attack, block, recoup stamina, bang, kill you, that sort of thing! For that, Twin Axes are the best weapon for me.
The Long Journey to Create Blades of Fire’s Soundtrack
Q: Could you talk about the choice to include singing inBlades of Fire’s score during exploration?
Araujo:Nothing communicates loneliness as well as a lonely voice. I wanted the player to feel lonely, defenseless. That isolated voice makes you feel fragile and small.
Q: You’ve worked on some movie soundtracks in the past. What’s the biggest difference between scoring movies and video games?
Araujo:One of the biggest differences is that, with a movie, the spectator is passive. In a video game, the player is actively participating in the action. In a movie, everyone gets the same experience. They go from point A to point B, and I know exactly how long that takes and what kind of emotions I want to convey with the music. In a video game, every person has a unique experience.
I need to take that into account, especially in these kinds of games where players might go this way or that way, tackle combat or not. From a musical perspective, it’s totally different. It’s way more complex for a video game. In a movie, it’s about finding one track per section. In a video game, you need to consider where the player came from, what they’re doing, and how the battle and exploration themes need to mix. It’s a totally different world.
Another difference is that when you make amovie soundtrack, you pretty much use everything you compose. But in a video game, sooner or later, you realize there are a lot of compositions that aren’t useful. Not that they’re not good, they just don’t fit. Your feelings tell you it’s good, but no. There’s a lot of discarded music.
Q: With it being such a complex undertaking, where did you start withBlades of Fire’s soundtrack?
Araujo:It’s hard to remember, it was five years ago!
Alvarez:Oscar and myself worked very closely at the beginning ofBlades of Fire’s development. Essentially, I’m kind of a vision holder. I had this vision, it wasn’t detailed or accurate, it was just a vision. But then I talked to Oscar and sent the vision to him. Together, we were looking for the melody of this game, trying to find what this game would sound like.
Oscar started imagining and composing. Piece after piece after piece, I was discounting them. “No, this doesn’t sound like the game.” Back in the day, we had a few sketches and a vision I had in my mind, that was it. It’s useless, right? But at the same time, it’s more precise than you’d think!
The main melody ofBlades of Fireis a song named “The Forgers,” which is one of the five songs players can hear on the main menu. That song is a little like the Forge I explained earlier. Everything grew around this single song that took months to create. You can’t imagine the number of songs we discounted, not because they were wrong, but because they might have sounded a little too muchlikeLord of the Ringsor something else. We wanted something more raw. But I didn’t do anything. I just watched and said “No, yes, no, yes!”
The CEO of MercurySteam’s Thoughts on AAA Development and Comparisons to Other Games
Q: Enric, you mentioned during the studio tour that a portion of MercurySteam’s employees are currently on vacation. Is that something MercurySteam regularly does towards the end of development?
Alvarez:Of course, we do that every time. This has been a four-year project. It’s been very stressful. Very fun, but a lot of stress. There’s been a lot of frustration because to end up with a cohesive game, you need to discard a lot of things. Before discarding them, you have to produce them. It’s hard when you’ve been working for a couple of months on something, you put it into the game, and it doesn’t work. Everybody agrees that it doesn’t work, and you realize you’ve spent two months on nothing.
But it’s not for nothing. You learn, and your next product builds upon the failure of the previous one. But it’s hard. Theselong AAA projectsare exhausting. It’s a good thing at the end of a project to take some time before jumping into the next one.
Q: Is there any game or other piece of media (aside fromBlade of Darkness) that’s inspired you both duringBlades of Fire’s development?
Araujo:Conan the Barbarian. Thesoundtrack toConan the Barbarianis a masterpiece. We discussed that soundtrack many times duringBlades of Fire’s development.
Alvarez:From a gameplay perspective, you might sayBlades of Fireis similar to this or that. But this is natural, this is how life works. I’m not going to say everything is already invented, because that would be very presumptuous of us. It’s essentially saying, “Yeah, everything’s already done, so f*** future generations!” That’s a silly thing to say.
But we can’t avoid being people of our time. It’s absolutely natural to take references, both conscious and subconscious, from your environment. You absorb everything. For me, the key to creativity is not where your references come from—which is a big obsession in the current video game market, and you may understand why—but it’s more what you do with that. Yes, you can takereferences fromCastlevania: Lords of Shadow,God of War,Blade of Darkness, or any Soulslike game, but that doesn’t tell you anything about the game.
What you do with those references is key. When people punish a game for being too similar to this or that, I simply don’t get it. Don’t tell me this game is similar to that one because, I don’t know, there’s a companion who’s a kid. F*** it. Just play the f***ing game, you know! And tell me how it feels, how it plays, and whether it achieves what it tries or not.
For me, the Forge idea was so strong inBlades of Firethat we couldn’t take much reference from any other game. Everything is built around the simple idea of connecting the Forge with the rest of the experience, to make players feel like their decisions and skill in the Forge affect gameplay.
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