English
Gamereactor
news
War of the Vikings

The combat and historical accurary of War of the Vikings

Gordon van Dyke talks to us about War of the Vikings and how the nature of the combat changes thanks to historical facts.

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

We caught up with Gordon van Dyke to discuss War of the Vikings that recently launched into early access on Steam (at the time of the interview the game was in an alpha testing phase). The sequel to War of the Roses builds on the foundation of that game, but a lot of work has gone into making sure it plays differently.

HQ

We asked him how it came to be that vikings were picked for the sequel and how War of the Vikings came to be.

"There are a lot of really awesome time periods. Not just the viking age. But there is a lot of awesome time periods that you see really fits with that technology was really relevant in a lot of different regions and culture that were that you would almost think were disconnected, but there are so many similarities like Feudal Japan for example. But I just really had this interest in the Vikings, because you don't really see a lot of games that take from a factual standpoint and look at it and try and take that historical time period and reflect it more accurately. You always see it taking the mystic area where you have it always themed around Thor and things like that."

You won't see any horns on the helmets in War of the Vikings (no actual historical evidence exists for horned helmets), and everything in War of the Vikings has been researched. But the nature of the weapons and armour paired the Viking beliefs makes for a different, more intense style of combat than in War of the Roses.

"It actually did accidentally inspire a game mode that we did. We actually kind of revamped one of our battle modes called pitched battle. And that game mode basically you could have 64 players and you were on a large map. We made these smaller maps to make this more aggressive combat. Combat in that time period was much more aggressive it was about attrition and a Viking wanted to die on the battlefield if that was his time. He didn't want to be captured or ransomed and things like that. That would probably be the ultimate defeat to him emotionally. So you know, you just didn't have that. And their weapons were always about cutting and slashing and you didn't have plate armour and things like that. We've actually tuned and tweaked this design very much to specifically try and bring out what we, from our evidence, felt like a much more aggressive combat."

"We also have a lot with shields. The shields are a lot more accurate now. So the shield is the shield, so there's no invisible extra defensive layers to that. So it's about aiming that and that kind of ties into how much more they used the shield as a part of their combat. And then having axes, and axes like will be what will destroy a shield. Making sure that weapons that in that time period were meant for that specific use or that was their primary purpose. Making sure that that's reflected in gameplay. There's javelins that they used to have. And the javelins they weren't actually trying to hit people, of course if they hit somebody and they got some damage they were like "yes", but they were actually aiming more for the shield. And what they would do is that they would hit it and they would try to get it to penetrate as deep as possible and then they had barbs on it, or ways that they designed the head of the spear or javelin, so that it would penetrate and couldn't be pulled out. So then you had to ditch your shield."

As previously mentioned War of the Vikings is available for early access on Steam with a full release planned for early 2014.

Related texts

0
War of the VikingsScore

War of the Vikings

REVIEW. Written by Mike Holmes

"It's still an utterly punishing game, and while it is certainly easier to pick up, it's still very tricky to master."



Loading next content