Delve into the making of Eragon, the video game
By Michael Lafferty

“Eragon, at its core, is a hack-and-slash action adventure … with this very cool dragon flight mechanic”

Sometimes books are so rich with action and adventure that they capture the minds of both the movie industry and the video-game industry. Eragon, from Christopher Paolini, is one such book. Set in a fantasy world, the tale is one of evil dominating the land and a young man who finds a dragon egg. The egg hatches and the young man and dragon soul-bind, leading to a new hope in the return of dragonriders – the benevolent force that once maintained justice and peace.

If you want to know more about the story, read the book, or wait for the movie, or the video game to get the gist of the tale. What was so compelling about the book that it warranted a game from Sierra Entertainment and Stormfront Studios?

For the answer to that, we went to the source – Eragon game producer Tim Ramage. He was kind enough to take a few moments from the end-run in the development cycle of the game (it is slated for a mid-November release on the 360, Xbox, PS2, PSP, NDS, GameCube, PC and Game Boy Advance) to chat with GameZone about this title.

Q: Eragon is an, as of right now, unfinished book trilogy. How hard was it to create a game based on a set of novels in which the outcome was unknown to all but the author?

Tim: The game is actually based upon the movie, which is based upon the first novel, so that was a challenge we didn’t have to face. If all goes well, then we’ll hopefully get to follow up with games based on The Eldest and the unnamed third book (Writer's Note: the teaser at the end of Book 2 named the third novel Inheritance, though that could conceivably change) of the trilogy.

Q: How closely was Christopher Paolini involved with this project?

Tim: Because we licensed the rights for the game through 20th Century Fox, we worked closely with the creative personnel involved with the movie; so in that respect, we didn’t get the opportunity to work closely with Christopher. However, we have been able to show him the game and meet with him on a number of occasions over the past three months. We were also able to get a bit of feedback on the two unique, book-based levels that appear in the Xbox 360 version of the game that really helped us ground the levels in the book universe.

Q: The game seems to be inserting action into the game in a manner that does not strictly follow the book. Did you merely compress the action timeline to make the game more involving for the player or did you actually take some creative liberties with the story in order to create a compelling game?

Tim: I think when you adapt any literary work to the screen, whether it is the movie screen or the video-game screen, you have to make some adjustments that customize the story experience for the medium. In the case of the game, we had to expand upon what appears on the movie screen in order to create enough compelling game-play content to satisfy the gamer. This is where having the ability to actually pull details … and even environments … from the book really helped. So, in one sense, we tried to close the natural gap between book and movie with the game franchise.

Q: What is it about this book that you think makes for a good game?

Tim: The book is about as natural a source for a good game as you get. A hero that uses a sword, a bow, and eventually magic; companions that provide tutelage and support, which is ideal for cooperative game play; and a kick-ass dragon—very solid video game material.

Q: How do you take a linear plot and create a game that will be intriguing, challenging and entertaining?

Tim: Linear is always considered a bad word in gaming … and I think that’s a narrow point of view. Story is always going to be key to good games. And one of the means to make a good game with a good story is to treat the story progression in a linear path. It’s what you do on that path that really makes a game shine. Eragon, at its core, is a hack-and-slash action adventure … with this very cool dragon flight mechanic. So as you progress through the story, it’s the action within the context of the story that makes or breaks the game. If the player is getting the action he or she expects, with a degree of challenge and satisfaction that makes them go, “Wow, that was fun!” then I think we’ve succeeded in creating an intriguing, challenging and entertaining experience.

Q: You created this game for not only current-gen machines but next gen as well. Outside of graphical capabilities of the next-gen machines, what did that format allow you to do that you could not do in the current generation of consoles?

Tim: It actually gave us the opportunity to create unique content based out of the book universe. We added two unique levels that are drawn from locales in the book as well as a new enemy character, the Kull.

Q: How did you go about realizing the vision for the characters and world in which Eragon lives - both from a graphic and audio perspective?

Tim: In the case of Eragon, since we were working closely with the creators of the movie, as well as having the ability to fill in the blanks with reference from the book, we were able to fashion a vision of the characters that really stayed consistent with the movie … and in the case of a couple of levels … even consistent with the book. From an audio perspective, having the voices of four of the major characters, and sound-alike actors for the other characters in the movie for the game really tied us in with the movie.

Q: In Eragon's world, magic has peculiar life-draining properties, and considering the size of the spell, can actually kill the caster. How did you alter this for the game?

Tim: This was a sticky design challenge. We knew we had to bring this sense of risk to the magic mechanic in the game in order to capture the nature of a young dragon rider, but we couldn’t just have the player die from using too much magic in the game. The solution was to take the core nature of the magic in the fiction — which is that Eragon cannot simply use it anytime he wants, he has to use it judiciously — and apply it in game language. So, based on the progression of the character, there is a rate of recharge that occurs whenever the player uses the magic. Early on in the story, after Eragon has learned he has this ability, the recharge rate is slow. As Eragon gets stronger, the recharge rate becomes faster, so that the player can use magic, especially in combat, quicker and more often than he could earlier in the game.

Q: What did you consider to be the biggest challenge of bringing this game to life?

Tim: Making sure we incorporated the movie’s vision in the game with a production schedule that outpaced the production schedule of the movie. This is a common challenge with most movie games due to the day and date nature of releasing the game with the movie. But there were times, very early on, where we were finalizing our art style and building levels all we had to rely upon for reference were conversations with the creative personnel on the movie and concept art. This was where Stormfront really shined. They were able to take these conversations and create visuals that turned out to be uncannily true to the vision of the movie.

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