The merger of art and design was necessary to develop Reckoning

Author: by Staff

In a new Gamasutra feature interview, Big Huge Games lead world designer Colin Campbell speaks about how his team is essential to creating an open world RPG that comes together. "We can't build individual parts. None of us are building our own sliver of the game, and then putting them all together expecting them to work. We're all connecting to each other. We're all building one thing, collectively. It has to feel cohesive in all of its parts. That's sort of the philosophy of the whole project," says Campbell. His team of world builders sits at the intersection of art and design. "We are both designers and artists, so we'll gray box it, we'll place the design aspects," says Campbell. The team receives quest designs from the design department and art from the art department, and assembles it. "We'll actually do the final polish," he says. But how did the team come together? "In prototypes, in trying to figure out how to make an RPG, there's things that we're not doing now, and I think that's consistent for any studio. We learned and we changed our plan... You have to learn to be agile. You have to be willing to say, 'This isn't working. We want to make something the players will love, so let's change plans.'" The full interview, in which Campbell discusses in greater depth what his team does and why, is live now on Gamasutra.