Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures [PC]

• Watch Age of Conan CES Trailer
• Go to Game Director Q&A (with exclusive screens)

Yahoo! Video Games: Please introduce yourself, your position on the team and your previous experience?

Didrik Tollefsen: My name is Didrik Tollefsen, and I work as the Art Director (AD) on Age of Conan. This means that I lead and oversee the artistic vision for the game. I have been working at Funcom for over ten years now and have been the AD on projects like The Longest Journey, Anarchy Online and World of Midgard. I also worked for a short period on Dreamfall during kick off.

I have been working on Age of Conan since 2003 when I came on-board after completing Anarchy Online - Shadowlands.

YVG: What do you deem to be the most important aspect for the graphical style in a next generation MMO like Age of Conan? Do you favour realism or are you taking a lot of liberties?

DT: I don't think realism in itself would be enough for this universe. It's enhanced realism to the extent that one can call a "fantasy/sword-and-sorcery-universe" realistic. I wanted this world to feel the same way one feels when reading the original books of Robert E Howard for the first time: a very credible, very physical and to-the-point way of describing a world of civilizations that could have been pre-historic...a world before the ice age, even before the great cataclysm when the continents parted. Howard was a master at illuminating the supernatural without explaining it to the full, leaving the reader in a perfect state between the explained and self imagined. A state of magic realism. To translate this into the graphics of a massive multiplayer online game... impossible!

Just kidding of course, but it's been one hell of a challenge! However, I do feel we have succeeded in keeping the same principles when explaining our scenarios as the player explores Hyboria. Using state-of-the-art-technology, the entire realm is believable and physical while also including fantastical features that blend in nicely. Some of the dynamic, interactive elements are in many cases pushed a little to function visually and mechanically with the often furious and intricate gameplay. It's all about pushing things the right way. There is always compromising and balancing to be done when all these elements are playing at the same time.