"WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR?
“The game is not out and I don't know if we've solved this problem, but one of the big challenges is to have events that are generated by dynamic sandbox events, and are good strategies for the NPCs to adopt, but that also make sense to the player. An example of what we want to avoid, from Warband: we introduced feasts, which were a way that factions could spend resources to repair relations between lords that were damaged by the ebb and flow of war. The problem, though, was that the strategically ideal time to hold a feast was when you were in the middle of a war, which didn't seem right from a narrative perspective. So there are a lot of moving parts in the game, and we're trying to get them to work together in a way that makes sense from both a strategy and an RPG perspective.”
WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
“I'm currently working on dialogs for quests. These can get quite complicated, because we want to have lots of small quests that offer meaningful branching choices but may also be given out by characters with different personalities. We're also trying to work out a main storyline quest that absorbs the player but complements the sandbox struggle for power rather than seeming like two parallel games.”"
Oh dear. That doesn't sound like they are even remotely close. You should have already nailed down a main quest at this point in the production. Yeesh.