Gamers who are particularly invested in the growing arena of open-world RPGs may have been following the controversy surrounding Bethesda’s alleged sabotage of Rune 2 (and its subsequent lawsuits) with some interest. The story got even more interesting as Studio 369, a development team formed by the original Rune 2‘s publisher, announced the release of Rune 2: Decapitation Edition. This is a fully overhauled version of the old Rune 2, seemingly made as a defiant riposte to the shuttering of Human Head, and the original developer’s lack of support for the first version of the game.
In order to get more information on the controversy and lawsuit between Bethesda and Studio 369, Game Rant sat down with members of the latter on two separate occasions to discuss the game’s history and play a preview build of Rune 2. We had a chance to talk with Matt Candler, president of Studio 369; Sam Goldberg, general counsel and manager at the game’s publisher; Dan Felts, a producer for the game; and Mitch Alpiner, the community manager. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Can you describe the moment you as a team first felt that the game was “sabotaged?”
Felts: There were definitely things preceding that. When we first found out, Mitch and I were planning on going out there for the original Rune 2 launch. And we were told the studio isn’t available. My first reaction was what’s going on? Did it burn down? It wasn’t until a press release later that we realized what they meant. As the producer on it, I was thinking about who I work with- you know, is everyone okay? So it was strange and a little frightening.
Goldberg: It was a shock and extremely abrupt for us to read the press release the day after the game launched. To hear the next day that our development partners had been acquired by Bethesda. You’d think they would share this with us, we had worked every day together for years, on multiple projects, and they told us nothing. So now we have no development team, we’re trying to support a game, and they wouldn’t give us the assets. They didn’t give them for months, and when they finally did, it was completely jumbled. The file names were wrong, over 500,000 files that were improperly named.
And then, the coup de grace, we found out that Bethesda had acquired all the same employees, and they were using computer with Rune 2 on them, our property, and before we had ever known about them being purchased, they had given Bethesda keys to Rune 2. So, it was an escalating series of things as we slowly found out over time.
Q: What made you guys decide to still make this game? Why not cut your losses, why not use the IP for something else later? What made you decide to keep working on it?
Goldberg: We’re not quitters, and we had fans and a community that we felt were counting on us. It was really hard, and those were some very difficult times in late 2019 and January 2020. It took a lot of work to bring it back.
Candler: The other reason was that we had support from Epic because we were working in Unreal, and we had the framework of a good product. Our initial reviews were positive, and we felt that with the right attention we could make a really good product by supporting the game after launch, as most developers do. We didn’t want that failure on our resumes.
Q: How much of that original game is left in this new game?
Candler: Not a lot. We had to export the game, and there were a lot of files we never got a hold of. We re-did a lot of core systems, combat, loot, the core loop of the game. We re-wrote the script, got more voice actors, from 4 to 80. So very little remains except the structure. Some of the sub-systems, inventory and things like that are still there. We want to fix the inventory but we want to do that when we have more time.
Q: One of the big claims here is that the game was sabotaged to prevent competition with Bethesda properties: what about this title would be threatening to a huge franchise like The Elder Scrolls?
Candler: When we think about Zenimax and Bethesda and their behavior in the past, it seems like they take a pretty broad view of what competition is and how they are going to act to prevent competition from interfering.
Goldberg: I think the facts speak for themselves. We can’t see into the mind of Bethesda, but their behavior tells that story I think.
Candler: The other thing to think about in the games industry is that hit games can come from anywhere. Look at Path of Exile, PUBG, we’re in the same kind of budget range. It’s not uncommon- like with Among Us! It’s what’s great about our industry. It can take a while to grow but a hit game can come from a smaller team. But an open world RPG with loot, quests, voice acting, and co-op – that ticks a lot of boxes. Like Sam said, we don’t know, just look at their actions. They’ve also been very protective about their property and have sued plenty of people over their products before.
Q: It seems like beyond doing the lawsuit, you want to get the story out and explained what happened with the development of your game. Why is that?
Goldberg: Sure…We walked into a dumpster fire and came out with a diamond. We’re proud of what we were able to do, and we’ve been getting a lot of support from the community. We got totally stabbed in the back, so we also felt we owed the fans an explanation. I don’t want to downplay how messed up this is. We were friends with these guys!
Q: You’ve made a lot of references to what happened in the game itself. It’s called Decapitation Edition to reference no longer working with Human Head, and the story even reflects some themes of betrayal. Did channeling those negative experiences reflect positively on the game?
Candler: Yes. In our lives, sometimes the best motivation is bad s***. We decided to take a stand and say “we’re not gonna let this happen.” We’re gonna take a stand for the fans and because we want to make good games. We’re not just gonna walk away and abandon it. That fire, being pissed off, that was good motivation and we’re in the games industry, we wanted to have a little fun with it. So yeah, we’ll throw a little shade and call it Decapitation Edition.
Q: Do you want your game to compete in the same space as Avowed and Elder Scrolls? What does that kind of competition mean for your game?
Candler: I think competition is good, it makes people strive and that’s good for everyone. When we compare, it’s not a zero sum game. You can enjoy more than one game, and Rune 2 at $30 is about 40 hours of single player and co-op gameplay. Each game offers different things. Ours is action-focused, Obsidian’s Outer Worlds was shorter but had a different focus.
The following day, we re-grouped with the same people and hopped into a co-op session with Mitch Alpiner while the rest of the team watched, ready to answer any questions. Since the game is aiming to have so much content, we started out with some basic questions about their open world and co-op focus.
Q: How does the open world work?
Alpiner: It’s open world but it is a linear story. You will have multiple hubs, and as you go through the ages of Ragnarok, you will have different areas serving as your base. But it is open world, and you can go in any direction. There is some gating, as you get to the outer islands there are enemies that are very difficult and may only be defeated at higher levels.
Q: It seems like there’s a big focus on co-op, how will that work? Can you come in with your own character and hop between games?
Alpiner: The main host is the hero of the story, and the co op partners are almost like hired mercenaries. We built our skill system around the characters differentiating from each other, so everyone will have a different character that will play differently. You can’t come in as an existing character to a friend’s session, but if you drop back in to co-op you will come back as the same character from before.
[End Interview.]
As the demo went on, we played through an early section of the game, getting a handle on combat and the open world. There is a main quest to follow, but it is extremely easy to get lost exploring one interesting area or another on the way to a quest marker, and the developers encouraged that kind of exploration. In the open world and in the pre-set quest dungeons, players are rewarded for checking behind corners and parkouring across suspicious-looking outcroppings, all staples of the RPG genre at this point.
Combat relies heavily on abilities, and much of the fun of leveling up is in building a unique hybrid-class character. Players must devote themselves to one god to get their stat boosts and end-tier abilities, but there is always the option to pick up upgrades from one of the other trees. Finding synergy between abilities made all the difference in combat, and team-play in co-op was just as important. The ball lightning our character, Halfman Bjornson, received after allying with Thor was perfect for crowd control, while Alpiner’s Hel-worshipping character was able to dish out steady damage to bosses and elite enemies.
There was plenty of fighting and exploring to do as well, with multiple factions of enemies that will organically fight each other as well as the player. For example, one tough boss was crushed by a roving giant after our under-leveled characters fled, and in one dungeon there was a clash between undead and bandits that left a smattering of corpses and loot ripe for plunder. While a catered preview build, there were plenty of rough edges but also a lot of promise.
Felts explained that the devs are working on adding more multiplayer modes, including deathmatch, and possibly features like clans, territory, and base raiding in the open world. We can only hope that Rune 2 gets the continued support it deserves from Studio 369, and that the title is able to recover from its checkered development history to become the fun, co-op focused indie title Studio 369 envisioned when it set out to make it.
Rune 2: Decapitation Edition is out now on PC.
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