Realm Royale changing "slow creep" of Battle Royale matches

Paladins had plans to get into the world of Battle Royale for a while, but it was only recently that Realm Royale was released, one such game set in the same universe as Hi-Rez Studios' shooter, and so we caught up with executive producer Rory Newbrough at E3 to ask about what separates this game from others in the increasingly-packed genre.

"We tried so many different things," he responded. "We really wanted to have the ability to play different playstyles, but also not to limit to 'you have to be the best flickshot' or try to get the quickscope or something. And that's what the class system really allows us to do; you don't have to be the best shooter to play the Engineer - it's all about positioning and playing intelligently. And getting that wide gambit of playstyles one means it's more playable, because you play a different class each time, the experience is a little bit different. It also appeals to more people, so we really felt that it was a good play into it."

"We also wanted to clean up some of the things that we felt weren't as exciting, so when you get knocked down you can't do anything - that's not as fun, right? So that's why we came up with the chicken mechanic, you turn into a chicken running around, no-one has to come and pick you up, you can pick yourself up, you can auto-revive. Same thing with the mounts - it's not very fun hunting around for a car when you're out in the fog and run for 20 minutes trying to get there, so you come with the mount on top already."

Another element that separates Realm Royale from competitors is the forges that appear on the map, allowing you to craft better weapons while at the same time alerting enemies to your presence as the forge billows smoke every time it's used, something that Newbrough says changes the matches significantly:

"We know we wanted an objective that would get people to come and fight. The one thing that we wanted to change about Battle Royale was mostly... it's a slow creep, and people avoid each other as much as they can; we wanted to flip that on its head and encourage people to fight early and give them enough incentive to do so. And so by getting the shards and disenchanting, going to the forge and getting really viable armour and weapons [...] it gives you that incentive to fight and use the forges. In fact, if you don't use the forges at all, when it gets to the last circle you're so far behind, you're not really in a good spot."

Have you been having a good time with Realm Royale? How does it stack up to other games?