Q&A with Rise of Legends
Project Leader and Lead Designer
Brian Reynolds

Microsoft Game Studios: What was your role in creating Rise of Legends?

Brian Reynolds: I was the Project Leader and Lead Designer. That meant I was in charge of the overall vision for the game which involved lots of discussions with different branches of the team (art, music, programming) to figure out how to bring a cool fantasy world to life. Let’s just say I spent a lot more time in concept sketch meetings for this game than the last one! I also headed the core gameplay or “rules” team that designed the RTS side of the game. 

MGS: What is carried over from Rise of Nations to Rise of Legends?

BR: We kept a lot of gameplay features that we thought were successful in Rise of Nations and were appropriate to the “Rise” franchise as a whole. That includes the concept of National Borders, the idea of capturable cities, resource caps, an infinite resource model, and many other details.

MGS: When are you going to reveal the third race?

BR: As of the time I’m writing this, the third race has already been publicly revealed to be the Cuotl, a super-high-tech race of aliens who impersonate the “gods” of their human servants.

MGS: What are you most proud of in Rise of Legends?

BR: The way we’ve managed to take the best things about Rise of Nations, package them up with all new technology that makes it all look amazing, just worlds beyond what Rise of Nations looked like, and then completely streamline our gameplay so that it is even more fun than Rise of Nations was.