“Not in 20 years”-Eternal Life of Goldman producer discusses upcoming game

The Eternal Life of Goldman is one of the games featured at this years Gamescom. A dark adventure side-scroller that still contains a sense of vibrancy and is heavily inspired by fables, fairy tales and parables of old.

This upcoming title is being developed by thqnordic, who are known for Destroy All Humans, Wreckfest and Desperados. Eternal Life of Goldman Producer Andreas Schmiedecker, spoke to the legend that is Eurogamers Ian Higton, on the IGN Day 2 Livestream. He discussed the main character, the art style and if AI was used at all.

Interview

Ian asked, “The Eternal Life of Goldman stars a very old man, and its not often you see old men as protagonist of video games, can you tell us about Goldman?”

Andreas Schmiedecker, “usually you don’t get old protagonists, but it feels like you are the character of an old fable or a parable, where an old man would outsmart his enemies, which is special.”

The Eternal Life of Goldman producer was asked if the game was going to be a horror, “it’s not going to be a horror game but there is a bizarreness and a weirdness to it with the themes of fables and fairytales. So, it won’t be a horror, but it will have dark elements.”

Ian asked “one of the things that stands out is the visual style of this game, it looks hand drawn but I’ve heard the team is small. Did they use any AI in the process?”

Andreas replied, “There is no AI in the game. It really is people sat at their desks for days, weeks, months even a year to finish the game, so it is first by hand then use their tools to bring it to life.”

“You could tell AI to do something like this but that level of detail and how it all fits together and works as a game…AI couldn’t do that…not in 20 years. The only way of getting this right is to say let’s get this right and sit down and paint it, then paint some more, then some more, then animating.”