Review Fix Exclusive: Pablo Rodriguez and Cesar Ortega Talk ‘Skara: The Blade Remains’

Review Fix chats with Pablo Rodriguez and Cesar Ortega, the minds behind the awesome upcoming fighting game, “Skara: The Blade Remains.” Discussing everything from the inspiration behind the game to their hopes for it once it’s released and their current Kickstarter campaign, Rodriguez and Ortega give a behind the scenes look at what appears to be a damn good fighting game.

For more information on “Skara: The Blade Remains” and the Kickstarter behind it, click here.

Review Fix: What was the inspiration for the game?

Cesar Ortega: Pablo and I grew up together 20 years ago playing video games and criticizing them! We would always highlight the flaws of this game or the defects of that other one imagining how we would solve those shortfalls. So Skara is our attempt to create the perfect video game under the point of view of the end user with all the features we would love to find in a single game.

Pablo Rodriguez: Yes, ten years ago I started my career in video games working on third party projects, then five years ago I started working on Skara on the side, and 18 months ago, Cesar and I quit our day jobs to work in Skara full time.

Review Fix: What games did you play growing up and how do you think they played a role in this game?

Ortega: We spent a lot of time and coins playing Street Fighter, Tekken and Mortal Combat so our fighting controls are inspired on these. We also played a lot of League of Legends, WoW… from where we are taking the social/group capabilities. We are also using the fast and frenetic action from games such Call of Duty or Team Fortress 2.

Review Fix: What has the development process been like? Any surprises? Hurdles?

Ortega: Although most of our staff has great experience in AAA games, this is our first complete video game as a company so the development has been a titanic challenge and a hyper steep learning curve! The majority of the hurdles came with the use of the new video game engine UE4 in Beta stage a year ago as there were no people in the market with the experience necessary to develop a video game in an efficient way, so we had a lot of trial and error sessions, but after 10 months using the engine we have become very familiar with it. Also, the fact that the engine is now open to subscription increases the number of people with experience on the market.

Rodriguez: I will always be surprised about how the technology changes and things that we deemed impossible to implement in Skara a year ago become more and more accessible to small indie studios such as us. From capture motion to facial and voice recognition that we will hopefully be able to implement in Skara if we raise enough funding.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite gameplay element in the game?

Ortega: Fatalities and combinations are one of our favourites and you can implement them against more than one enemy at the same time. We also love group attacks that allow your army to be more efficient than a few individuals attacking on their own.

Review Fix: Why do you think someone should contribute to the Kickstarter?

Ortega: Skara is a whole new concept that we defined as an MOV – a Multiplayer Online Versus, with adversarial control and combat set in massive multiplayer arenas. It is a unique concept generated after many discussions and conversations with thousands of gamers from around the world and that we truly believe will generate an engaged community.

Rodriguez: For the last 15 months Pablo and I have been working without a salary and we have been employing the team with money raised from friends and family, unfortunately we are running out of it. To keep Skara as an Indie concept we need the community of gamers to support us through Kickstarter so we can cross the finish line.

Review Fix: Who do you think will enjoy it the most?

Ortega: We believe that players of Versus fighting games, MMO and FPS will be extremely attracted to Skara given that the game combines features from all of them.

Review Fix: How do you want it to be remembered?

Ortega: We’d like to believe that Skara will be the best fighting F2P video game in the market and we dream with a world that will be started by the developers and that will continue evolving beyond our imagination by the community of players forever.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13819 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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