Ancient sorcerers wearing pointy hats. Damsels in distress. Guys with swords hitting dragons, skeletons, and other guys with swords. High fantasy has been slowly but surely sneaking into mainstream culture--it even took box offices by storm in the recent The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring motion picture. But it's been a mainstay of computer games for years, especially in role-playing games.

We're going to see a slightly different kind of fantasy from Lionheart, a role-playing game from California-based developer Reflexive and veteran RPG creator Black Isle Studios. Lionheart won't be based on Tolkien's works, or on the chronicles of the Dungeons & Dragons world--instead, it will draw inspiration from classical European mythology and history. The game takes place in an intriguing alternate reality that dates back to the religious wars known as the Crusades. King Richard the Lionheart of England, in his final campaign against the Muslim armies led by the legendary Saladin, gathers a collection of holy relics and performs a rite that he hopes will help him win the war, once and for all. Instead, the ritual causes the Disjunction, a cataclysm that unleashes unnatural spirits and sorcery into the world. Rather than remain at war, Richard and Saladin declare a truce, divvy up the artifacts, and head home to their respective kingdoms to battle the new breed of menacing creatures that have begun to appear in the world.

The Crusades have changed the world. And not for the better.

Lionheart takes place a few centuries after this alternate resolution to the Crusades, during what would've been the European Renaissance. But instead of giving rise to one of history's first industrial revolutions, the world of Lionheart is instead witness to a rise in sorcery--and an intense hatred of sorcery on the part of organized religion. Over the course of the game, players will explore this alternate version of 16th-century Europe, which will be populated by creatures branded with the mark of sorcery, as well as by famous historical figures, such as Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci.

As if this unusual premise weren't intriguing enough, Lionheart will also feature the SPECIAL (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, luck) character system, which Black Isle created for and made popular with its highly acclaimed 1997 RPG Fallout--a game that most RPG fans consider to be a bona fide classic. This open-ended system helped make Fallout one of the most interesting RPGs to play through, and play through, and play through again. Could Lionheart be the next Fallout? We checked in with Reflexive Entertainment's Eric Dallaire, designer on the Lionheart project, to find out.

GameSpot: Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. Before we delve into some of the finer details of Lionheart, why don't you tell us a little bit about your role in the game's development?

Eric Dallaire: Well, in addition to designing levels, I'm the lead writer for Lionheart, responsible for the story, character dialogue, and scripting some of the game's levels.

GS: Lionheart's basis in actual European history is an interesting break from the traditional high fantasy we usually see in role-playing games. Could you explain why you chose this setting for the game?

ED: Many months ago, Black Isle Studios and Reflexive agreed to create a new RPG using the SPECIAL character system. Black Isle pitched the idea of doing a game with some ties to real history, but altered and somehow different. Black Isle and Reflexive brainstormed some ideas and worked out the broad premise together. Reflexive then wrote up more of the specific story in our design document.

The idea of a historical setting is appealing because there is a sense of familiarity with the environments. It allows us to weave in real historical locations and figures into the game. The game's story is alternate history, so not everything you will encounter is the same as normal history. The alternate timeline gives us tremendous freedom to create a world that is at times familiar and sometimes strikingly different.