So the major idea of the character that you play as (which hasn’t been elaborated on yet) is that he is a concept warrior, so to speak. A small group of very subversive priests at Tenochtitlan created this warrior by taking a promising young combatant and indoctrinating him in such a way that he suppresses his traditional military training in favor of a more direct and deadly approach. They become far less concerned with capture and become focused on killing. While this flies in the face of Aztec culture, it serves a purpose; to give the priests a tool they need to get things done. To stop riots, subjugate potential tributaries, mercilessly stop outbreak, perform an assassination, and so forth. It’s a very controversial idea amongst the Mexica Tenochca’s administration, but no one can argue with the results. The beauty of the idea is that when one of these young Aztez warrior dies (which he most likely will) he is simply replaced with another promising young warrior. This essentially creates a warrior that is not only very frightening, but does not appear to die and can also appear in multiple places at once.

But that’s not to say there will be no sacrifice! One of the important mechanics of the combat in the game will be the ability to perform a high-risk move on a weakened enemy that will result in a high-speed ritual sacrifice that the player will be greatly rewarded for performing. The key skill area will be balancing killing (less difficult but less rewarding) with sacrifice (more difficult but more rewarding) in the heat of combat, where there very well could be a whole lot of enemies surrounding you.

Thanks so much, again! Hope you come back.

Considering the nature of Aztec warfare, the creative risk could perhaps revolve around not killing opponents – after all, an Aztec warrior was motivated by taking live captives for later sacrifice. Dead enemies served no purpose to the individual warrior; progression through the ranks of Aztec warrior societies (commoner to Eagle/Jaguar warrior to Otontin and then elite Cuahchicqueh) was achieved by the capture of enemy warriors (I know that you know this already!)

Perhaps this could be an element of the game – a twist on the beat-em-up. Killing is not so hard, but taking live captives is tough and more risky. If the primary weapon is a macuahuitl, for example, then a more complicated move is required in order to use the blunt bludgeoning point of this leathal bladed weapon.

Dying does not need to be the principal threat in the game (Aztec warriors were not particularly afraid to die). Social promotion and demotion could serve as the reward/punishment in the game as the warrior tries to rise through the Aztec elite societies.

Sorry, I’m not a major gamer so I may have missed the point (a! Your blog is intriguing – I’m the Latin American History feature writer for Suite101.com and I write about the Aztec military amongst other things. I’ll follow the game’s development – I’m always interested to see how the Aztecs are portrayed in games (Total War, Age of Empires, Civilization etc). Aztez sounds like quite a different perspective!

Cheers.