We’ve been following this game for well over a year, ever since it was known as Saffire (yes, developed by the company Saffire). However, we recently got to chat with the design team, and it turns out that a lot more than the name has changed since we last heard from Young Olympians. First and foremost, the type of gameplay has been totally redirected. Once known as an adventure game, Young Olympians: Mythos is now being developed as a fighting game with RPG elements! (Or “Real-Time Tactical Melee” according the developer.) You read it here first!

The background story: Back in ancient times, when the Greek gods were still causing trouble for people, a group of the gods finally defeated their Underworld adversaries and sealed them off via portals to the Underworld. They then vowed to never get involved again. Now, in the modern world, someone has accidentally found one of the portals and opened it. The ancient gods, held by their vow, cannot stop the Underworld baddies from taking over the world. However, they decide to employ their young descendants to take care of the job, and thus the name. The Olympians are led by Odysseus, while a mean fellow named Athama is heading up the Underworld forces. You may remember a character called Priscilla or Saffire from old previews and screenshots of the game. She is now known as Leda, but it remains to be seen whether she still has lightning powers as once reported.

In the single-player mode, you’ll choose to play on either the side of the Olympians or the Underworld. Then you participate in a variety of battles against members of the opposite side; the goal of the game is to drive the Underworld gang back into captivity, or to conquer Earth and Mount Olympus, depending on which side you use. As you progress through the story mode, you’ll get help from a warrior or beast...not so much a sidekick as a “henchman”, as the dev team likes to call them. You can switch henchmen between battles, and there will be plenty to unlock if you can meet certain conditions in the game. Each one has a unique personality and his own set of battle skills. The henchmen will be controlled by the game’s AI, but you can switch over to control them if the situation calls for it. (Saffire won’t comment on whether you can go two-player co-op with the henchmen.) Your henchman will gain new skills as you progress through the game, based on his bravery in battle and other factors, and each one will possess both weapon and magic attacks. There will even be optional sidequests for gaining extra experience, and according to Saffire, “you’ll need it” by the end of the game. Whether your main character will also gain experience is still up in the air at this time. As for multiplayer action, there will be a four-player versus mode, but no online play. The fighting takes place in large, highly interactive arenas, just a bit larger than those found in Soul Calibur on Dreamcast. (Marty Clayton, the project lead, repeatedly compared Mythos to that famous Namco game...interesting to say the least.) Arenas will be set on Earth, Mount Olympus, and in the Underworld.

By now, those of you familiar with Saffire’s past work will probably be drawing comparisons with the Xena fighting game on Nintendo 64. Despite some similar gameplay elements and the Greek setup, Mythos is being developed by a completely separate team. In fact, the lead designer is Paul Grimshaw, who was very closely involved with both Rainbow Six for N64 and Starcraft: Brood Wars for PC! Considering that those two games are some of Saffire’s most well-known and successful titles, it looks like the company is planning really big things for Mythos by putting Grimshaw into the mix.

Mythos is actually the first game in what will become an ongoing Young Olympians franchise for Saffire. The company is self-publishing the title for now, but it’s already being shown to potential publishers for the console version. It should be noted that, at this point, the game may not come to GameCube at all. It’s being developed on the multiplatform SAGE framework that Saffire is so famous for, so the target console(s) will pretty much depend on what the publisher wants. There is currently no release date or window. Young Olympians: Mythos will be present at E3 in some form, and we’ll do our best to uncover even more info on it at that time (or before)!