The gaming industry has fallen into some sort of cliche, as almost all of the releases put the player into the shoes of a good character that has to battle with the forces of evil and ultimately save their own home town, country or world.

Codemasters took that recipe and turned it 180 degrees, as it has placed the players of its Overlord game into the evil armor of a despotic ruler. Now, as it is preparing to launch not one but three more titles bearing the Overlord name, the Creative Director of Overlord II, the full blown sequel, Lennart Sas, has talked with IGN about the improvements that it would receive as opposed to the first one. One of the things he tackled is the control scheme, one that was a bit tough to master on the Xbox 360 console.

“The beauty of Overlord was that you could do quite complex things relatively easily. In Overlord II, we have smoothed out the controls for the camera, Overlord and minions while adding a lot more abilities to the minions and the Overlord, and escalating the scale of the battles. To address your gripe (shared by other gamers) the console controllers now have the camera under the Right Thumb Stick, with minion sweeping started by pushing the stick forward. This makes it a lot easier to look around and aim. We have also addressed navigation issues, with in-game maps and better sign posting and quest updates. This was something that came up time and time again in the feedback from the community.”

So, it seems that at least on consoles, things will be much more user-friendly. The PC version featured some solid controls, which made it quite popular with a lot of gamers. Hopefully, Overlord II will improve on the recipe and offer us more mindless fun by playing as the evil ruler.