Paradox has always dabbled in a smorgasbord of styles, especially when you consider all its published games, but its in-house efforts are almost all grand strategy games where you paint real-world provinces your favorite color. But before it had solidified that reputation, it was trying to make a name in other genres. Trying, and failing spectacularly.
In an interview with PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens, Andersson recalled one of the studio’s earliest games: “If you want to laugh, Google Valhalla Chronicles. We had the best comment ever on that one: ‘bugs, many and diverse, some more interesting than the gameplay.'”
It’s not a looker. But as Andersson explained, the team was “doing multiple games at the same time” and its take on a Baldur’s Gate-inspired RPG “did not turn out great.
“We did a lot of games with a small team of like five, six people for the first, like 10 years,” he said. “We became Paradox in 1999 and Paradox Interactive in 2005. Until 2009, I think we released like 20 different games from that internal studio, and most of them were grand strategy games.”
While strategy was clearly the studio’s wheelhouse, it didn’t become obvious until much later that it’d become its sole focus. Andersson said: “We thought it was EU1 that made it into a grand strategy studio. I think it was EU3, which was probably like the 12th grand strategy we made. That was when we basically were like, ‘we’re a GSG studio, we’re not gonna do anything else.'”
It’s probably for the best. It’s hard to imagine today’s Paradox Development Studio putting out any sort of RPG, but games like Crusader Kings have a way of producing stories no writer would ever be eccentric enough to come up with on their own.