Guild Chat - Episode 117
Guild Chat - Episode 117
- Title
- New Kaineng City Map Tour
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Indigo Boock
Connor Fallon - Date
- February 4, 2022
- Official video
- YouTube
The 117th episode of Guild Chat aired on February 4, 2022. In the build-up to the End of Dragons release, host Rubi Bayer along with two developers introduced viewers to New Kaineng City, the heart of Cantha where the upcoming expansion is based.
Transcription[edit]
Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons - New Kaineng trailer [13:17][edit]
Introduction [14:25][edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hi Tyria! Happy Friday and welcome to Guild Chat. I'm your host, Rubi, and I am so glad you're all here today and you're excited for everything that we have to show. Before we do anything else, I do want to call out the extremely cute merchandise that you were just looking at since I saw a lot of you asking about it. The plush griffin and yes, that is a siege turtle enamel pin, are two of the newest official merchandise items that you can get over at Good Smile now. Get that siege turtle pin just to get ready for end of dragons. So, on to today's show because we have had a really busy week earlier this week we shared the End of Dragon's gameplay trailer and announced the February 28th launch date of End of Dragons to all of you and yesterday we gave you a first look at New Kaineng our fourth map in End of Dragons, so we're going to expand on that today with a nice long map tour of New Kaineng City. We're going to be led by our dev guests so let's say hi to them real quick. Indigo, hi.
Indigo Boock: Hello, I'm Indigo, I'm a narrative designer and writer at ArenaNet, I worked on End of Dragons as some of you may know, I helped with a bunch of the systems and making sure that they were grounded in the lore of Tyria and felt like a living, breathing part of that narrative. So I helped with elite specs, I helped with Jade Bots which we might talk about next week on Friday, a bunch of other stuff like fishing, helped with the golden path, but most importantly and maybe my biggest contribution to the expansion is I was the the narrative owner of the New Kaineng map which we're going to look at today.
Rubi: Cool, thank you. And I love your plush griffon, you got a little head start!
Indigo: Appropriately placed! At the last minute.
Rubi: He's perfect. And Connor, hi, welcome!
Connor Fallon: Hello, my name is Connor Fallon, I'm a senior designer here, I'm serving as the story team lead for End of Dragons, which means i was working very closely with all our writers and designers in order to figure out the golden path, the general themes that we're going to be touching on, how they affect various maps, and yeah, I'm super happy to be here with these two awesome people, I don't have a plush griffin though, so I'm sorry everybody.
Indigo: Yeah, bummer.
Connor: But I do want one though, they are pretty cool.
Rubi: It's okay, you're still awesome and I'm so glad that you've found time to take part in this today.
Tour of New Kaineng City [16:42][edit]
Rubi: All right, so I am going to let Connor and Indigo lead us, I'm going to be your eyes and I'm going to follow them around and we will see how much we can get a look at... Uh, Connor, when your awesome dance is over let's take a look at where we're starting.
Connor: It will never be over.
Rubi: It will never be over? I mean while you rock out, tell us where we are.
Connor: This is, I mean this is Kaineng.
Rubi: This is it, this is the whole map.
Connor: We showed the preview, in between when we showed the last preview and now, we deleted the entire map.
Rubi: It's just this.
Indigo: You saw that airship crashed.
Connor: It looked too nice, so we blew it up.
Indigo: Yeah we blew it, it's gone.
Rubi: Could we stop blowing up cities please?
Connor: Never.
Indigo: No. It's a great climactic way to start every single expansion, but where we actually are, so we're... To bring it back down to a little bit more serious, I suppose.
Rubi: Yeah.
Indigo: So we're standing right now in a really tiny alcove in what is actually Old Kaineng. So a lot has changed in the last 250 years, but about a hundred years ago from present, when the elder dragon Zhaitan rose, a travesty called the Zhaitan Disaster happened, and basically, on his awakening, a massive tidal wave actually wiped out most of Old Kaineng, so it's currently occupied by Risen threats that have been festering and mutating over the last 100 years. But we only get a peek of that right now, so we're in the Old Kaineng ruins which is in the north-most east corner of the map, and there's a bunch of Unchained Risen, and the Unchained, which Connor will get into in a second, are just kind of our expansion of what the risen are and it's just an incredibly dangerous area that's starting to bleed out into the city. Just a little bit, it's a hard thing to maintain, but I'll let Connor go into that a little bit more.
Connor: Yeah, I mean, so, you know, way back when when we did the announcement video and we can maybe slowly meander, uh no it's hard to walk and talk, way back when we did the announcement video, you know, we talked about how we made a timeline of all the major events that occurred in Tyria and tried to figure out which of them would have affected Cantha, well Cantha, you know we have talked about in lore that Cantha was affected by the Risen as well, and we, the initial rising of Zhaitan, we really saw it as like a major event and you could actually probably divide Canthan history into kind of pre, for the time that we've been missing, into pre and post Zhaitan Disaster, it is that significant. And so, but as from a design perspective, these ones are already running ahead, it was fun to kind of return to this army and update them the way we did with the Branded in Path of Fire, right, make new variants of them, you can see that some of them are, we have some classic varieties that washed up with the waves. We, I saw some people online when we were releasing the trailer, who were like "What, why are there Orrian gorillas here? Didn't Cantha..." because there was a massive tidal wave, that's why.
Indigo and Rubi: (laughter)
Connor: But also, there's people from Cantha who were affected. And like you can look around, you can see some of these people are wearing Canthan attire. It looks like the spawn - here we go, unchained hunter is wearing - and so these are people who were actually caught up in the magics that surrounded that disaster. Now, as we know from Orr, even after Zhaitan is dead, this corruption is very hard to completely clean up, so a lot of Cantha has focused on containing it to clear areas that, you know, people just know not to go in. Except for us, you know, we're the Commander, so we're just going to go where ever we want to go.
Rubi: Yeah, you guys are making friends.
Indigo: We're a little headstrong.
Rubi: I'm invisible. I'm trying to find one to get like a closeup look at, so if you see one, don't murder it quite yet?
Connor: You're murdering it there.
Indigo: I will. Okay, I'm a little headstrong. I'm sorry. I'll stop beating up the local wildlife.
Rubi: Indigo's starting trouble.
Connor: So, as I was saying, that- Cantha is mainly doing containment efforts, right? But there's also people who have various reasons to venture into these ruins. There's a lot of lost history here, which you as a player can also find, and other characters have other reasons for going here. If you look up- Indigo, do you want to talk about this character that's up on the ledge up there?
Indigo: Yeah, absolutely. So like we talked about, in some of the other streams and for folks that didn't tune in, all of our new elite specs are incredibly grounded in the lore of Cantha, in the nation of Cantha, and so this- Yuryong is our harbinger elite spec mentor and and she is maybe doing a little bit of research here in the ruins. She's particularly interested in Zhaitan and kind of the magic that was left behind and the disaster that happened. And they're spread all throughout the world and that kind of helped us ground the specs a little bit more in the camping culture. So you- It's kind of like a fun thing to go hunt where all of those are down. So this is the harbinger one. There's also- The catalyst is also in New Kaineng, but yeah! Very exciting!
Connor: Rubi, go invisible. I've got one for you that you can get up close to.
Rubi: Yeah! Thank you!
Indigo: Ooh! There he is!
Rubi: Alright. Where is-? Oh.
Indigo: I won't kill it. I promise.
Rubi: Where? Oh! Thank you. Let's just- And Indigo, I'll just get a good look and then Indigo, you can just go nuts.
Connor: Yeah, I mean it's just-
Indigo: (laughs) I'll leave it alone. I'll be nice.
Connor: It was really fun when creating these variants, to be like, "How do we take the completely new assets that we made, which are like the, you know, the new camping outfits and things like that and"- Oh, God! There's an abomination that's rising up literally where I'm standing. I'm gonna just- I'm gonna cheat and kill that guy. I don't want to fight him.
Rubi: No!
Connor: yeah and merge them together. But you know what? I think we've looked at ruined stuff for quite some time, so lets-
Rubi: yeah
Indigo: We have maybe people want to see what Kaineng looks like. So let's travel towards this, oh my god wow is that a mysterious giant jade tech looking door on the side of the ruin? What!--
Rubi: Oh my gosh, could we? We did not know this was coming, could we go through it?
Connor: Of course.
Indigo: What happens if we approach it?
Connor: The doors open, I'm just going to spoil it. I'm going through.
Rubi: Wait!
Indigo: Go on through. Ok wait for Rubi.
Connor: No one can stop me.
(laughter)
Rubi: Ok, so where are we?
Indigo: We are in the Nahpui Lab. So aptly named after the Nahpui district in Kaineng originally which was destroyed in the Zhaitan disaster unfortunately. The sister lab to the south is the Sunjiang Lab, similarly named. This is one of the main stops and the starting point for the Kaineng meta event actually and it's a really great first kind of peek at some of the stuff you'll see in the city. There's a bunch of jade mechs walking around and jade batteries hanging from the walls and panels and all sorts of really fun tech and it's just a tiny peek of what we're gonna get. There's a couple of labs scattered throughout but in the Kaineng meta, without giving too much away because it is a little bit of a spoilery event what we can say is that the tech in the city is starting to go a little bit haywire and we have to work with Yao and Mizuki, Mizuki being an MinSec officer, to see what's going on. I'll let Connor talk in a second about the um golden path characters and how we incorporated those into the world. But the um the what I can kind of say is like a fun little anecdote about the Kaineng meta is when I went to Elijah Miller, our team lead for the map and Shing Jea as well, and Frosty, when we were kind of coming up with the narrative pitch for the meta, one of the things I said to them was I really want to make it feel like a 1970s horror movie.
Um my my specific point of inspiration was the 1970s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and just kind of getting that tone, that eeriness, the unknown that you're kind of exploring, and everybody was like 'oh heck yeah we're absolutely doing that, there's no other way we can do it now' and the result is really fun and we just we played through the whole thing yesterday and it was, it was absolutely delightful. But speaking of Yao, our dearest agender engineer, I will pass it over to Connor to talk about how one of the big things that we did was making sure all of our characters were in the world.
Connor: Yeah so I mean this is you know something that we've I think only gotten better at Guild Wars 2 over time, is that characters with fleshed out stories don't only exist in the golden path, they exist in the open world as well, um and in this expansion especially blurred the lines a little bit, we have characters who show up in the golden path and then they really come into their own and live primarily in the open world and you get to know them pretty well. And Yao is actually one of the primary coordinators for the Kaineng meta, so you really get to know them by you know you meet them in the golden path and then you by participating in events in the world and doing things throughout Kaineng, that's how you get more familiar with them. And there's just a lot of really nice things like that throughout the world that really helps it feel cohesive. Like that the people that you are encountering in the story have lives beyond just you know 'oh I've been waiting for the commander to show up to for my one scene and then I stop existing'. No they've all they're all doing things. They have their own lives and their own problems they're trying to solve.
Rubi: Yes. Very cool.
Connor: So we go through the other door.
Indigo: Oh my god wow another.
Rubi: Yeah there's another mysterious high tech door.
Indigo: We really love mysterious doors in Kaineng.
Connor: They're not really that mysterious after the first one. Anyway.
Rubi: Just go with it Connor.
Indigo: After the first one it's not that mysterious. Just go with it.
Rubi: Let us have this.
Connor: Alright. Live your dream.
Indigo:' Well, as you can see, welcome to New Kaineng. This is our first peek of the city itself. So New Kaineng, my kind of quick overview is that New Kaineng was an incredibly exciting map for us to put together and it was a really unique opportunity to write because being that it's a cityscape it's also a combat centric map so there was a lot of technical difficulties associated with making that function but most importantly to me it provided a really fascinating opportunity for storytelling because it gave us a really really intricate view. An opportunity to dig into the lives of the Canthans. Given since the Zhaitan disaster a lot of political change has happened so Kaineng is now a very inclusive city. Work in progress as everybody is when those kind of big social changes happen but the Luxons and Kurzicks have been since integrated back into Canthan society, some of them live here now too. The Tengu which did not get along with the humans at the time of Factions, they have their own districts which we'll be exploring in a little bit, but kind of the nature of having a map like this allows us to have events that are telling these people's stories and really fun environmental things and Kaineng specifically is a really big example of what modern Cantha is like. It's the hub of technology. It's almost like a Wakanda, so to say, of Cantha. It's a very cool thing and as you travel from the lower districts up you see a lot of social change, a lot of financial change. Jade tech is an incredibly expensive thing, even though it has been mostly incorporated into the city not everybody can afford it and you get to see a lot of these differences as you travel throughout.
Rubi: I'm right behind you Connor. I got distracted looking around, everything is beautiful. I'll be right there.
Connor: I mean, I don't blame you. For every corner that we're going down there's a bunch of corners that we're not that are just as crazy and intricate. So one of the things that I really love about Kaineng, and Indigo touched about this a little bit, is like we have made city maps before, we have made big maps that have a ton of events before. To combine them both was a really unique undertaking that honestly we've never really tried to do. The closest was Amnoon which was a city that took place in an open world map but even then like most of the events took place outside the city and the city wasn't the whole map.
Rubi: Sure.
Connor: The closest comparison in size to scale that new Kaineng has is Divinity's Reach but even further than that because like, for example Divinity's Reach, when that was first made, we didn't have mounts, so we could just have things get smaller to create the sense of scale as they went further up. That's not the case in Kaineng. Everything when you look up is actually there. The things way off in the distance are all built out and there's a lot of really crazy views that we're going to be able to see aand I just love the fact that, I mean like this is obviously very different from, what anything was in Cantha in Guild Wars 1, but one of the things that's lovely in this expansion especially when compared to the other previous expansions is the fact that every one of these maps really has its own personality, you know we have Shing Jea which is very much more like what we experienced in Guild Wars 1, we have the Jade Sea which is a holy site in many ways that's been affected by this need for jade technology, the depths, the twisted depths of the Ma- of I was about to say Maguuma, we do have those, but the twisted depths of the Echovald, and then Kaineng which is really let's take all these jadepunk, jade tech elements and just amp them as far as we can go because this is where all the tech is developed, this is where people are integrating it into their everyday life and just having this one spot that has this really distinct, like this is all the you know, it's everywhere, and I just love that. I love it.
Indigo: Yeah. Yeah, I do too, and one of the really cool things about Kaineng is that, one, it's an entirely new city. It was built just to the south of where the old city used to be, over top— there were some naga swamps, unclaimed territory, tengu territory. So there's a little bit of political drama with taking up this land to build the city and we we touch on that in some collections that you can find throughout the world. But given the nature that it's an entirely new city and we built it to kind of reflect a really specific story, so there's three different layers to it.
It's an incredibly vertical map. The bottom layer is a little bit more poverty struck, where we were when we started, and as you move up you see more wealth. So the middle districts in Kaineng is kind of like the San Francisco of our world where it's— tech is starting to become more prevalent. There's a lot of growing pains associated with that. People are now competing with technology for their jobs, but then as you start traveling up to the very top it gets very opulent and airy and the music is beautiful and that's of course the wealthy district. They want for less, it's— there's gardens, it's lush, it's beautiful. Technology is widespread since jade tech is incredibly expensive.
But yeah, so that was a really cool opportunity to really dive into Kaineng as its own story outside of the rest of the expansion. Like every map is his own story like Connor said, and this was just a really cool thing to make a hub of technology that was unlike anything else in Tyria.
But speaking of the lower districts, I think our next stop we are actually going to be traveling over to Cobble Ward, which is the tengu district in New Kaineng. And so, the tengu — just a little bit of a refresher — is our race of bird-like creatures in Cantha. And they have taken over one of the the southern lower district of the city, which is a little bit more run down, and we are— which also serves as a renown heart which Connor will go over in a second. But we are helping a community leader named Strigidae and helping clean up this part of the city, because not only the tengu but a lot of people in Cantha and Kaineng as a whole, given that they've gone through so many social and political changes, care very deeply about keeping everything in working order. Keeping it a very inclusive, welcoming place, and the tengu who haven't really had that in a long time, especially not integrated into larger Canthan society, it's really important to them that Cobble Ward is a peaceful place even though it's in the lower districts.
And there's— I will note that there's Jade Brotherhood presence in the city, as well as maybe a tiny bit of undercover Purist activity. Not saying too much, but it's not the safest place. But there— it's one of— it's Strigidae's goal, along with her comrades', to make it a better place.
Another really cool thing that we did with some environmental storytelling down here is that, since jade tech is very expensive, they have steam power generators and other steam powered tech. One of the activities that we do in the heart is to help patch those up, but the heart does something really cool for the expansion as well that players might appreciate, especially ones that are newer to the game and I will pass it over to Connor to kind of go into that a little bit more.
Connor: Yeah. So this heart is actually, you know, we've talked in the past about how we're giving mounts away in this expansion as well, because they're just such a cool feature and so distinct in Guild Wars 2. We want to make sure that people who are coming in for End of Dragons have access to them. This heart is actually, and the other heart, this heart is actually where you get raptors, if you haven't had raptors before. And also there's another heart in Kaineng where you get the springer. But the thing that's really nice about this heart that I really enjoy is, even if you've already had your raptor, it just gives you a good excuse to explore the city and leap across the rooftops, which is just a lot of fun.
I'm gonna show the core mechanic of this heart quickly. If you head over to this Supplier Crex, he's got a bunch of crates. Yes and let's talk about Supplier Crex for a second. So, this is a new tengu model that we got within like the last month or so. Which, you know, I know, fluffball tengu was an early favorite, but I have to say I really like- what do we call him? Bowl cut tengu?
Rubi: I'm going with aggressive bowl cut!
Indigo: Aggressive bowl cut. Yeah.
Connor: It's a Gloster canary- is I think the model, but like it is worth noting. I mean we are, as we said, we were showing these previews when the game is still in development. In every area that we have visited, they have been updated and obviously like Mori Village that we visited in Echovald, these new tengu models that we're getting, there's going to be a lot more variety there when the expansion actually comes out. And yeah, it's just really fun to see them still coming in and being able to integrate them. In fact, one of the characters we showed, I'm not going to say which one, one of the characters we showed during our character preview stream actually has an updated look from when they were in there before, so that'll be nice. But yes! So the actual heart, the way this one works is you collect these crates and it gives you three random locations, everyone's gonna follow me, on the rooftops that you're like okay, deliver these to these generators to get them running again and it's just, it's a really nice- I mean I like it. I'm sure the people living in these houses don't appreciate me running across their rooftops as much, but it's a really fun excuse to like navigate the city in different ways. I am going to head this way which is with one of the things. Make some interesting jumps, like to navigate some of these upper ways past some shady Brotherhood-
Rubi: No! Sorry, jumped too far.
Connor: Yeah, there's some shady Brotherhood up here actually complaining about the tengu and the fact that they're not buying the Brotherhood's knockoff tech because they don't trust the Brotherhood. Yeah, there's just-
Indigo: I don't really trust the Brotherhood.
Connor: Again, yeah, Kaineng is so- the verticality in this city is amazing. I'm just going to stop here. I'm not even going to go to my destination just cause like, you know, you can go to the top of something and look down and it looks awesome. You can go- look up and it looks great and let's actually take these stairwells because we talked about the verticality. Let's head to the upper district and be sold some noodles as we're doing so. I'll wait for Rubi to catch up.
Rubi: I'm sorry. I got distracted looking around again.
Indigo: It's so easy to get distracted in this map.
Connor: That's easy to do.
Rubi: It is.
Connor: Yes. All right. Let's head up, get sold some noodles and yeah.
Indigo: Yeah everybody really wants to sell us noodles in this map. Why did I do that? I mean probably because I was hungry like 90% of the time when I was writing, but...
Rubi: I do love the bots just like, "Hey, friend. Do you like noodles?" Yeah! Hey! Here he is!
[Jade mech on screen saying, "Are you a fan of NOODLES? Bora's Bowls is a national delight. You can locate one on almost every corner."]
Indigo: My favorite anecdote about that though specifically, now that you point that out, is that whenever you're walking around with the bots you're gonna- They have a bunch of ambient chatter that they say and when you see something that's in all caps, that was kind of our way of representing that they're pulling something from an algorithm, so- Because I mean they're AI. They're kind of imperfect. So it's like, "We hope you have an uneventful day." So really silly stuff like that or "We hope you enjoyed-" - what was the joke? - "Murder!" or something like that.
Rubi: Yeah. Sometimes it's noodles, sometimes it's murder. All right, so we're in the upper district.
Indigo: Yeah, I mean, noodles, murder.
Rubi: Whatever.
Connor: Yes. So...
Rubi: Upper district. Here's where we are. It's lovely.
Connor: Yeah. So yes, the upper district. Again there's so many spots that you can just climb to and have some fantastic views. An interesting fact about End of Dragons is because we have all these lights and all this tech we actually changed the day night cycle in Cantha to be night for more, because night is just so beautiful. And so many of these maps with, even some of the older maps just having lights that run across like the forest paths and things like that and it really shines. A lot of these locations shine at night. That said, that does not mean they are not beautiful during the day. I am going to perform some witch magic here and change the time of day and probably freak out a bunch of-
Rubi: Oh my gosh! Whoa!
Indigo: I'm so scared!
Connor: Again, the trade off in Kaineng is during the day there's a little bit more visibility. You can really see a lot of these towers way off in the distance. Again, we really have not had any city map that was like this before. It was a lot of work to do, but I really think it's paid off and there's so many different cool locations for you to go to. Yeah.
Rubi: Yeah, I was gonna say totally worth it.
Connor: I'm gonna change it back to night now. Yes, yes.
Rubi: Oh my goodness!
Connor: This is going to be a little bit of a weird one because we ran through this earlier and we actually did the thing and now it's disappeared, but I do want to talk about an activity that exists in some of these maps because even if we can't now show it to you, it's still really cool.
Rubi: It's right here!
Connor: Yeah, it was just- "Oh yeah! It's right there! Yeah! I can see it!" We just gaslight each other on live and on livestream.
Rubi: Man! I'm actually disappointed because it's fun.
Connor: So I'll warn our players, that's really what we've been doing. That'd be really bad. Anyway. So hidden throughout the world, and we will follow the general path because we've done it a number of times so we know where it is, hidden throughout the world, you know, we've always had chests and like, you know, little things to find that are rewards for exploring. But this time around, the Rewards team and Raymond Ng took this an extra level and, taking some inspiration from Breath of the Wild, have created a bunch of like mini activities that, you know, if you could climb to a weird obscure place and there might be a bunch of crates and you might have to figure out something to do with the crates or like there's a weird swirling cloud of dust and you run into it and it appears further down and you chase after it. That's the one that's here. Lots of things like that, and then doing them reveals a chest at the end. So the one that is over here that you can totally see is us running- basically it leads us along a path that sends us running down this little ramp, leaping across, and just gives us an excuse to like really explore this map in a completely different way and then there's a chest that would show up here with a bunch of- and Indigo appears! Then that's the reward. You get to see Indigo.
Indigo: Pretend I'm the chest. Yeah. It's me.
Connor: Yeah. But the thing is actually-
Rubi: Oh my gosh! There's a legendary inside!
|
Note: The text below was auto-transcribed and not reviewed. It could be that text appears for the wrong speaker. https://youtu.be/3NIWp1gN0Ek?t=2411 |
Connor: Love you, Gary for this one. Anyway, the thing that is really cool about these is there's actually a little lore that was built around these, which is when you every time a chest appears, you see little baby foxes running around all the places. It's really cute and I'm really sorry that we accidentally. Earlier because it's super adorable, but but the. Whole idea is that it's basically these baby shrine guardians have hidden have hidden these chests and their you know their spirits. So they're they're being playful and you figuring out. You know their little puzzles and the little, the little things they're doing is just a cute way to interact with the world. And so they're basically baby versions of those mounts that that the string guardian mount which. You all love but. Yeah. And then.
Rubi: I'm actually so disappointed.
Connor: We need to replace them.
Rubi: That it didn't show up, man?
Connor: I know, I know. I I had actually thought about it and then we hadn't done to. We hadn't run through it in the same day that twice in the same day before. So I forgot. I apologize, but they are adorable. You'll just have to. Take my word.
Rubi: They can see it for themselves very, very.
Connor: But yeah, there's wonder here. Yes, it's true. It's not that far off.
Rubi: I've got the target. OK, so we're looking at that first.
Indigo: Oh wow. What? Is spontaneous water? Yeah.
Rubi: I'm going to read it.
Indigo: We'll do that. There's there's two little anecdotes that we have up. On this roof. Yeah, this letter that Ruby is looking. At is it's really, eerily. Kind and welcoming and lovely. But one of the cool things that. We did in. End of tractions was that we we used collections and we've been doing this in the game for a little bit. But in end of Dragons, we kind of amped this. Up where we're using collections. To tell anecdotal stories, some of these are just like collecting books and letters like players are used to. Some of them get a little bit more involved this time. This is kind of an example of one of the ones that I. Wrote for dining. Where we're just learning about some sneaky individuals. This letter is a little bit of a red herring in this situation. It seems very warm and lovely and can stick you asleep place, but it's actually a very eerie. Story that tells. Some stuff, some things go down, but.
Rubi: I I like that it's a red herring because my first thing was this is a lot of dangerous information for someone who starts this with. I'm a spy. Here's all my family's names.
Indigo: It's like hmm, that seems conspicuous. The other thing I will draw our attention to, which is incredibly important. But there's a kitten on the roof and there's.
Rubi: Oh no and. I guess I was trying to.
Connor: It was fine, so I guess that's my type of command kill. And then before that I typed in Neil and I tried to use my last command and I. Thought it was. Neil, so I could kneel in front of the.
Rubi: Oh my God. Well, I'm gonna pretend, isn't it?
Connor: Ohh pretend that's like.
Rubi: And to go continue.
Connor: Level of like.
Rubi: Continue your heartwarming story now that Connor. Murdered this kitten.
Connor: Alright, one of one of our fellow 1. Of our fellow devs just messaged me on teams with you Monster, which is a fair response I.
Rubi: Feel like I'm good. I'm.
Indigo: Exactly because I was so proud. Our one of our our designers on you, kinning are my one of my my favorite humans, Devin, whose work has just been sieged. One of the things when we were working on. Yes, Cotter, no. But when we were working on him filling out the world, one of the things we did was add a bunch of cats and dogs and kind of the idea was that they came down from the ruins after the seitan disaster. So when Connor is not. Killing them, there's there's cats all over the roofs. There's dogs everywhere. I can't keep a straight face.
Rubi: Yeah, I don't know. I I wow Connor.
Connor: I can't pull my face over again. This is the goodbye, everybody.
Rubi: So yes, you can cut all of these adorable animals, and they're petable dogs now, which I. Kind of love. Wait, hold on. Hold on, hold on. I'm gonna. Ohh my gosh. I wish you would stop. No, don't keep using your God powers. You took him on the sun. Yeah. No, we. Killed the kitten.
Indigo: You killed a kitten. Connor, I want you.
Connor: I know, I know.
Indigo: To think about that for a minute.
Connor: OK, look, you know what? You know what? There's only one thing I can do. I have to change bye.
Rubi: Oh, gosh, I'm going after.
Indigo: I guess it's almost like the jump was scripted, but the kitten I promised the kitten was not, I don't know. Killing kittens on screen.
Connor: I don't either I am. I am I am emotionally distressed.
Rubi: Not as much. Yeah, it's like the best part is that it didn't happen until I had zoomed in on it and like the. Whole screen was. Nothing but getting and then Connors like now.
Connor: I can start on. That great, but then people. Be like why are cats randomly dying in the mat? They don't normally die. Happy and you can. Pet them and.
Rubi: Let's get on a boat and leave.
Connor: I'm on that boat.
Rubi: This place a.
Indigo: Yeah, let's get.
Connor: I'm not going to matter.
Indigo: Out of here.
Connor: Anybody on that boat?
Rubi: Let's just let's let's let's kind of put a skiff out. Let's just leave. All right, so where we going?
Connor: Have some messages from people paying likewise you murdered. Anyway, alright, alright, so. Other than accidental head murder, one of my favorite things to do in this map is. Is honestly so this this map is super cool and the fact that there are these canals everywhere and it's got this real feeling like kind of like Venice, right, where you can take your boat with all your friends and you can travel along these rivers.
Rubi: Yeah, it is.
Connor: So for example, and I have a soft spot for going under bridges. I just think that. There, there's something kind of fun about taking. About taking your boat and sailing under the bridges, but we're going to be going along these rivers and what?
Indigo: Fridges aren't neat.
Connor: Sorry, I have to recalibrate myself. OK. So there's a lot of a lot of things to find along a lot across the water. There's Kappa that live along the rivers. There's actually a fishing event that triggers here. I do not think too much about the fact that you can catch fish in these these canals.
Rubi: Please, let's go back to talk. About the sewage, that is.
Connor: Yes, I mean.
Indigo: Let's do that.
Connor: I mean, Kathleen, Technology is very clean and it's actually so like these rivers are there's fish living in them and all these other things. So yeah, it's just. It's just a cool place to go sailing and catch fish and go swimming if you want. There's stuff to find in the rivers. Just don't think about. You know, we haven't really established what? They do with their sewage.
Rubi: Yeah, I worried they put in the fish.
Indigo: My battery discharged. It could be, I mean like. What could go wrong? Power plant discharge going into the the water system for this.
Rubi: Ohh that's such a loaded fresh head.
Indigo: Don't worry about it, that's an HR question. That's not an US question. That's a natural question.
Rubi: So we're coming to a cool place.
Indigo: We are so we are approaching the the central most district of new kanang, which is the Ministry ward and the Ministry ward, aptly named, is home to two really important functions. This opulent, beautiful giant jade structure in front of us is the Chennai jade headquarter. And it's in such a cool building. It's one of my favorite props in Kadang. It's it's fantastic and and Nestle just behind that is another, maybe even bigger building which is the the Ministry headquarters and these are maybe some of the most opulent parts of the city on top of the ministry headquarters are some skyline gardens that overlook. We think this is just a really beautiful spot. In general, this canal is stunning. But in front of us just kind of at the the central little hub of the ministry building in front of us in the canal, there's a a golden. Little plaque looking thing. And Connor had talked about this and one of the other streams. But that is one of our many hollow projectors. Yeah, I think you're looking at it now, which is where a giant woman. Politely tells us about the news.
Rubi: How graphic woman? Not like a 20 foot. Person. Yeah, that's.
Connor: No, they they have, they have.
Rubi: A giant woman. Ohh no we.
Indigo: Yeah, giant holographic woman politely tells us the news now. Me right is incredibly professional and this is and one of the things that basically the hollow news is what happens when you let Connor and I like work on something together and that might not always be the best idea because we go a little hard, but the hollow.
Rubi: It is the best idea.
Indigo: This is one of my favorite things. To write it's. So cool because it lets us feel like really, really.
Connor: Yeah, it updates as you progress. Through the story, which is really fun.
Indigo: But, but yeah, so this is. And I think we're going to be doing just as a little of demo. We're going to be doing. One of the. Events right here in the canal.
Connor: So I want to talk about the meta briefly, so the structure of the meta is actually. My understanding was initially is basically that there's a bunch of smaller events that get triggered throughout the world, kind of rapid fire and you are running around basically fixing a bunch of. Different malfunctions that can happen throughout the world. My understanding is design wise and early. Inspiration for this was actually the Metal Legion concert where, you know, we had those rapid fire, many events that are happening all over the place and you have to go around and fix them up, each individual event being more simple. But then the fact that you're juggling all these different things, you have to do it turns into a little bit more of a hectic thing. Now obviously being an entire map wide meta, it evolves. It's not just you're in one space, so the events got to get. A little bit. Bigger then you have more time to do. Them, but it's still that has. That general feel of like a grab bag of madness, madness that you have to deal.
Rubi: With you love to grab bag of madness. So this one for example is.
Connor: This one, the main theme is that basically power has been poured in like the one of the jade brotherhoods has sabotaged one of the batteries. Power is spilling out into the river and you have to go around and collect the pieces and return them. So it's a nice boat activity. You can only do. It on your boat. And yeah, it's just a really uh. Let me make ohh it's not the right. Give me a second.
Rubi: OK, make this thing happen.
Connor: Uh, it's just a really it's a really nice. No, no kittens died this time when I. Entered the wrong command.
Indigo: OK.
Connor: There's a it's a really nice excuse to do stuff on your boat. Explore the as, explore the waterways and, you know, try not to get sniped by brotherhood. People could theoretically get out of the boat and go fight that brotherhood and but they can also throw up a shield for me in order to make sure, you know, I at least. Don't get us all dismounted.
Rubi: My shield is recharging. Someone else needs to help.
Indigo: I guess I'll help the kitten killer.
Rubi: Thanks. Ohh no.
Connor: OK, that's gone. I already I already feel.
Rubi: It was an accident.
Connor: This deep, like remorse in my I I know.
Indigo: It's OK better.
Connor: It does make it better, I think does make it better. But not much better. Still feel deep remorse in my soul.
Indigo: OK. I can't even focus on the really cool door behind the really big waterfall that we're going. To right now. And yeah, I'll. I'll.
Connor: I mean there is a.
Indigo: Move on, I'll.
Rubi: Cool, cool water. Move on, let's. Let's look at the really cool door behind the really. Cool waterfall cause I wanna. Go to the. Big high tech door should we chat?
Indigo: Yeah. So we have.
Rubi: Should we go to the?
Indigo: It's not quite yet. Yeah, I think we should.
Connor: It's still we still. Got a little time until the thing happens.
Indigo: We we have a couple seconds before we can do that. But yeah, one of the the really cool things about like the the little event that we just did. And like Connor started to elaborate. On was that in the the pre event phase for the meta crime is a little bit more rampant. Some technology is going a little haywire so there's a ton of tiny little events all over the place that you need to help well and now there's a rare occurrence of those happening out in the normal world cause crime can happen at any point. So that was a really cool way that we can kind of in corporate events that were thematically appropriate to both the meta. But also make sure that those are usable in the open world that make it feel like a robust city because of a crime. Events in a city are a little inevitable, but it's just one more thing that lets us make it feel like breathing and living. Yes. Ohh but we have.
Rubi: I keep trying to pan up like too high and just I just I would show more and then the camera just goes underwater. So I've ruined everything like three times. I'm so sorry.
Indigo: Ohh you're fine.
Connor: Well, the The thing is actually starting now.
Indigo: So yeah, so we are gonna go see the. This was teased a little bit on in the gameplay trailer on Monday. OK. But we're going to go get a little sneak peek. I will call him my baby because I love this boss so much and the finding that it was maybe my favorite event that I got. To write for the the. Game thus far. We're going to go look at the Jade Behemoth, which is a big boy and. He's a really good. Big boy and I love him and we. Got Yao and Mizuki here with us.
Rubi: Yeah, it's not that good.
Indigo: I mean now. He's misbehaving a little bit right now. So this is. The jade behemoth, which is maybe one of my favorite boss models. He's so good. Look at him.
Rubi: I am invisible right now so I can get in there and get a real good look.
Indigo: Go ahead. Ohh God. OK. I'm trying my best. I will fight him as long as I can while we're talking. But so the jade behemoth was designed by we'll we'll see. The Jade Behemoth was designed by June to kind of work as a a fail safe for the city and the need of dire protection. But as you can see he's attacking us. So he's not really doing much protecting. You might be on the Fritz for some.
Rubi: I think it's broken.
Indigo: Reason or another. It might be broken and he hits really hard.
Connor: Yeah, I remember when we were getting all the concept art for the different Jake mix and. We actually got this one, the. One for this creature, a little bit later, but we were all immediately like, stop everything. This one is incredible. We need it. We need to. Use it and. It just really has a different feel than a lot of the other mechs. It's obviously more meant for defense for combat. A lot of them are more. You know, elegant and yeah, this event progresses a lot. It's obviously the designed for a bunch of people and we're. Not doing that.
Rubi: We're not a bunch of people.
Connor: We're only showing the initial phase. Yeah, it's chasing me. Probably because it wants vengeance, which is fair, but indigo, meanwhile, can just slowly take it away. But yeah, we're not. Going to be able to beat it. So my advice is that we actually. Just run away.
Indigo: OK. No, I.
Rubi: I think she's this though.
Indigo: I got it down by 1 percent, 1% guys we got.
Rubi: Ohh wow, you can do it. You can do it.
Connor: So we can. Sit here for like you know there is a timer on this event. So I don't think we're tracking.
Indigo: Think I can get that done in. 13 minutes, OK. We we might as well run. I tried my best. We got 1% down.
Rubi: Alright, I'm just looking around real quick.
Indigo: I'd definitely like an event.
Rubi: Our our meta event a cool. I'm Jen western.
Indigo: You're fine, or a cool note too about our meta events for for newer players is that they are map wide events that are meant to play with as basically upward of 20 people. I know the chaining meta we we did a test yesterday with all with the 60 I believe and it felt really good and fun. So these are wide scale events. So while it would be fun for me to sit there and hit it for all 13 minutes before I died, I could not accomplish that on myself. I doubt I could accomplish that on myself.
Rubi: I don't know if you're that good.
Indigo: I don't know if I'm good.
Connor: Use we when we. Did the raid stream together? Indigo was kind of ridiculously good at this game, but.
Rubi: She really is.
Connor: But it is.
Rubi: Yes, I'm not that good.
Connor: Let's let's the event. Cowering right now because the met. Is up, but let's just talk. Quickly about some of the ambient scenes that occur in the city, and then I think that's a good probably. A good place for us to wrap up.
Indigo: Just kind of like Connor has been one of the really great things that Connor has been comparing. Kinning, too, was divinities reach, which has a lot of casual ambience that are just kind of meant to be pieces of conversations that you walk by that tell little stories. And we filled the city with those that make it feel alive and and one of Connor's favorite ambience that I wrote is this incredibly well, actually, we're we're being attacked by incredibly. Angry jade brotherhood.
Rubi: I'm invisible again. I wanted to look around in peace.
Indigo: OK. But one of Connors very favorite. My my favorite thing to write is Morgan Lockhart, and I wrote a bunch of children being children in the the expansion, which is very fun and silly and a great way to to show character in a different way. But this little girl that's currently cowering because the day brotherhood are attacking us and that. Is going on is usually. Shouting at her mom about how excited. She is to see a car that's just on the other side of this market because she's. Never seen one before. So I think one of the the the lines that is the most quoted. Is it's wearing. And I mean, if I was, why is that cat wearing shoes? So there's there's little moments like that sprinkled through all of Kinane that make it feel very reactive, not just to kinding itself, but the cities now been opened up to the rest of Tyria. And slowly but surely, there's there's steps that have to do with that, that reopening process, but they're starting to see more people that they've never seen before. They've never seen a char, they've never seen the Sara. Some of them may not have known that those were real creatures. Most of them did, but it just kind of if that was literature that you encountered or not. But so we get to see the world be incredibly reactive to it, and I'm really excited for players to dig it, dig into the city and see not only the events that are happening, but just get a piece of cantha as seen through the eyes of the. Which is maybe my favorite thing about this now.
Connor: Just just to talk. Yeah, just to briefly touch on it, design wise like again one of the interesting design challenges here is it's a city that people are living in all the time. And yet there's things that events that can happen. The jade Brotherhood can get rowdy from time to time, and having the world respond to that. In this case, we had them cower and hide because that makes sense, right? But there's a real incentive, therefore, to try to keep the city safe, right? And so you could explore and and and see some of these ambient scenes.
Rubi: Well, thank you both. This tour was super fun. I hope all of you enjoyed watching and looking around. You guys are going to be able to check out new kinning for yourself in just over 3 weeks and of Dragons is coming on February 28th. You can still pre purchase. And get some cool bonus items for your account, the Shinji, the Shinji prodigy of Shinji title, the Cape, the Flame Serpent Weapon chest and the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions. Have this also Raptor skin and the skip skin. So thanks again for joining us. Don't forget to join us next week on the 11th as we give a little preview of Jade bots. We're going to take a look at all the details of these little helpers that you'll be able to get an end of Dragons and to go and Connor, thank you so much for joining us. This was a ton of fun and we will see. You all next week.
Connor: It was an adventure.
