Guild Chat - Episode 57
Guild Chat - Episode 57
- Title
- Daybreak
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Andrew Gray
Morgan Brown
Erik Fagerstrom
Heather Conover
Kirk Williford - Date
- December 8, 2017
- Official video
- YouTube
The 57th episode of Guild Chat aired on December 8, 2017. Host Rubi Bayer interviews some of the developers involved in the Daybreak release.
Transcription[edit]
Introductions (6:44)[edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hey everybody and welcome back to Guild Chat. We are talking today about episode one of Season 4. We've resumed Living World seasons, so we're gonna chat with some of the devs who worked on that. I'll let you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves. Talk about what you did on this episode?
Andrew Gray: I'm Andrew Gray. I worked on the Mordant Crescent Great Hall meta and the Palawadan meta and Champion's Dawn and the Koss cave, and the Dervishes, Paragons, and Loyali- Alchemists.
Rubi: So not much.
[Andrew, Morgan and Erik say no and wave dismissively]
Andrew: I'm kind of a slacker.
Rubi: So what was left for you guys after that?
Andrew: I just let these guys do everything.
Morgan Brown: I'm Morgan Brown, Game Designer, and I just worked on Chapter 1: Eye of the Brandstorm on this release.
Erik Fagerstrom: I'm Erik Fagerstrom. I am a Content Programmer and I worked on Chapter 5: The Hero of Istan - that jail break.
Rubi: Awesome. And you're kind of the handyman, too.
Erik: Oh yeah, I guess so. I guess I do all the-
Rubi: This is important!
Erik: Yeah, you're right. Okay. Yeah. So I'm not- I'm sort of new to designer land and I'm a programmer so all the tech stuff was, "Ahh! It's broken!" I go fix it. Or find somebody smart who can actually fix it. That's pretty much how I do it. Eh, whatever.
Favorite Parts (7:51)[edit]
Rubi: Nice. Alright, so there was a lot going on in this episode both in the instanced content; outside, well, we got the new map. Why don't you guys tell me a little bit about what your favorite parts of developing this were? And you can fight over who goes first. It doesn't matter.
[Andrew and Erik point to Morgan while Morgan does rock, paper, scissors]
Erik: You win! Congrats.
Morgan: Alright.
Rubi: Morgan wins just for thinking of that.
Erik: It's unanimous.
Morgan: Favorite thing. Okay. Favorite thing about working on this is... This sounds like a stock answer. It's kind of cliche, but it's- Cliches are cliches for reason, like this is a truth that we always get to, is that it's the collaborative process of realizing the vision for the episode, or in my case, the instance. Everybody working together, pitching in all the little parts, every little part gets a lot of love from different disciplines like animators, effects artists, character modelers and everything like that. And then taking all those separate pieces and putting them all together into like the big picture. And then, at the end of the day, the sum of all of those pieces is greater than its parts and you can like kind of step back from it and see everything together for what it is and it's like, ah that's what we've been busting our butts... about... for...
Erik: Butts.
Andrew: Good catch.
Rubi: Good save.
Morgan: Yeah. [thumbs up]
Erik: It was good. Nobody noticed.
Andrew: Yeah.
Morgan: For so long. And like, you know. And it's really hard. It can start with specific ideas like the branded wyvern, you know? It's got a whole team of artists that have to realize just how it looks. Plus, you know, systems designers and stuff. How it acts and all this. And it can be more like abstract things like this story. You have the narrative team who has a story for the whole world, for all the characters. Those characters have interactions which are kind of their own story, like sub-story? I don't know, like there's different tiers. And then because the world is always changing because it's a living world...
Andrew: Whoa, he said the thing!
Rubi: Ooh!
Erik: It was great. I totally nailed it.
Morgan: You always have to make the characters respond to the ever-changing status quo, how it changes... So yeah.
Erik: That was super good.
Morgan: Thanks, man.
Rubi: That was very good.
Erik: That was super good.
Morgan: That's my favorite part.
Rubi: It- well, it's a lot of moving parts and it's a huge thing and making all of that come together has got to be so rewarding once it all works out.
Morgan: Yeah. Sometimes you feel like you're on fire. Most times you feel like you're on fire.
Rubi: Are you actually...?
Morgan: Sometimes you're actually on fire. Yes.
Erik: [waving arms] Oh, God! I'm on fire! Yeah. Fire.
Rubi: And that's where Erik comes in with the extinguisher.
Erik: Usually, yes. Yeah, they're just like, "Erik! It's broken!" I don't know, good luck!
Rubi: Morgan's on fire again.
Morgan: In case of fire: break open content programmer cage and let them come out.
Erik: Yeah, I have to go find somebody. Go find an adult for them.
Andrew: We do not cage our programmers.
Erik: Yeah, generally.
Morgan: Well, it's a glass enclosure.
Erik: Yeah, never hit them with hammers. Yeah, it's fine. It's all good.
Andrew: It's a friendly cage.
Erik: It's a friendly hammer.
Morgan: It's got holes in it. They can breathe.
Rubi: Geez, Andrew, what are you doing to these guys? Alright. What about you guys? Erik!
Erik: Dang it... Ah, wow. [looking at Morgan] What you said was really good, especially at the end, because it feels so long you're just like, I'm in, you know, paper design or just like, everything's broken! I'm just trying to, you know, you've got, like, dummy creatures and then at the end it's like, shink! [laces fingers together] Ah, there it is! There! That's- Ah! Yeah, this! You're right!
Morgan: That's the thing we were trying to do!
Erik: Yeah! As I remember this, it was-
Morgan: And you just figured it out like on day 200.
Erik: Players were like, "Yeah! This is totally working!" And you're like, [shifty eyes] "Yeah, the whole time it did."
Rubi: You have no idea!
Erik: Yeah. It seems like, "Oh yeah, you just make the thing and it works! That's how that goes!" That's never how that goes, at least not for me. I don't know about you guys, but... I think favorite for me was, because I was sort of new to this, like I've done big releases and stuff but always from programming land, collections and stuff back in the day, but now it's I don't know. I really feel like [whispers] "Shh! Don't tell anyone that I don't belong here." Because like, just working with you guys, it's like, I don't know. You clearly know your stuff and just kind of absorbing it. Especially getting to sit near you guys now I just kind of listen for like, "Oh! Something important's happening!" And like, take the headphones off. "Hmm!" So like the collaborative process: it really does make a big difference. Even on this scene, we didn't have seating in the last- where we were sitting last. We move around at the office, our desks, a lot and earlier when I was a little bit further away, it makes a difference! Like being right there, it's just so much just popcorn knowledge happens and it's like, "Huh. That's awesome!" So it's quiet and it's day-to-day but I really like it. Also Dara's puns. That would be the other thing, but-
Rubi: Dara's puns are something that everybody kind of loves.
Erik: Yeah, they're incredible.
Rubi: It's a thing.
Erik: Yeah, that's- It's dark and it's Monday and one of those happens and you're like, "Oh right, don't worry about this. Alright."
Rubi: That's okay then.
Andrew: Alright, another pun.
Erik: Frost loves 'em. Don't let him tell you otherwise.
Rubi: Okay, maybe it's- Everybody has strong feelings about this. Is that a safe thing to say?
Andrew: Yes.
Erik: Yeah. Very diplomatic.
Morgan: Yeah. It's more of a spectrum of emotions.
Erik: Oh, wow! Yeah, that was really good. A synergy. Okay.
Morgan: Yes, some vertical integration and paradigm shifts.
Erik: Yeah, alright. Yeah, this is- Okay. Yeah, it's really solid.
Rubi: So, let's make you feel better about the puns and you can talk about things that you loved about developing.
Andrew: I really liked going back to Istan and like being able to revisit some old characters like getting to visit Koss and getting to pass on the news that his family was not horribly murdered by Joko during the purge.
Rubi: You made him happy!
Andrew: Yeah! It's nice to deliver good news for a change here. We're often the bearer of questionable to not good news.
Rubi: Yeah. So bringing Koss back- I mean, that was- you can't just cut and paste, bring him out of Guild Wars 1 and yeah, here's the character model, just like he was.
Andrew: No.
Rubi: How did that work?
Andrew: So actually, originally he was wearing sort of a variation of the default Sunspear armor that you see some- around the griffon stuff.
Rubi: Yeah.
Andrew: But an artist actually approached us and said, "Hey, wouldn't it be a lot cooler if Koss was wearing Koss' armor from Guild Wars 1?" And we were like, "Well, hell yeah it would be a lot cooler if he was!"
Rubi: Yes! Please!
Andrew: So we actually took the time to re-sculpt it and everything so we could get Koss' armor in Guild Wars 2.
Rubi: Okay, that's extremely cool. Again, collaborative process working so well and making it like a million times better.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Erik: Right.
Morgan: Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, the more people you include in brainstorming, or any phase of development, the better. Because like good ideas come from everywhere and like it just makes a product better.
Renaming of Kamadan (14:01)[edit]
Rubi: Yeah. Speaking of good ideas: the renaming of Kamadan.
Andrew: Yes. So that was a contentious debate of whether it should be Palawadan or Jokodan. Palawadan was-
[shouts of "Praise Joko!" from off-screen]
Rubi: Oh, gosh!
Andrew: Yes. Palawadan was clearly the better name because it sounds like Kamadan, right? So.
Rubi: I refuse to weigh in on this.
Andrew: Oh, well.
Rubi: So. Chat: Palawadan or Jokodan? What do you think?
Andrew: Palawadan! Come on, now!
[someone hums a song]
Rubi: Thank you! Oh gosh, it was driving me crazy!
Erik: What?
Rubi: It was like, please, somebody do the thing!
Erik: Do what? Nobody- I don't even know what you're talking about. There's nothing happening.
Morgan: What are you talking about? What? Is it them again? [points off-screen]
Erik: It's totally- It's the peanut gallery.
Andrew: Yes.
Morgan: Alright.
Erik: [looking off-screen] Shhhhh!
Rubi: Geez. You guys are out of control.
Erik: Get out!
Paragons, Dervishes and Books (14:46)[edit]
Rubi: Quick! Quick! Tell me about Paragons and Dervishes!
Andrew: Oh, yes. Um, so-
Rubi: Look, everybody!
Andrew: So one of the first things we did when we decided we were going- when we settled on Istan was we rolled new characters to go play in the earlier parts of Nightfall that all take place in Istan so we could, you know, make sure we were true to the original. And so because we're rolling Nightfall characters a lot of us ended up rolling Paragons and Dervishes and then we're like, "Hey, you know what are cool? Paragons and Dervishes!" So from there we decided that we should add them. And we did! And now they chase you around a map with a scythe!
Rubi: I don't like it.
Andrew: Well...
Rubi: I like the Paragons and Dervishes. I don't like all the death that happens to me.
Erik: Oh, man! I thought I was the only one! I just get ruined! Like, "Hey, look! Some st-" Oh, I'm dead. ???[verification requested] can you tone those back? No!
Andrew: Hey! I toned those down like three times!
Rubi: We did, didn't- Yeah.
Erik: I know you did! I, yeah, I'm still terrible.
Rubi: They just came flying of nowhere and one-shot rekt you at first, didn't they?
Erik: They were bad news.
Rubi: They still are.
Andrew: Yeah and the Dervishes didn't have ground attack AoE markers and... Yeah!
Rubi: So they just- Poosh! You're done.
Andrew: Uh huh!
Rubi: Wow. Thank you for toning that down.
Andrew: Must like Dervishes!
Erik: Now it feels like you have to pay attention. You get outta there and like-
Morgan: Yeah.
Erik: Run away, so.
Rubi: Yeah. If you pay attention and if you don't stand in the red circles and be terrible. Yeah.
Erik: Don't stand in the stuff! That's the ???[verification requested]
Morgan: Yeah. Don't stand in the red.
Andrew: Yeah.
Rubi: So most of their skills came over intact, didn't they?
Andrew: Yeah! So there were a few liberties we had to take because like, for example, enchantments don't exist in Guild Wars 2.
Rubi: Surprise.
Andrew: Yeah, so the dervish, there's a dervish skill that when you hit you steal an enchantment and there's another dervish skill that if you have an enchantment on you you remove that enchantment and knock down your foe. So I just replaced enchantments with boons and now they do basically the exact same thing.
Rubi: That's perfect.
Andrew: Paragons, the same, like a song of flame is one to one copy, it causes burning with your next attack, yeah.
Rubi: I like it. They worked out really well bringing those over. How long did that take?
Andrew: Actually, not that long.
Rubi: Really?
Erik: Well for him. Because you know Guild Wars 1. I'd be like, 'what?' It just happened one day.
Morgan: Wikipedia dot org
Erik: I, seriously
[All laugh]
Andrew: How to make dervish. There is a youtube tutorial for that.
Rubi: How to paragon. You mentioned too that you did some of the rough drafts of the books like the nightfall book.
Andrew: Yeah, I did.
Rubi: In the Astralarium?
Andrew: No the Astralarium books, Heather did a lot of those.
Rubi: There are so many books, we should have Heather on soon.
Andrew: Yes, she can talk about those.
Rubi: Don't go anywhere. [points off screen]
Andrew: I did the books for the collection event, that starts with Koss on Koss. I did the rough drafts for those ones. In yeah the nightfall book you interact with to get down into the Sunspear base. That one was especially fun because it's sort of taking the the actual nightfall story but giving it a very strong Joko bias, saying like 'yeah rip her eyes out because then it'll actually make it a challenge for me.' It was fun.
Rubi: Yeah the Joko spin on a lot of history is something that I had a lot of fun with. I mean interacting with a couple of the books over in the Astralarium for the first time and the nightfall book I was sitting there. I don't, did I remember this wrong? No...
Erik: It's all in your head man.
Jailbreak Story (xx:xx)[edit]
Rubi: I mean it has been a while since I did that story but come on. Something else that I wanted to ask about you [points at Erik] did the jailbreak sequence, you did the jailbreak story and we were talking a lot about the collaborative process but you finished up all of these skills, all of the little jailbreak skills.
Erik: Well ok, so it was still collaborative, the whole instance is you know. I took over from Frosty who had the paper design and actually had that moment written down when I came to it. Hey do you think we could have a professional specific moment here? I was just like that's awesome I have no idea how to do that but we'll totally do it. Ben Arnold, he's not here, but he, he did most of the boss, Warden Amala, at the end. Kirk, he'll be on later talking about the animation stuff.
Rubi: Don't go anywhere.
Erik: [Looks off] Don't go anywhere.
Morgan: Surprise.
Erik: It's really cool. Yeah, so I just kind of I don't know how many of the designs we kept at the end but that moment was it stood out. Hey this could actually be really cool and players have really responded. So the gist was we wanted to put you in a tough spot. Strip you of everything and then we just give you back kind of things that would make sense without your weapons, like utility skills, stuff like that, to kind of have a version of those that would fit within the prison. So you're just in the cell. You've got nothing. You're just like alright, how do you want to do this?
Rubi: What's here?
Erik: So if you're a warrior maybe you're just like 'I would like to rage' and splatter the door open. But if you're a Mesmer it's like 'well this seems too easy, I could just... I mean you think it would?' You can certainly try, and just blink out. And that's the one, that's man, that's gotten a lot of I mean, it seems too easy. It seems too easy. And yeah people seem to respond to it, so we like to have moments where. I mean, you know we talked a lot about some of the really big story stuff. And we make sure we get that right and that's where I kind of defer to people who know things like frosty. But then you know when we get into it, it's really we really like to get into the real details. So we talked about the big bosses and then all the way down to you know the middling the mummies in style, way down to like the critters out there. You know we love them too. So yeah we that's what we worked out.
Rubi: That's what makes it good, those little details.
Erik: Yeah, right.
Rubi: And I was telling you when we were talking about this the other day is that it caught me. because I was playing on my thief, I was like ah this is so cool. I yeah, you picked the lock with the bones so I didn't really look for anything. So then I went through again on my necro and I was so pleased with myself because I knew to how to. Yeah go get the bones and pick the lock. And why can't I interact with this thing. I don't understand what's happening here.
Erik: Yeah.
Rubi: So thank you for detailing that.
Erik: A lot of people didn't even notice that. I got it open, you know. Summon the spirit hammer, done. No, no the necro did not do that.
Rubi: No, no, perhaps I had done something more.
Erik: Yeah, but credit to Frosty. He really pushes for that kind of stuff. It's cool. We love it.
Rubi: It is and again the detail is what makes it. So thank you all. Because now I feel like, I was looking at you like I mean you didn't really do anything.
Erik: It's true. I didn't. They just, I just featured it.
Andrew: Oh no, he absolutely did. Channeling Palawa Joko, Prisoner Palawa Joko. That was all this guy.
Rubi: Oh yeah.
Andrew: I didn't even know about that until people were talking about it on reddit.
Rubi: It's easier to ask forgiveness.
Andrew: You actually did that. But you know seriously.
Erik: Nobody said no, so that what we are doing.
Rubi: That was the Revenant, right?
Erik: Yeah, it was similar to the warrior. And then I was like, okay you're going to force your way open. You know strong whatever. I won't have to me a teleport or whatever. So what do they got. We should really have a stance. Like well, what's a prisoner that's like, could be still have their essence kind of imprinted on the Mists. Just enough to channel, just this once. That's Joko, that's perfect. And then audio came through and they have like a "release me". It's great. I was like, oh man I did not do that. So collaborative process.
Morgan: Collaborative process.
Andrew: In the Living World
Morgan: Yeah.
Rubi: Also our audio team is kind of amazing.
Erik: They really are. They are wizards. They are, yeah.
Morgan: Yeah.
Erik: They are elementalists. I don't know what they are.
Morgan: They are just magic.
Erik: They are just magic.
Bugs (20:05)[edit]
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okay so talking about the development process we had talked about some of the bugs that you got worked out before it went live and thank you because your little guys carrying the casks had issues part of me wishes it was still there I was fine I couldn't find it yeah yeah so ok when when we change characters the art stuff there's this composite build thing as run I don't know it works it's fancy its way I'm not smart enough for that but it puts together these human humanoid characters like the creatures don't go through this the humans do it puts like there are more on their weapons on all this stuff and what it fails we get a default like a fallback thing kinda like we do the other assets do you like pink well this one though is a it's a male they have no head and they have no clothes it's just a naked headless man on your screen and at one point in my instance the you roll up are the beginning Sayid is fine she's ready let's turn you over to the jail guys and then her Posse with her cast don't they're just they're just naked headless man she's like alright everyone so let you have a moment yeah so my screen I'm trying to debug stuff and somebody's like that doesn't look right oh yeah you're right it doesn't it really it really doesn't have a very strange job but like I told friends about don't say you don't say so that's what we get okay so we're not gonna use the image from this oh god but you have to talk about when you're in prison right we wanted to take your stuff away so you have that like I don't have any view prison clothes right instead of just your arm or whatever it could look a little weird if you're all you know blinged out in djoko's dungeon so we we had asked for new assets for this so okay that was really cool y'all just oblige that's really tougher than it sounds because like Chara weird shape every race is still bit different but they came through it was great the problem is that it had some clipping issues where your skin years through and like that's not abnormally just a bucket and you fix it didn't week the animation whatever this one was egregious like it was all over the place and man it led to some problems you sit down and just you can oh boy and then especially we had one screenshot where the human male is just sitting the cameras facing and that is it's not okay so in the bug reports I think Dara just like taking all the screenshots that was worse on my screen I think they're kind of like par for the courses it was pretty bad it was pretty like some of them like how bad could it blow wardrobe malfunction it was worse it was way worse I mean worse like way better image men say yeah or entertaining there you go okay good diplomatic show that's great game de Ville speaking of Pat the fire was still in development when you guys were working I mean you've been working on Episode one for a while and Pat fire was still in development while you were working on that so it's kind of a moving target yeah how much fun was that so we started on Episode one well or at least started on season four planning right after we were done with episode 4 of season 3 so it had been a while now granted some of that time was coming up with the overarching season arc but yeah we've been working on it for a while and Pat the fire was still an active development now and we kept close communication with them to make sure that we hopefully knew as things changed but there were definitely some surprises where we would because we were regularly going back and playing pacifier too because when we first started the episode like a lot of the instances weren't even made yet so right as we got close to the end we'd go back and play through again and then play through again oh that changed I guess we're gonna have to change no you found out stuff the hard way yeah but now I like both products in my opinion turned out really well so it's a testament like the the iterative process has its pain points but it also is how you fine-tune something to make it great yeah so it's definitely worth it yeah it is and it worked well good job thank you alright I want to ask for one less story about djoko's fountains before we so one of our other co-workers Connor he worked on path of fire and as path the fire was kind of winding down and shipping and all that good stuff he sort of rolled on and was helping us with a few things here and there and he was we did a test for the Morton Crescent Great Hall Mehta and he saw these fountains of Joko that were mind-controlling sunspears and his immediate reaction was why can I not drink from these fountains of Joko she prays yeah so now if you interact with these nasty green puddles of mind control serum you will get let yell out a hearty praise Joko and then for ejected obama all over the place as one does to us I mean green goop in the fountain I'm not sure I need to talk to Connor about why are you so adamant about wanting to drink this did he just need an excuse for his character to yell praise joke Oh maybe as if you ever need an excuse what's the power of choice [Laughter] alright well I will let you guys get back to work not you stay here but thank you both very very much for your time thanks guys we'll be right back you it means welcome back like you guys introduce yourselves sure I'm Heather Conover I'm the game designer um you want to hear what I worked on yeah please I worked on the astral areum in the open world the Corsair area open world events the heart I did the Corsair army as we call it doing the creatures making the bosses and the brand stone multi-tool on the falling okay alright okay that's you down there that mean yeah I'm a gorilla for it I don't know which camera is it focused on okay I'm Kirk Williford it's gonna be game absolutely I worked on in the first city instance as well as the last instance why would you do that I just heard that might have been what it used to be called I guess the first thing the foreigner first city instance as well as the mother miners done across the map it's not minor it's important okay the race worked on the race yeah and some of the little technical things that we'll talk about later but we talked before with the other three guys what were some of your favorite things bet development oh crap me first sure okay she's my favorite thing is that eric is like dying a thousand deaths just off-camera this guy quiet you okay my favorite thing probably was just being I'm a huge fan of nightfall and being able to go back to Astana was huge and I really was happy were able to do that and when we first decided to go back to Stan we thought of ways to make it work to go to farriner because that was a really cool place and why do you do this okay but yeah just go being able to go back to farriner is near and dear to my heart because I love the place and we were able to bring it bring it to life in a way that I think paid good tribute to what it was well also bringing a lot of new stuff to it it was something that we've talked about on Gil chat a lot recently coming back to the crystal desert when there are all of these callbacks to go to Guild Wars 1 what were some of the harder things about like you said being true to that but still bringing it into the game and making it 250 years later and a whole new game uh well art assets for one just things have changed graphics are more pretty now you know it's not as easy as just copying pasting a line of code or two so you have to I can't confirm that I guess but I just have a hunch but yeah just working with our artists you know we went through not just as a design team but we went through and showed our artists you know we put it all together other stuff and said you know what what makes this done look like it's done and that's why we have things like the Sunspear Great Hall you know really really noticeable and areas like Anniston were more acceptable to change over 250 years like joke it on right you know things like that it's a city it's gonna change over 250 years right but farriner is an old roots set of ruins right it's an old city it was the first city so it has to stay a little bit more to what it used to look like and so that was a challenge in itself yeah it was fun to think about the Astra larium how it could change over time um I like to think that science prevails and so it's fun to be like let's just expand this area let's make it bigger more technical they got more advanced they have a huge library now that was fun yeah the library is kind of amazing yeah all the libraries in our game I probably should have mentioned to you that we're gonna be talking about spoilers and I've just ruined that I'm so sorry but hey all the spoilers [Music] [Laughter] it's been like a week I want to give a quick shoutout to Aaron our map artist like because he made fart like we're like we gotta go to Stan and then we're like wool we really gotta we have to have comment on in there like but we also really want foreigner but oh look there on clear opposite sides at the island so we basically went to our map art isn't but like so you make one map how about two maps and he was on board and he knocked both out of the park so he never complained ya know he was like it was a nicest guy ever so all of you so what else Heather oh gosh yeah so my favorite part um it was actually one of the first things I worked on I we knew you're gonna have course errors because we were going to it Stan and I love pirates I think they're really fun themed to work with and something we all know that pirates love to do is drink oh yeah one of the first things I did was make a boss themed all around drinking the Ale hounds crew boss so that was a lot of fun it was like what are ridiculous skills that can be related to drinking vomiting yeah and vomiting I'm concerned it's definitely I think we like like multiply by a factor of at least for the amount of vomit in all of Guild Wars 2 with the sticky floor people over there oh gosh that's terrible what about the yeah I want to talk about that a little bit more because I know you did so much in there with the telescopes and the librarian everything happening yeah so that was a lot of fun the path of our team had started developing tech to make books to add this books that you know see in the map and so I was kind of like you know if this exists we should try to finish it up we should get it in it was fun for me to brainstorm a bunch of book ideas it's it's a little hard for us to add a huge volume of books we had a library but it's a lot of text it's a lot of lore yeah so we kind of like compromised and said okay we'll do like back of the book descriptions which will still be flavorful they'll still have Lauren them but they won't be as involved in as long so that was kind of fun yeah huge series of full books is a little much yes yeah and it's not just much for a narrative - and localization has to look at all and it's a lot of translate at all yeah um but yeah so that was fun for me I got to think of just kind of like fun book names and I pull a lot of inspiration from pacifier and from Guild Wars one used my encyclopedia of Guild Wars 1 knowledge you guys these guys helped a lot - I asked the team for fun book name ideas and they ended up pitching in and writing some of them - and um and then after I do my past everything goes through narrative to make sure it all right like words good yes the same Peters face yeah yeah thank you yeah and Alex Kane he did a lot of the revisions and made them really polished and shine um so I was really fun I did you know I like played a bunch of pacifier you know because this is before it actually launched and looked around for for inspiration you know one of my favorite books is you and your Springer it was a lot of fun and then of course the telescope's was really fun for me too I learned about how astronomers take astronomical notes so that I could actually be accurate that was fun for me - yeah like you know and all that stuff and then again pulled a lot of inspiration from gw1 wanted to make sure that we had some callbacks - legendary weapons so yeah it was a lot of fun for me the back end of that the way all of that works the randomization makes it a little bit more complicated I mean it seems very straightforward on the front but everything going on in the background talk about that a little bit yeah yeah yeah there is a lot of randomization there are a lot of telescope correct readings that you can get from each telescope and then it also randomized the incorrect readings that will try to trip you up when you put them down in the book and so it was kind of funny to to get it all in and then Peter was gonna review it all any kind of like you know was like oh goodness this is a lot but it's gonna be worth it yes yeah at least I hope it was worth it um because that's it you know I think about the fact that the player plays this more than once you know we have our beautiful hearts now yeah so adding variants is really important to me but it it just explodes scope so it's definitely something that we have to be diligent about using yeah and huge shout out to QA for making that making it work smoothly yeah making it work well yeah pretty much shout out to cue me for everything yeah yeah oh gosh our QA meds are great and they helped me a ton with testing the brain stone multi-tool as well which also uses a lot of randomization yeah you did the brainstorm multi-tool yeah did you just like come out of put that I'm mostly just leading you at this point so we were we were actually playing breath of the wild at the time they were totally the only ones no yeah no we were super jazzed about it and there were certain things that we really liked hunting for the stars that would fall in breath of the wild was the touchstone for doing this brand branded multi-tool finding the brand stones blooming that streaks across the sky you have to see it you have to get there in a certain amount of time like there are a lot of things that we pulled firm from inspiration for it and and that ended up becoming a main part of our content reward loop so yeah and it's it's good to have those in-game ways of crafting the weapon - yeah that was that was really well done thank you and we've talked about this before I mean we're all we all play games every every kind and a lot of those inspirations can be felt and it works out really really well so nice job thank you do you guys want to talk about some of the bump in the road things development on the way we can go back to your way looking to me I was I was kind of thinking of your ale hound guy oh yeah at one point oh goodness okay so I mentioned that it was the first thing I worked on right so there's this thing that happens that when you make something and then you don't look at it for a long time it'll break like it will just sometimes break as you know we switch branches or that like part of the technical process somehow this guy had gotten into a state where he was so hard so we were playing it we're like all right let's make let's say did he check this guy's won't get together on a branch we'll play together and he was ridiculously hard he managed to get like a hundred percent damage increase and just recognize completely recognized I'm just asking what content gets lonely it'll just break out of nowhere and just get your attention again exactly nice that dog how about you Kirk um let's see the big one for me was probably the you said spoilers right yes yes the final okay porn porn it's a guitar yeah because by against a certain golem in the first city instance there was a lot of weirdness that happened because of some weird there's some stuff we were doing that instance with some relatively new tech yeah there was challenging lots of golem we played the power cord yes walk scruffy standing floating in the middle of nowhere just kind of doing its own thing it likes to walk on in infant air without using Jets which is totally cheating and not allowed pretty much okay well you don't have to worry about that it's fine seriously but yeah just things like that all right our big fights a lot of things can break just because so much goes into them things that you think are perfectly fine will break I don't know you fix it and that'll break something else just because that's how software development works yes it's not that simple yes but yeah like Heather said just credit to our QA team just trying to nail down all that stuff they do a fantastic job of finding things that I never thought was possible not just not fine but everywhere else they'd be like hey this is this is broken here because of this this is what on this one like specific profession when this one skill this will happen yeah edge cases I mean they're terrible heartbreaking you mentioned new tech and that reminded me that I wanted to talk a little bit about the invisible NPCs oh yeah yeah this is a hazard of developing something new so it's fine so so one thing that we did with our story is that the sly crew the sly corsair crew is not visible until you're on the right story step and then they'll show up I kind of goofed and made it so that they were not visible at one point when they should have been but everything that activated their dialogue was there so I would be running around their area when they're not supposed to be there and then hearing people talk then just being like where is this coming from this yeah that was pretty funny um ghosts basically like actually not like the ghostly you can see in our game they were like weird yeah but the tech on that I mean having that added to the game is something I love the constant improvements as we figure out how to do more things and having them not show up as just NPCs that you can't do anything with just randomly standing there such a nice little yeah it also meant that we could have Kido show up in the middle of a conversation and then go away that's right yeah normally we would not be able to do that in the open world because we got this new tech we could do something like that which is it just allows us to do such cool things like we use it to ensure the first city as well exam is standing guard you know when you go in that isn't something we'd be able to do without that tank yeah I didn't put those two together until you said that just now but thank you for mentioning Kido because I was a little embarrassed when I first did it notice you had mentioned Kirk the last instance can we talk about how bad that hurt and how sad it was goodness so I don't know if we talked about it yet but before we get voice in we have a thing called Robo voice yes so it's like Microsoft Sam voice type thing you know and it's just so we can kind of get the base timing of our stuff when we're before we get recordings in from voice art voiceover artists and stuff right when that came in for timing my jaw hit the floor just cuz it completely changed the tone of the entire instance yeah the voice actor for that Jerry baby did a fantastic job like holy crap I it was more than I was expecting and I was expecting it to be fantastic well you didn't know the video was in no that's right yeah like I just all of a sudden instead of hearing her say I I do not want to die what yes that tends to happen no cuz it's like it's added in chunks right and so all of a sudden it's there and you're just pulling away so yeah it's really cool it's a wait like you work on something for so long but you still surprise yourself because of it it's really neat yeah it's um it's a tiny tangent but the robo voice is one of my favorite parts of development because sometimes it can't pronounce ya crowd cater ik yes in Yoko no no because way back when we were talking to I think the priest of Balthazar and he you said something he like scoffed at you do you remember that in the temple and hearing robo voice say was one of the highlights just he just like buzzed and I wish I'd saved it because it's just gone forever now but yes robo voice makes all the difference and then when it's gone and suddenly you have something like this last instance it hits you like a sledgehammer yeah it really doesn't that was some of the biggest feedback that I saw once people once our players started finishing the story was all of this I'm just sitting here crying why would you do this to me ArenaNet so well done to all of you guys who worked on that the narrative team Debbie especially with her vo yeah they did an incredible job yeah well what else were some of the highlights of development on this for you guys you guys worked on so much I feel like I'm just asking you this huge I'm just observing okay and judging say really quickly though that you know his yes the Paragons winner was just really hard but the first pass of the Corsair army that I did was also very hard and yeah and so you know I they were also used in the plow in Donovan and so we didn't I don't even think I realized how hard they were until we did it plow it on I got we were with like a large group - I got so many of the same bug those guys too hard he's creating me constantly seriously yeah they kick their kickers yeah definitely piranhas in that water I wonder I put those there yeah but still I feel like you kind of deserved this watching inside to his own oh my gosh dying of your own creation how about the drug does terrible things to you and why is that so we can't have alcohol give you any benefits thinking is good kids yeah you're great um but I was in this lovely like naive bubble where I was like oh make I'll make Medi who's this character um have a suite of drinks that you can try and they'll each give you buffs and players will love it they'll do it every day it'll give him some renown credit and Lindsay played and she was like I know and my heart kind of broke a little and I was like well fine they'll debuff you instead you know it's kind of like so um so yeah they're now they gave you a buffs which will give you some conditions and there's there's a fun little hidden thing with that too that apparently some players have found but not a lot of players ok we'll skip the power chord and let them find it on there oh yeah you can still do it I mean it's fine that instead of just scuttling all of the work because now I have something to go look for yeah alright well I will let you guys get back to work too and thank you all very very much all five of you even those of you in the peanut gallery troublemaker all right thank you guys very much for your work on Episode one and for kicking off season four all right we will be back on the next skilled chat thank you, guys
