Guild Chat - Episode 84
Guild Chat - Episode 84
- Title
- Requiem
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Steven Stadnicki
Alex Kain
Julia Nardin
Tom Abernathy - Date
- May 10, 2019
- Official video
- YouTube
The 84th episode of Guild Chat aired on May 10, 2019. Join host Rubi Bayer and members of the ArenaNet Narrative Team for a closer look at the All or Nothing: Requiem short story series.
Transcription[edit]
Introductions and Gauntlet for charity (9:13)[edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hi everybody. Hi Tyria. Happy Friday. Welcome back to Guild Chat. I'm your host Rubi and we have a whole lot to talk about today. Mark was showing us some of the goodies from our friends at For Fans By Fans and they sent us over this. We were looking at them earlier. I just wanted to show these off for scale, before we got started, because our new little quaggan things are off of pre-order and they are available on the For Fans By Fans website now and they are tiny and adorable so I had to show these off because we were all going crazy over how adorable they were earlier. So these are available now and they are super cute and they're not getting them back from me. I'm keeping I'm keeping them forever. They're my friends now. So we are going to be talking with members of our Narrative Team today about the Requiem series, now that we've released all of that, but I do want to chat with you really quickly first about something else that we are supporting here at ArenaNet. I'm here with a member of our dev team: Steven Stadnicki. Steven why don't you say hi and talk a just for a second about what you do here at ArenaNet.
Steven Stadnicki: Sure. I'm Steven, as we said, and I am actually in the process of switching over from being a primarily programmer for gameplay to being a content programmer, which means that I'm kind of the jack-of-all-trades for individual story groups. And this is both exciting and terrifying because it means I'm doing, in addition to the code, some actual design stuff now. And this is a new experience for me, so it's good times though. I had not appreciated I think how much tedium there is occasionally in design when you have to place, you know, a hundred different little widgets around the map one by one by one.
Rubi: Okay, so you're not bored.
Steven: I'm not bored. Thankfully.
Rubi: Okay well, so while you're learning all that, you are donating your spare time to the Gauntlet for charity that's coming up in- We're nine days out, you guys. It's gonna be fine.
Steven: It is gonna be fine.
Rubi: It's gonna be fine.
Steven: I get to spend all day playing board games. How can it go wrong?
Rubi: I know! Like there's no bad here. We've been talking a lot about ArenaNet's Gauntlet for charity. We are nine days out. This is our first year participating, so I wanted to give all of you a little bit of background and kind of get you caught up on where we are. First, just to let those of you who aren't familiar know, Mox Boarding House is where we're doing this at. This is a local restaurant and board gaming and board games store. They have a little bit of everything. It is a super fun place to go and hang out. They have a corporate giving and community outreach segment called Engage, that they've been using since 2013 to be a good community partner, help improve things around the Seattle area, and support our community through things like supporting education and improving local education, which is kind of the focus for them this year. The Gauntlet, which is the event we're participating in, is their longest running event. It's been around since they started in 2013 and has raised almost half a million dollars for local charities since it got going. So how this works is on Sunday, May 19, Steven and three of our other devs are going to spend all day at Mox playing board games to support this charity. So do you want to talk a little bit about what you've been doing to prepare?
Steven: Yeah, we've been trying to get in some games over lunch. We've still mostly been focusing on Photosynthesis, which is a wonderful little abstract board game about growing trees. The other game is Parade, which I have not yet had a chance to play. Mox has been hosting some developer get-togethers where last evening I think one was- We had a couple of folks- John Hargrove went over there and I had a chance to play some of these games with a bunch of the devs from other studios in the area. So we were getting our practice in where we can.
Rubi: Yeah.
Steven: And Izzy is still working on metagaming the whole thing and trying to figure out how we can beat everybody.
Rubi: That's right.
Steven: But we're going to beat everybody for charity, so it's alright.
Rubi: Yes. So there are two ways. We're competing against 19 other teams. These are all local teams of four from different companies. There are two ways: we can raise the most funds or raise more funds than at least some of the other teams, and you can win the games. So Izzy's working on the metagaming and trying to figure out how that's going to happen. And we're working on the fundraising. The charity that Engage is supporting this year: it's a local charity called the Center for People of All Races and I'm gonna have Mark show their website and what some of their goals are for the local area. How they would like to improve things for people around here. There's also a- Yeah. I'm just- I'm kind of letting people look over that. There's also, Mark if you can show the donation page, kind of the breakdown of what your donations support and how that goes to support various educational initiatives around the area. Our community has been super generous. We got a little past $500 over last night, supporting summer initiatives, tutoring programs for local kids and we've- I just want to let you guys know that we are super appreciative of how you've stepped up and helped us support that. But we also kind of wanted to make it fun for you. So I wanted to share some of what we've been doing. Yeah, those are those are some of the things that your donations go to support and smaller amounts help too. They add up extremely quickly. Five of you donating $5 each will add up and provide that first level donation. So, everything that you guys have done to step up in help has already made a huge difference. So I wanted to share some of what we're going to be doing as we hit our donation milestones. We're gonna do some giveaways the day of. You'll be able to watch all of the board game fun here on our Twitch channel on May 19. You guys are going to be going all day and we will be keeping an eye on where we've gone for our donation milestones. As we reach those, we have some signed Guild Wars 2 merchandise, starting with the quaggan mug that all the members of our Gauntlet team here at ArenaNet have signed. As we hit $1,000, we will do a giveaway and Twitch chat for that that day. At $2,000, we have Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire final soundtracks also signed by all of you guys. $3,000 we have five Guild Wars 2 mouse mats. I have to pass this off to you because I'm running out of hands.
Steven: Of course.
Rubi: And these are- We have five of these. The really, really, huge ones that- I have one of these at home and I love them. We're gonna have the guys sign all of those. We'll give away-
Steven: I don't even have one of those.
Rubi: You don't?
Steven: I don't even have the quaggan mug. These things are awesome!
Rubi: I know where you can get them.
Steven: I don't think I'm allowed to enter, but...
Rubi: You're not allowed to enter, but you can get one and then you can sign it and then you will also have a signed-
Steven: I will have a signed team mug! Amazing!
[Someone offscreen]: Then you can donate it to yourself.
Steven: I may be a little busy on that day.
Rubi: And you can donate it to yourself! That's right! So you have the mouse mats. At $4,000 we will have a signed Guild Wars 2 Collector's Edition and once we hit our $5,000 goal we will have a signed Guild Wars Prophecies Collector's Edition. We stopped making those. We did the manufacturing right around way back when Guild Wars 1 Prophecies came out. Those have not been manufactured in a whole lot of years. We have a few copies lying around here so we broke one out, had the guys sign The Art of Guild Wars book that came with it, and we will give that away to someone in Twitch chat the day of if we hit our $5,000 goal. So we have awesome prizes, but we also- I would put that back unless you want to hang on to it and you're welcome to but you cannot keep it forever.
Steven: I had better put it back before I walk away with it then.
Rubi: Eh, whatever. I will tell you where to get one later and I'll give you a Sharpie so you can sign up for yourself. So, we have another thing that we're doing though that Steven helped us come up with the idea for. Since you guys know when War Eternal is coming now, next Tuesday, we're just a few days out, we thought it would be kind of fun to give you a little head start on your skyscale mount. Part of what you guys need to do to get your mount, after War Eternal comes, is hunt down some loose skyscale scales that are lying around the new map. So for every $2,000 in donation to the charity between now and the release of War Eternal, we're going to release one screenshot of a scale location on the new map, up to six. There is a forum thread where we will be posting those and you can see that link in chat so you know where to watch and we'll see how many screenshots you guys can unlock between now and then. So.
Steven: Look forward to that.
Rubi: Yes, thank you for the idea on that.
Steven: Happy to.
Rubi: Good luck gaming.
Steven: Thank you.
Rubi: Good luck beating everybody else.
Steven: It'll be a blast of a day regardless.
Rubi: Both in the games and the fundraising. Thank you guys for helping us support the charity, for helping us be a good community partner here in the area. And there's a second link in chat, should be right now, telling you where you can support us. So alright! Who's ready to talk about Requiem?
Steven: Thank you so very much and thank you to everybody.
Rubi: Yeah. Thank you so much for doing everything that you've done to help out with this.
Steven: It is a delight. Legitimately I love this stuff so this is one of the best parts of being in the games world.
Rubi: Yeah. You have nine days. You guys got this.
Steven: We do have this, but there's still that, "Ahhhhh..." about it, so...
Rubi: I can understand. Make sure you get plenty of rest between now and then.
Steven: I promise not to have any more root canals between now and the charity Gauntlet.
Rubi: Yes! Like that's the other thing: Steven, he just had a root canal like what, yesterday afternoon, and came in to talk about this because he cares about this so...
Steven: And because modern pharmaceutical technology is really good.
Rubi: [laughs] Alright. Thank you very much.
Steven: Thank you.
Rubi: I will let you get back to hopefully going home and resting.
Steven: That is actually my plan for the afternoon.
Rubi: Yes. Alright. You guys stick around and we're going to talk about Requiem in just a couple minutes.
Requiem (22:00)[edit]
Rubi: All right, Welcome back to guild chat. We are ready to talk about Requiem. We are super excited that you all liked it so much, so let's jump right into talking to the narrative team. Why don't each of you introduce yourselves, talk about what you do here at ArenaNet and what you worked on for Requiem.
Alex Kain: Hi, I'm Alex Kain, I'm a Narrative Designer here at ArenaNet and I was the writer of the first two Requiem stories and I helped out on the outline for the third one, the Caithe one.
Julia Nardin: I'm Julia Nardin, I'm the story editor on Guild Wars 2, which is kind of like the video game equivalent to the showrunner. Just making sure everything is cohesive and guiding the story and providing support to the writers like Alex and Samantha, who wrote Caithe's. So more of that for Requiem.
Rubi: Awesome, welcome to the show for the first time by the way!
Julia: Aww, thank you!
Rubi: Thank you for joining us! Tom.
Tom Abernathy: I'm Tom Abernathy, I'm the studio Narrative Director. Which means I sit around and watch brilliant people like these, do what they do and give them as much support as I can.
Rubi: That works. I feel like you work a lot harder than that makes it sound. (laughs)
Tom: (laughs)
Rubi: Well, I'll tell you what, why don't we kind of go through the process in order. How did this all get started?
Alex: So, Anatoli came up to us with an idea and this idea was to tell some additional story in between episodes 5 and 6. We wanted to sort of dive into the characters a little bit more and use a storytelling medium that we haven't really capitalized on before. We can't like, build whole episodes that quickly and release them in between other episodes, so-
Rubi: Right.
Alex: We looked at Twine. Which was, you know, what 'Toli suggested initially and we thought it was a great idea. Initially, the idea was that, y'know marketing would sort of spearhead it and narrative would provide some oversight. But we chomped into it like immediately. We loved the idea, there were a lot of stories that we wanted to tell, so we sorta took the reigns on the writing, and 'Toli was super supportive of the whole thing. It was a great sort of cooperative effort between marketing and narrative.
Rubi: That's something I want to start us off by calling out something that you'll hear us talk about throughout the show, is how so many more people - This was a huge group effort all over the place and Anatoli who writes our blog posts and does a- well, honestly keeps us sane with the ten million things he does on our team. This was Anatoli's brainchild way back in October I think. So that is the first of many shoutouts that we are going to give today.
Alex: Absolutely, yep. So, I mean, it started off that 'Toli had the idea for doing three stories and you know, right off the bat we were like - Rytlock, Caithe, and Zafirah. These are three characters that we really felt we could take advantage of the format with. We could dive into their psyches a little more, we could get a perspective that we don't normally get as the commander in the game because the whole story is from the commander's point of view. So we really enjoyed taking advantage of you know, telling stories from different points of view that we don't normally get to do.
Rubi: So how did you decide "These three, clearly it had to be these three".
Tom: I think Rytlock and Caithe came pretty quickly if my memory is right and the third one took another minute and a half (laugh) basically to come up with.
Julia: All the same.
Alex: It was, yeah, all in the same evening, yeah.
Tom: It was quick! I think the Rytlock one, we knew there was internal stuff to explore. Partially because there were important things that had happened regarding Sohothin and other things that hadn't been player-facing, that we hadn't done anything with to put it out there and let people see how it happened. Then also because Steve Blum who's the actor who plays Rytlock, in his interview that he did with you for behind the voice, had some really fascinating things to say about his way into the character basically, and the affinity that he has for Rytlock. Where he talks about how he was also a runt as a child and how that's the compassion that he feels with Rytlock. I think we have that tape.
Rubi: Yeah, let's let him tell it!
[Clip of from Behind the Voice interview plays]
Steve Blum: He was sort of the runt of the litter. They called him Runt-lock I guess, when he was training as a young kitty-cat and I was kinda that kid too, who's the smallest and the weakest and bullied a lot, and having to fight through that, emotionally and physically, made me a much stronger person as I navigated the world and I think that's worked in his favor also.
Rubi: He is the sweetest dude.
All: (Agree)
Alex: He totally is the sweetest dude.
Tom: and so what happened there was something we don't actually get to experience as much as people who work in media, where actors are hanging around more of the time, do, right? Where the actors themselves come to understand things about their characters, even that the writers and the directors don't necessarily. So they have insight. You know, we only get to see our actors, although we love them to death, we only get to see them every few months, right.
Julia: Yeah.
Tom: But the fact that Steve had thought about that in-depth and sort of made that connection, really had an impact on us and so, we felt like, thinking about Rytlock's sense of guilt that's been expressed all the way through Path of Fire because of him being the one - Spoilers! - who let Balthazar out and you know, all of that.
Rubi: I feel like that ship has sailed. It's been a while.
Tom: It totally has.
Alex: We can't roll the spoilers tag, with a big foghorn and everything. (laugh)
Rubi: No.
Tom: It was over two years ago now. Anyway, that was- it just seemed like there was a lot of ripe territories there. Similarly, Caithe had been off-screen for a while but her relationship to Aurene was so intimate and specific, right, both as a sort of mother figure, and then once Aurene brands her and gives her the ability to speak for her, there was even more of a mental and emotional intimacy there, and we just wanted to get- Caithe seemed like the perfect person to express grief for the loss of Aurene. I think that was the big hook there, right and then the reason we landed on Zafirah ultimately was a more prosaic one, but nonetheless important for that. Which is that because of changes that had been made late in Episode 4, things that had been removed from the scene where you first meet Zafirah and she's sitting on the clocktower taking potshots at everyone basically (laughs) Yeah, there's poison gas that was added in and some people got confused by that, and thought that she had put the poison gas in the area to kill anyone who came, right, and WE knew that was not what was actually happening but we understood how that was a confusing point for people and to us, she wasn't actually killing anybody. She's basically trying to commit suicide by cop, essentially, in that scene right. So we wanted to first- the idea of being able to correct that misimpression and maybe put people a little more in her head, who hadn't found her too sympathetic yet. There were some players who expressed that they weren't sure what they were supposed to like in her and we liked her a ton and thought there was a lot that was really relatable about her and so, the opportunity to get in her head again and do that sort of thing, just seemed like a really good one. So those are our three. It really didn't take us five minutes to come down with the three and the first two were in ten seconds. (laughs)
Julia: It was pretty unanimous.
Tom: Yeah.
Rubi: That's awesome, so that's your first step. It was a pretty quick one, then it was slightly less quick. (laugh) So, then you start going into meetings to outline the stories and what these are going to look like.
Tom: Yeah.
Alex: That's more of Julia's thing too.
Julia: Yeah.
Alex: So, I mean, you know, there were a lot of iterative passes on the outline. For the Rytlock story, which is the one we released first. We did these sequentially, so the order they released in was the order in which we wrote them. The tone of the piece and really the whole exercise was really sort of difficult to nail down at first, because it's not just first-person, right? It's first-person through characters like Rytlock who maybe don't think the way that they speak and it's probably -
Tom: and they don't voice their feelings.
Alex: and especially a character like Rytlock, who, you know- has never been in a position in the game to voice his feelings and his emotions. Like how does a character like that actually think? That's a question that we've never in the history of Guild Wars 2 ever been able to explore and it was only by writing a story in which he's telling it from his own perspective and it's him thinking about his past and telling it through his own lens, that we're actually able to do that. You know, a lot of readers were very surprised by his internal mechanism for grief and how he sort of masks all that, but finding that tone at first was very difficult because you know, with any sort of writing project you start here, then you start drilling down more and more and more. It was several drafts, taking it into Julia and Tom and other writers on the staff who had been with Rytlock the longest and written him the longest. To sort of get those, you know, figure out if this was the way he would think. How would this character think? We've never heard him think before. That was an interesting process but once we nailed it for Rytlock, I think we'd sort of figured it out and the Zafirah story was a little bit more of a conventional first-person thought process and Samantha Wallschlaeger who was the writer for the Caithe story, really just took it to a whole new level for that story as well.
Tom: I think the reason that the Rytlock one was important, but also the reason it was difficult was because he's a long-standing character, a fan favourite, I mean in some ways he's the emblematic character of Guild Wars 2 in a lot of peoples minds. So people know him well, but as you say, his internal life they don't have such a great sense of, right. I mean we know he feels guilt over the Balthazar thing, he's said that. But beyond that? He mostly just is grumpy all the time and stuff, right? So the difference between the way he speaks in-game and what's going on inside him is greater for him than it is for the other two characters, which is why, both there's a higher degree of difficulty and it took us, as Alex said, a while to sort of nail down what exactly what the tone and the voice should be, but also secondly, it's a great one to lead with because it tells you everybody in our game has an inner life. If this guy has an inner life that's this rich and interesting, you can be sure that they all do, and believe me, we would all love to get into all of their heads at one point or another in this fashion because it's an exciting exercise for us, too. It educates us about who the characters are and all that.
Rubi: (Gestures to Julia) So Alex was talking about bringing that to you, as far as like, getting into Rytlock's head. So what was some of the process like? Iterating on that.
Julia: Yeah, so, it's funny. When we were doing the Twine stories we were also concurrently planning ahead, so I can say that we have Season 5 coming.
All: (laugh)
Tom: Yeah, there's a Season 5 and it's coming. (laugh)
Julia: It's coming, so we've been working on that and a lot of the Twine work in the room and generating ideas, we do it as a group. We story break as a group on a whiteboard talking about the things we wanted to do and where we wanted to take characters and one of the big things that informed that, was figuring out where they would end Episode 6 and where their heads were at. We really wanted to kind of god back, especially in Rytlocks history, and say, what are the unanswered questions? That people really want to know about Rytlock. Who does that inform who he is, who he's become, and where he's going? So a lot of the stuff we did in the Twines, with the planning and the talking and the revising, just to make sure that it was in line with what we wanted to do with the characters in the future, you know.
Alex: -and also like elements of the past too.
Julia: Yeah.
Alex: Like, one of the big things that the story finally reveals is all the back story about Sohothin and it's one of those things where, a lot of lore focussed players are you know, always asking like - 'Oh man, there's a reason why they're not bringing Sohothin back, they're planning something big for it' and really it's like, we would LOVE to talk about Sohothin, but that's not the story that we're telling right now. How do we pay that off in a way that we can kill two birds with one stone, how do we tell a story that fits the tone that we're going for, but also answers these lore questions? and with the Rytlock story it was perfect because Rytlock self identifies himself with Sohothin, it's a very big part of who he is. So for exploring his psyche a little bit that's a big part of it, so we were able to really deep dive into that and explain some of the lore that we've been wanting to explain for a very long time. In a way that makes perfect sense. I distinctly remember writing the outline for it and actually having a little note in the margin that was like 'This would be a really great place for us to finally explain Sohothin', it would be great-
All: (laugh)
Alex: - and like, I was really nervous that I would be, you know be like 'this is my idea for how I want to do this' and a bunch of people would be like, no. That was not what we were planning to do.
Julia: Noooo!
Alex: But actually everyone was like 'yeah, that's a great idea, you should totally do it!' (laugh)
Julia: Yeah (laugh)
Alex: Yeah, oh man! Like, tying off one of those big lore, you know, hanging - it feels really good.
Tom: A loose thread.
Alex: Yeah, a loose thread. To finally tie that was great. You know, it helps inform elements of the character that we've been trying to seed a little bit. We're all really excited about, you know..... that.
All: (laugh)
Tom: and I think, too. You know, what you said about having things in their past that we know about, or at least that WE know about, sometimes players don't know. That we wanted to more fully explicate. That was a motivation for all three of these characters, obviously, Zafirah is a lot newer so the thing in her past that we wanted to explicate was the thing that was player-facing, but we also felt like getting in her head would help them and telling them about who she was before we met her would go a long way towards explaining who she is, what motivates her and particularly what the sense of her relationship and her religiosity vis-à-vis Balthazar is at this point because it's complicated. She needed to think it through and it was nice to have her think it through, in a way that we could hear. Caithe even more so, I mean, one of the things that we've been doing this season, first with Braham in earnest and then with Caithe in the second half of the season, was to take characters that players were not completely satisfied with where we'd left them last and thinking about how we could help that situation and bring those characters sort of, back into the story and help make the way that they'd been acting become something which would be more comprehensible to people.
Julia: Yeah.
Tom: and also evolve them and move them forward, right. So, first, we did it with Braham who had all the issues with his mother dying and everything. You know, first, his relationship with the commander gets better. It starts out crappy but gets better and then he even gets to see his mom again and mom basically says 'stop pining for me Braham, here's your family right here' and we've been able to get him to a place that we really like and here's the tiniest- it's not a spoiler but I'm going to tease it- at the end of Episode 6 when you play it, go hang out with Braham at the end of the epilogue.
Julia: Yes, do it.
Tom: You'll get a sense of Braham's evolution for this season.
All: (laugh)
Tom: Yeah, it's really not a big thing-
Rubi: I'll be right back. (laugh)
Tom: -it's a cute thing. But Caithe was also a character like that, right. Was a character that had done some really reprehensible things in the past and some people were really irked at her, to put it mildly, for those things, and we wanted to do something with her relationship with Aurene, which inescapably takes you back to her stealing the egg and you can't do that. You can't have her come in and sort of be a maternal figure for Aurene in the way that we wanted to do it and not deal with that past action, right?
Rubi: Right.
Tom: So it seemed with her, a really great opportunity to at least let you understand what she was thinking at the time that she did things that were crappy and also how now she's beginning to revise the way she thinks about those things and the person that she wants to be. She acknowledges, you know, as it says in the piece, she's actually very young. She hasn't been around that long even though she looks adult and urbane and Carrie voices her so marvelously that way.
Rubi: Yeah, she's really.. she's got that presence.
Tom: Yeah, totally, yes, a lot of, yes, presence is a really good word.
Alex: Gravitas.
Rubi: Yes!
Tom: But we knew that with any character, inside she doesn't feel that way and inside she's still figuring out how to be a grown-up person, and so to have her be able to go back to some of the events of the past, Faolain and that kind of stuff, and interrogate her own behavior and her own motivations - and realize that she doesn't want to be that person anymore and that Aurene is part of the reason she doesn't want to be that person anymore, right. That was just so full of rich stuff that it was really - That was why Caithe came in the first ten seconds because there was no way we were going to pass up that opportunity.
Rubi: Yeah, to talk about that a little bit. I actually want to loop back around for a couple of seconds. You mentioned that Samantha wrote one of those, so huge shout out to Samantha, because fantastic work!
Julia: Amazing.
Rubi: and Julia, you'd mentioned story breaking and that was a term that I was going to ask you to talk about a little bit, about what that is - what that means.
Julia: Sure. Let's see if I can explain this without spoiling anything or giving examples. (laugh) So when we go to plan a season of content, we break it down by episode, we get the writers and the designers in a room together. Ideally, we have people from other departments as well, you know, sound, art. It takes SO many people to make a game, it's not just the writers and designers, it's everybody. To really sit down and figure out what the overall arc of the season is, how are we going to divide that, what characters are we going to focus on, what are their individual arcs within that. Then we go episode by episode and figure out if we have like a three-act structure or a five-act structure, how do we divide it, what do we know we need to hit, story-wise. So we try and lay that all the way out when we start planning for a season's worth of content, so we know where we're going, so characters can act consistently and true to themselves, which is why the Twine stories I think, are so important. As a writing exercise for us to really understand why the characters do the things that they do so that they can be consistent and their actions make sense moving forward.
Rubi: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah, so I think that's story breaking in a nutshell.
Rubi: Okay, yeah! Whenever possible I try to do a 'here's how stuff works!'.
Alex: Yeah, you get the big ol' whiteboard and you got episodes up on the whiteboard in big columns. You got all the characters, on the left side and it's you know, what are their story beats and yeah.
Tom: Yeah, you did a lot of that at the beginning, talking about Season 5, of where - not just characters that had been in Season 4, but other characters too, like Marjory and Kasmeer, everyone wants to know what's going on with them, right. We had, as you say, a list of ALL the characters-
Julia: SO LONG.
Tom: -and then, what's going on with them right now? and what's the arc that we want to do with them maybe over this season and start there, start with themes, start with character arcs and very high level, big-picture stuff and then get progressively smaller in terms of the area magnification.
Julia: We've got these cool magnetic strips that I love, where we can like have a story beat and move it to another episode if we need to move it.
Rubi: What??
Julia: Yeah! It's really flexible and fluid and-
Alex: They're like these flimsy magnetic whiteboards-
Julia: They're really great. Like you slap them on and you move them across. (laugh)
Alex: Very satisfying.
Rubi: Where are those? All I ever see are-
Julia: They're at my desk.
Tom: Yeah, Julia has a horde of them.
Rubi: Oh, okay, like all I ever see are post-it notes with doodles on them everywhere.
Tom: Oh, that's the artists.
Alex: Yeah, the art team. Those are collector's items, you should hang them up.
Rubi: And they're not related to anything?
Alex: No.
Julia: They're just fun.
Tom: Artists can't be in a meeting and not draw.
Rubi: It's true.
Tom: It's a compulsion they have which is great, I mean that's why they do what they do. (laugh)
Julia: It's like Christmas when you walk into a meeting room with all these new sticky notes, you're like awww!
Tom: That's right.
Alex: Little drawings.
Tom: At one point somebody was doing one of like all the directors in the company I remember, that was a couple of years ago. It was really funny.
Julia: I think someone had those along a wall, I remember.
Rubi: Yeah, they're upstairs. So, okay. (laughs) So, while all this is going on, over here in another area we're working with some of our creative partners to do artwork for some of those and that was another thing that started happening back in October. All of this was not anything slapped together in like a month, which I feel like, if you're not thinking too much about the process as a whole, or if you're kind of outside of the process and looking at it from a surface level a month sounds like -'yeah, I could totally do that in a month' (shakes head) This has been going on for SO long, so it was so gratifying to see it all brought to fruition. But yeah, shout out also to our creative partners, because they did so much work on this and they worked for so long and we're really happy with how that side of it turned out as well.
Julia: Really beautiful.
Rubi: Yeah, so each of you. What was your favorite part of working on this?
Alex: Oh, that's a tough one. There was more than one.
Rubi: You can have a couple.
Alex: So the initial thing was when we were in that meeting room and like, I think all of us at once realized how great the project and the opportunity was. We all shared a look and we're like, we're actually gonna get to do this. Like holy smokes, this is great, because we have had many conversations in the past, just the narrative team about like - how do we tell story in a different way, because there's only so much we can do per episode and it's always from one perspective and you know.
Rubi: Right, there are some things that time and development constraints, you simply can't- you physically can't do.
Alex: Yeah.
Tom: and gameplay needs too, right. I mean, it's a game that we make and we tell stories though and I mean, a number of people, I don't think it's anything like a sort of majority opinion, but a number of people responded to the Rytlock thing saying- 'well how come you put this stuff about Sohothin and everything into this and why couldn't I have played it in-game'. The answer is because it doesn't particularly lend itself to gameplay and playing the game is the most important thing you should be doing when you're playing the game, right. It also wouldn't have allowed us to get in Rytlock's head.
Alex: Yeah, I mean if it was gameplay it wouldn't tie into any of the story that we've been telling at this point too.
Tom: Yeah, as you said, this was not the moment to deal with that.
Alex: Right, exactly. So that was certainly one and also like, being able to figure out what elements of these characters past we wanted to dive into and being able to see like, oh, we can actually explain Sohothin in here, oh we can actually dive into the Zaishen and Zafirah, oh this is a great opportunity for us to, you know, dive into a little bit more about the Caithe and Faolain situation. It was just opportunity after opportunity and so when I say it's hard to pick just one, it was because each story was - you know, normally you have to dig for gold out there but this was just a big pile of gold and you're just digging through it to find the best piece of gold.
Rubi: Like backing up a truck and dumping it on you.
Alex: Yeah, it was great.
Rubi: Finally getting to tell these stories.
Alex: Mhm.
Rubi: How about you, Julia?
Julia: The story-breaking process and the idea generation process, where you get all these wonderful minds in a room and you start popcorning different ideas. Like they write the word 'Sohothin' on the board and someone's like 'well, what if- dah!' and you're like, okay, let's go with that and you go down a rabbit hole and that doesn't work and you're like - alright, we'll figure something out for that. Good ideas there but we can't use it, but there's like an energy in the room when you're doing that. It's really electrifying and everyone knows when you've hit on the right thing. Like, there's a silence and someone will go 'YES!' or like 'Oh my god' or (gasp) if it's like really emotionally horrible. Yeah, it's just having all the people in the room and coming up with what we want to do and then you know, we give Alex the notes and he's of course there and helping lead that conversation and then seeing what Alex and Samantha came back with is like Christmas morning sometimes.
Rubi: I love it!
Julia: Like, I see this thing in my inbox, I can't wait to read it and it's exactly what you wanted it to be and of course there are revisions, revisions happen with everything.
Rubi: Yeah.
Julia: But like, we cut to the core of it really quick and-
Alex: I was jus-
Julia: No, go ahead.
Alex: There was- one of my favorite things was that there wasn't that like - 'I think you've totally missed the mark on this' (laugh) That never happened. It was like, 'this is great, here's a couple of notes' Great, and then you tweak it, it's like - 'This is better! Here are a couple of notes' and 'This is even better!' and everyone's just, it's all positive reinforcement, it's all great.
Julia: Incremental
Alex: Yes.
Julia: Yeah.
Rubi: Aww, that's so cool! Love it.
Tom: We try to deal in positive reinforcement in our team, for the most part.
Alex: Yes.
Tom: I'm a fan of that. I certainly agree with everything that Alex and Julia have said, but for me, actually, my favorite thing about this process is maybe, I don't know if Alex would say it's his least favorite part or not and that, but I really, for reasons I'll explain, it is my favorite part. Which was, we've already talked a little bit about how it took us a little time to dial in the voice of Rytlock and the tone that we wanted it and part of the reason that was true was because we weren't just doing it for Rytlock. We knew we were establishing it for all three of these pieces and if we ever ended up doing more, for the whole thing right, like we need to figure out what the style is, that we want to tell stories in this form with and it was an arduous process that required more than a little iteration and feedback to sort of dial-in. It wasn't an easy thing to do, but once we had it, we knew we had it and we knew it was strong and so, I felt a lot of - I was very proud of Alex for one thing and putting up with it.
Alex: Blehhh.
Rubi: Too late, too late! Take the praise, take it!
Alex: Delete it, from the internet, everything! (laugh)
Rubi: No! (laugh)
Tom: - and pleased that we had - it's gratifying in a unique way when you finally accomplish something through a lot of hard work. That's a different kind of gratification than something that comes easy to you and you toss it off and know it's good, right? and we have some of those too, but this was one of those things that took some effort on a lot of peoples part, especially Alex's and so it's that much more satisfying to see how well it turned out and how well the other two turned out as a result of it as well.
Rubi: (to Alex) Praise! Praise! Praise!
Alex: (laughs) No, I'll hide behind- (turns around to look at Path of Fire backdrop with branded crystals)
Rubi: Praise! Praise!
All: (laugh)
Rubi: I would stay away from the crystals, I'm just saying.
Tom: Yeahhhh, that doesn't work out for people very well.
Alex: Yes, it's true.
Rubi: Yeah, it's not good.
Community Questions (51:11)[edit]
Rubi: Alright, well, do you guys want to answer some questions from our community?
Julia: Yeah!
Tom: Sure.
Alex: Absolutely.
Rubi: Okay, so we tried something a little bit new this round. We were taking questions on the forum this week, so I pulled some of those. If you guys in chat have some questions, go ahead and drop them in chat and if we haven't gotten to those yet, we will try to get to those afterward once we run through these and see if your questions aren't answered yet.
Alex: Ask! Ask away!
Rubi: Ask away and praise, give Alex praise because he loves it.
Alex: Stop! Stop!
Julia: and Samantha and Anatoli.
Rubi: and Samantha, yes.
Tom: and Anatoli.
Rubi: and Anatoli, they all really like it, just like pats on their heads and they're all going to kill me after this show.
Alex: They are.
Rubi: Alright, first question and this was kind of a fun one for me because there's a lot to play with and talk about here. 'Are these tales considered canon, or should we treat them more as personal thoughts from potentially unreliable narrators' - and I'm assuming Rytlock, Zafirah and Caithe are the unreliable narrators, not you guys. (laugh)
Julia: Yeah, I can take that one. I think that something being canon and having an unreliable narrator don't have to be mutually exclusive. They are being truthful to themselves, they're not lying to them- I mean you could lie to yourself I suppose, but if they are they don't realize that they're doing it. When a character experiences an event, they perceive it through a certain lens so that's really what you're seeing when you're reading these twine stories. Like, for example with Rytlocks, if you were to task Alex with re-writing that from Bangar's point of view, that off is seen in the Twine, like the dialogue would be the same, but you'd see a very different internal process and you know, you're the hero of your own story, right. I'm sure he would have very different feelings than Rytlock in the moment and-
Alex: (Bangar impression) 'This looser Rytlock, he's just, you know-'
Julia: Yeah.
Alex: '-terrible with authority. I'm trying to pull this legion together and (grumble) ruin and everything.
Julia: True. Caithe too and the relationship she's had. If you flipped it, you'd get a very different narrative and I think that's kind of what makes these things so exciting like you can trust that their internal narrative is theirs. How accurate it is to reality is up to debate.
Tom: What is reality?
Julia: What is reality?
Rubi: That's a whole other show.
Tom: It is.
Julia: But short answer, yes, they are canon. (laugh)
Tom: That's right, yeah. They are canon, absolutely.
Rubi: Alright, so, a lot of this we've already answered. It starts with 'I love these stories' so that was praise that was already here, I did not add it at the last second.
Alex: Alright.
Rubi: 'I'm curious though, what made you decide to tell us details like how Rytlock got Sohothin and basically all of Zafirah's backstory via short stories rather than game' - and we have addressed that. 'Also, as someone who gets really invested in the characters, I have to ask if we will get to peek inside the minds of other characters in the future.' and I'm going to pause here and say that there was (counting) one, two, three, four, five, six- there were no less than six questions that amounted to 'please give me more of this' so.
Julia: Awwww.
Tom: That's lovely.
Alex: Yes, like I said before, a couple of times. This was a fantastic project, amazing collaborators. It felt that everything that could go right between you know, all the different departments that were collaborating on this went right and I think that everyone is excited to you know, see what we can do in the future to give our fans more of these kind of stories.
Julia: Time and resources permitting.
Alex: Yeah, that's always a problem.
Rubi: That is, yeah...
Tom: We have a game to make and this kind of stuff is sort of peripheral to that in terms of what we usually do.
Alex: (pointing at chat) I can actually, there's that one at the top that I would actually like to address if that's fine.
Rubi: Let's finish the forum ones first because they basically got in line first.
Alex: Yeah, that's fine, absolutely.
Rubi: Here's one I'm interested to see what you guys say. 'What did the Zaishen think of the World vs World mists war and would they ever consider participating as allies of our world'
All: (laugh)
Alex: No comment. (laugh)
Rubi: I will accept that answer.
Tom: I don't think that's a thing we've ever discussed, just because- not since I've been here anyway- just because it hasn't been super-relevant to the story that we've been telling at the moment and you know, with Zafirah around, it's a thing we could think about for sure. But I think we have no substantive things to say on that subject at the moment.
Rubi: That works. 'Will we see any re-' now this is kind of a future story or this is kind of a future question so Spoilers! is an acceptable answer. 'Will we see any repercussions of these requiem stories, like additional dialogue with Zafirah, Rytlock or Caithe in the future or will be just move on, not seeing anything from this in-game?
Tom: It is certainly possible.
Alex, Tom and Julia: Yes.
Rubi: That we will see repercussions? We will definitely either see repercussions or we will not?
Julia: We do everything for a reason.
Alex: Yes. I will say that we, you know, storytelling decisions that were made in these Twine stories was not intended to be thrown away.
Tom: That's right and they're consistent with the story we have planned moving forwards.
Rubi: Awesome. I had mentioned October, but you guys can probably delve into this a little bit better. 'About how long did these take to write? Starting from initial ideas, research, and multiple drafts? also, thank you for writing them.'
Alex: First one took the longest because as we were talking about it took a while to figure out the tone and the voice and everything. It was also something I was doing in my spare time.
Tom: Yeah, while you were working on Episode 6.
Alex: Yes. (laugh) Yeah, you're all gonna find out.... (laugh)
Rubi: You guys, we are like four days out!
Alex: I know! It's crazy.
Julia: I am so excited!
Tom: Alex hasn't recovered from the trauma of working on Episode 6 yet.
Julia: A lot.
Alex: Yeah.
Rubi: Are you tired?
Alex: I just want to sleep, please. (laugh) No, honestly I'm really excited to talk about that when it hits next week. It's going to be great. But yeah, so I was working on those at the same time, I can't remember how much time it took because time is a flat circle and all that and I don't know.
Tom: Alright, alright alright!
Alex: (laughs) Yeah, it was. I don't know, like four months from start to finish on the first one, maybe, thereabouts. Just to like, you know. We did the outline and then I would go back and that would be like a week and then it would be like, okay, I'm gonna do the first draft and that would be like two weeks and then it was 'let's get this revised' and that would be another week and then finally, you know, it had to go through editing and all that and yeah. I'd say like four months for the first one and then the next one, the Zafirah one was like two months.
Julia: So half.
Alex: So yeah, it was about half of that because we'd finally figured out like a process for it and you know, I think Tom would agree that Zafirah came together a lot quicker than Rytlock for sure.
Tom: Oh yes.
Julia: Yeah.
Alex: and then I was a little overbooked at the end there, with Episode 6 and getting that all wrapped, so Samantha came in and took the outline I had written for the Caithe story and really just knocked it out of the park.
Rubi: Thank you, Samantha.
Alex: Yeah. She did that even shorter than the Zafirah one took, so yeah, it was great.
Tom: The Zafirah one too, I think one of the reasons that it was quicker in addition to the stuff we've talked about, is that it was the opposite of the Rytlock situation. The way that Zafirah speaks actually, is of the three of them, the closest to her own internal monologue essentially. So it wasn't nearly as hard I think, for Alex to find the right voice to write her in because it was more similar to her usual way of speaking.
Alex: Also we didn't have seven years' worth of lore to go through as well.
Tom: That is certainly true, well that part was harder for you because that meant that you had to think of what- of the backstory of this character that we haven't really come up- do I want to write a thing about, right? and the choices that you made, I thought were brilliant and really-
Alex: Stop. Stop.(laugh)
Tom: -and really they give such insight to the character and you came up with questions that you wanted to answer, that were not questions I would have ever thought of, is what I'm trying to say here.
Alex: Yeah, I think we had a goal for what we wanted to do with the Zafirah story and how we wanted people to look at her character and I feel pretty confident with how that all turned out.
Rubi: You might want to cover your ears for this next question because I- 'When did you decide to write the Requiem series? Was it alongside the Episode 6 writing, before? after it was done, but you needed something to bridge the Episode 6 plot?' I'm sorry to talk about Episode 6 already.
Alex: No, no. That's quite alright.
Rubi and Tom: (laugh)
Tom: If he twitches, just-
Alex: Yeah, no, I'm all about talking about Episode 6.
Rubi: I almost just knocked over his energy drink too. That would have made it worse.
Alex: This is the turbo, of the turbo fluid. Yeah, so it started after Episode 6 was in production. It was one of the reasons why, like I said before, it took a bit longer to write than if I had been writing them full time.
Tom: I think too- I'll throw in, that Episode 6 was harder. Out of all the episodes in the season, it may have been the one that we had the toughest time nailing down.
Alex: Yes.
Tom: Which was again- and I think we can talk about this without getting into specifics, but the issues and problems that we were facing were not dissimilar to the ones that we discussed in the Twine pieces, in the sense that when Alex and Neal and Lily and people started coming back with scripts, first drafts, into our table reads for the various parts of Episode 6. Tonally, there were things that felt off with the stuff everyone was bringing in and we all felt it and we weren't sure why. We didn't know what it was and it took us a couple of really in-depth group discussions with pretty much the whole team in the room, which is the way we iterate on these things and it's a great way of maximizing the value that everyone brings to the thing. But it was a bit of a bear to sort of wrestle to the ground, specifically in terms of- everybody knows what the Episode 5 tone was, where you're left in that- really the tone of the whole thing. It's Helm's Deep, it's a slog against odds that are so overwhelming that you know in your bones the likelihood is, you're probably not going to win, but you do it anyway because it's all you can do, right, and then you lose. (laughs) Just like you were afraid you were going to and so how to move forward from that place. What the mood is when we rejoin our folks and then where you go 'cause you've got to go somewhere.
Alex: Yeah.
Julia: I mean, it's that character consistency question again.
Tom: Right.
Julia: You've got to record in a way that makes sense and like, they've got to be true to themselves in those difficult moments where we haven't seen them that low before.
Tom: Yeah, and so it's interesting I think that the problems were parallel and I think the solutions were similar which was, once we got mostly sort of settled on and articulated the tone that we felt was right, both for the episode and for the Rytlock piece. Then things really began kicking in and moving and that was great, but it's hard work sometimes.
Alex: Yeah, Episode 6 comes out May 15th.
Tom: If you haven't heard.
Alex: Yeah, if you haven't heard.
Julia: We can say that now.
Rubi: Does that feel good?
Julia: Yes!
Tom: It does, it will feel better Tuesday.
Rubi: Alright, let's see. 'Where do these stories sit in relation to the development of the overall storyline and the progression of the living world episodes themselves? Are they written off the back of the episodes to expand on giving characters backstory or do they come about earlier in the process, as a way of outlining where you want to take that character or where you want that character to end up?'
Alex: I think we've talked about this but I mean in summary it was an opportunity that arose between five and six.
Tom: Yeah.
Alex: and we took full advantage of it.
Tom: So more the former, but in terms of the latter it's something that that is as we move forward we might start thinking about those. I mean we might spot opportunities as we're working on the story for those seasons.
Rubi: Okay so. These last five are all like 'Please let us have more' which time and resources permitting, but there is one specific request that I really have to read because it makes me so happy. 'Are there plans to do more? I'd personally love a story focusing on Marjory with that noir gumshoe flavor that you used for the cutscene way back when she was first introduced. Basically-
Rubi and Tom: A lost Mickey Spillane!
Rubi: -story but with magic and dragons and Kasmeer. So that particular request made my day. (laugh)
Tom: Yeah, that's a great and very specific request.
Rubi: It is.
Tom: I think that's exactly the way we would want to do it, frankly.
Alex: Yes.
Rubi: We can't actually say lost Mickey Spillane story because we would get sued.
Alex: You know it-
Tom: -it won't literally be a lost Mickey Spillane story.
Alex: Right, we would need a time machine first of all.
Tom: (laugh)
Rubi: Also that.
Alex: I mean all this stuff time permitting. Like we've had incredible ideas from the whole team on things that we could do with this format or other formats and it's all like, if we had all the time in the world if we had time-turner's we would never leave this studio because we would just be working on awesome stuff like that all the time.
Rubi: (laugh) I'm sorry, someone put a time-turner on the free table the other day.
Julia: Did they?
Rubi: Yes. (laugh) So-
Alex: Dumbledore is going to be upset, they don't give those things out for free.
Rubi: There's literally a time-turner outside that door, twenty feet that way.
Tom: I think to the center of the question is actually a question about Marjory. The answer is- somebody asked me this on Twitter yesterday if we were doing anything with Marjory and Kas and what I said was: we have not forgotten about them. So, we know they're there. We ask your patience because we have a lot of story and a lot of characters we want to deal with, but we have not forgotten about Marjory and Kasmeer.
Rubi: One more thing, speaking of the format, Twine. A lot of people were like you know are- what about- I saw one question about 'Could you do one with like an open space for the commander to respond'. Twine is Open-Source software that is super easy to use and that was something that Anatoli was saying. We encourage you guys to go in there and play around with it, have some fun, it doesn't even have to be- I mean you know it'd be awesome if you made like own commander stories- but it doesn't even have to be Guild Wars 2.
Julia: Someone did!
Rubi: Yeah. Keep doing it, it's not difficult to play with to learn. Get in there and have some fun with it.
Alex: Yeah. I picked it up in like like less than a day.
Rubi: Did you really?
Alex: It's super easy. I didn't actually implement any of the Twine stories that were done for this project, but I've worked with it in the past and yeah. Definitely recommend checking it out if you have any interest in writing or interactive fiction, it's super easy to use it's just you know, you got a little flow chart and you draw little arrows and you have little links and that's really cool.
Rubi: Alright, what about these questions from chat?
Alex: Yes, so this first one here. 'How come we had multiple links to click in the Rytlock story, but the other two stories were more linear?'
Rubi: Yeah.
Alex: So, this is one of those things where the initial plan was different than the execution. When we watched streamers go through the Rytlock story, the format was so new for people who were familiar with ArenaNet and how we tell our stories, is that people were actually worried that they were missing story when they were going through it. We'd actually written the Rytlock story so that you know you go through one branch and then it loops back around to the other branch and then they both combine at the end. But, you know, we had people who are like experiencing severe anxiety, who were like 'What if I want to find out about Balthazar and Sohothin and Rytlocks and I don't-
Rubi: Story FOMO.
Alex: Yeah, so, yes Twine is best when you're using it to really express a nonlinear story I think, but this was a new experiment for us and I think that when we approached the next two stories the first thing in my mind was- how do we make people like not feel like they're missing out on the story and that was why the Zafira and Caithe stories are more linear.
Rubi: Okay, alright.
Tom: (To Julia) You want to take the second one?
Julia: Sure. Shall I read it? or can they see it?
Rubi: Yes, they cannot see it.
Julia: Alright. 'Would we work on the other two races for a Requiem, Asura, and Norn, and if so which characters would we cover?' The person who asked the question says I think Taimi or Gorrik for Asura, not sure about Norn yet outside of Braham. I'd go with Gorrik I think, between Taimi and Gorrik, just because he's just suffered a huge loss with his brother and now he has to deal with the fact that Taimi- who he cares very deeply for has this degenerative disease and I'd really like to kind of explore what his thought process around that is and kind of get into who Gorrik is. since we just introduced him this past season and there's a lot there to explore. For Norn, we kind of really do only have Braham right now, which is something-
Tom: That could change.
Julia: That could change. But if I had to do it now, today it would have to be Braham and that's all I will say on the subject.(laugh)
Tom: (laughs)
Alex: But we wouldn't be doing it today because I mean, we're busy with this guild chat and everything.
Rubi: Yeah, you're doing this. (laugh)
Tom: That's right. We wouldn't literally be doing it today. 'Did you consider to touch more on the branding of Caithe by Aurene?' That's a question I actually saw people asking yesterday as well, on the forums and I think the honest answer to it frankly is, no. We could have done, but we were what we were primarily interested in- (gestures to Alex), and if I misstate anything in terms of, since you're the person who really outlined it then correct me. I think what we were what we were really interested in were- A) Caithe's grief based on her relationship to Aurene, The maternal aspect, the branded connection aspect. We were concerned with that stuff in terms of post-branding and also about her relationship with Aurene leading her to reconsider choices she'd made in her life, things she'd done. We didn't- I don't think it felt particularly urgent to us- or else it would have occurred to us, to have her talk specifically about what the experience- which I assume is what you're asking- of being branded was like. Because I think we felt like what Caithe had said on the subject in the moment and soon after the moment was probably sufficient. We didn't have a lot more to say about it other than, it didn't hurt she did- Aurene asked for permission and Caithe gave it. She gave her consent and she doesn't unlike some branded from other dragons, she doesn't you know, mentally transform into something different. She is still Caithe, but now she has this sort of, emotional open channel with Aurene and can articulate Aurene's feelings into words and does. I think for us sometimes the case is that we've moved past a thing before you guys necessarily always have and so that may have been- for folks who would like more from Caithe about her subjective experience of that, noted. Maybe at some point in the future, we can have her address that, but I think I think we were already five steps down the road in terms of thinking about what was mattering to us at the moment.
Julia: I think that on that note though with having that connection, the consequence of how that being severed is definitely reflected in my words that Samantha wrote.
Tom: Right, so we were more concerned with that.
Julia: Yes, so we kind of did it without actually addressing it explicitly.
Alex: Yeah, you're right. The actual process of the branding was covered pretty well in the episode, I think. The fallout from that and Aurene dying at the end of Episode 5, had a lot to do with you know- when Caithe talks about her connection with Aurene, I feel like when we talk about that in literature and in games and in movies, when we talk about 'oh we have a connection to this person' it's you know, it's a platitude or a trope. But in her sense of the word, it's a literal connection and so I feel like that might have gotten a little lost in there as well, as when she's talking about losing her connection to Aurene she means that literally and she actually says, you know. There's this great bit that Samantha wrote about 'How do you live when half you heart stops beating' and that is literally what she's talking about. She feels like half of herself is now gone because she did have this literal connection to Aurene.
Tom: and the artists and animators physicalize that too, right? With the bloom.
Alex: Yeah.
Tom: So you see at the end of Episode 5, the thing that tells you that Aurene is truly dead is that the Crystal Bloom on Caithe's shoulder crumbles and blows away, right. In the trailer, if you've seen it for Episode 6 she's the first person you see and she's kneeling over the candles and she touches the place where it used to be and you can see- I think that our animators did an astounding job with all of those characters but yeah I mean the way she touches it, the pain on her face is just is tremendous.
Alex: I mean it's even worse, she goes to touch it and it's not there and she has that moment and it was heartbreaking.
Rubi: Ohh, I hate that. (laughs)
All: (laugh)
Rubi: I'm just so sad over here, ugh.
Alex: Yeah, it's true. All these feels.
Rubi: Yeah, it's too much, but yeah they did a real good job. Thanks, ow.
Tom: Well I remember- there's a great oral history of the wire in which one of the actors talks about David Simon telling the showrunner- the creator of that show telling the actor that their character was getting killed and David Simon- you know the actor understandably was a bit bummed and David Simon said 'Look, if you weren't so great and everybody didn't love you so much, you wouldn't be the guy getting bumped off' you know, those are the people who have to kill because that's what's gonna hurt the most, right? and so, yeah, killing Aurene was the thing that was gonna hurt the most and everything said it was gonna happen and it did.
Rubi and Alex: Oof.
Tom: Sometimes we have to grab that and embrace it.
Alex: That's how it is, you know, It's tough seeing how the word sausage is made. (laugh)
Tom: (points at Alex's sweatshirt) But there is Aurene sweatshirts.
Alex: Yes.
Rubi and Julia: Awww!
Alex: Now available for purchase at For fans by fans.
Rubi: (laughs and throws pen at Alex)
Tom: That's right, lots of stuff available on For fans by fans.
Alex: (laughs and passes pen back) There it is, have your marker back.
Rubi: and on that note. (laughs and snatches pen back) Thank you all for your time, I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you guys for your questions, I appreciate all of you spending some time with us and listening to how the Requiem series was made. Thank you all for engaging in it so much, I think it's been really fun so how much our community enjoyed it.
Tom: Yeah, I should have actually added to my thing, when you asked about my favorite thing- not just the satisfaction at how good it turned out, the satisfaction of how people received it that first day.
Rubi: Yes.
Tom: I think for all of us, was really overwhelming because we didn't know how they were gonna receive it and the fact that everyone was so over the moon about it was really just incredible.
Julia: Were we in Burbank recording?
Alex: Yeah, we were recording there for Episode 6.
Tom: We seem to be in Burbank recording when everything important happens, I don't know how that happens.
Alex: Yeah.
Rubi: That's very true.
Tom: It is! Just over and over again.
Alex: Yeah, I remember I was in my hotel that night and it was when the streamers started posting- you know our creative partners started posting readthroughs of it.
Julia: Oh yeah! I love the readthroughs, they're my favorite.
Everyone: (Agrees)
Tom: First readthroughs are amazing.
Alex: All of them were amazing. I've gone through a whole bunch of them, you know because- I don't know, I just- yeah. It was great, everyone who did one of those, thank you. They are phenomenal, great work! and yeah, we're obviously excited to do more stuff like that in the future as time allows, and yeah, we'll see what happens.
Rubi: Alright, thank you guys so much. We will see you next Tuesday for War Eternal. Thanks, guys. Have a good weekend!
Alex and Julia: Bye!
