Guild Chat - Episode 98

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Guild Chat - Episode 98

Title
Drakkar
Host
Rubi Bayer
Guests
Cameron Rich
Chris Burgess
Lee Bledsoe
Date
February 21, 2020
Official video
YouTube
Previous
97
Next
99
The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.

The 98th episode of Guild Chat aired on February 21, 2020.

Transcription[edit]

Warning, the following text is a raw transcript from the youtube video, this has to be structured. [7:00]

'''Rubi Bayer:''' Hi tyria, happy Friday and welcome to Guild Chat, I'm your host Rubi and we're gonna be talking some more about the Drakkar encounter today. We talked about it a little bit few weeks ago and promised to you a little bit deeper dive, so we're gonna talk with some of the developers who worked on that. Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves and talk about what you worked on?

'''Cameron Rich:''' Sure, so, my name is Cameron Rich, I was the game designer that built Drakkar.

'''Chris Burgess:''' My name is Chris, I was the audio lead for the episode, so I told other people what to do, but I'm here to showcase what they did. Keenan Sieg was the sound designer and implementer, Stan LePard was the composer and I just worked to facilitate and do a lot of emailing for those people, yeah.

'''Rubi Bayer:''' So you here for the shoutouts today.

'''Chris Burgess:''' I'm here for the shoutouts, yeah. I'm sure leading other people's good work which is, I'm very proud of them.
 
'''Rubi Bayer:''' That's fair.

'''Lee Bledsoe:''' I'm Lee Bledsoe, the visual effects lead on Guild Wars 2 and that was responsible for maintaining the visual target and the overall budget and management of the team that created the digital effects for this encounter.

'''Rubi Bayer:'' All right, so if you guys have questions while we're talking to the show, go ahead and drop them in chat, and we'll try to answer some of them at the end as we have time for. But yeah, let's start with, let's kind of go way back months back toward the beginning and talk a little bit about how the encounter evolved during design and development, and bringing all those teams in at the beginning and having everybody talk together.

'''Cameron Rich:''' Yeah, ok, so man...

'''Rubi Bayer:''' Way back, because there were, you had multiple teams involved working on this.

'''Cameron Rich:''' We did, yes, and we knew that we were going, this was going to be a really really big project because we haven't done a world boss in a really long time, and world bosses in our game are epic and scaled, they're dynamic, feeling in terms of like the way that they impact the environment, and so we, we knew this was going to be a big lift and in order for us to really hit that, especially with the amount of time that we had, everybody had to buy into what the design of the encounter was going to be, so when we first got together with VFX creature art animation props, pretty much everybody just sat down and walked through, we call them tabletops of the encounter, where either we use like a sheet of paper on a table and draw out the encounter from like a top-down perspective, use figurines. In this case we used a whiteboard and just kind of like mapped out everything, because we didn't have anything in game yet, we hadn't really built anything other than prototypes, and so it was like hey let's use our imagination, and come up with some ideas for how this worked and I remember like I know we've talked about it before
<!-- 10:10 -->
 but one of the biggest
things with this encounter was your car
and gw1 was frozen in the ice and so we
we wanted to do something with that and
so the idea came up I can't remember who
had it but that he could swim through
the ice and that started a lot of
conversations with the art department on
like how we're gonna pull that off yeah
yeah absolutely there's from the
animation team of how we're gonna make
him swim and modeling can we actually
have the physical model behind the ice
or do we need you to leverage some other
sort of shader trickery to create that
look of him behind ice we ultimately
ended up going with the shader trickery
which ended up being a substantial
amount of work from one of our shader
artists and the gasher but at the end of
the day it looked convincing and it
worked really well with our attack and
you went into the shader trickery a
little bit a few weeks ago can you do a
quick refresher on that yeah it was
complicated and there's a lot of math
wrong No so we started with a base ice
shader that we've used in our game
throughout the game and we took that and
expanded upon it adding elements that
simulated lifelike depth and movement
but also allowed us the flux of
ability to control jerk arse shadow
position in the environment so that it
worked with the gameplay demands that
that were presented to us yeah because
that position is significant yeah I mean
it's the visual tell for where the most
of it where he's gonna come out of an
attack so there we had to deleverage
some flipbook technology and some flow
map math and a bunch of other stuff that
I don't want to bore you guys too much
about but at the end of the day it all
came together and achieved that I think
the final or at least it achieved the
the idea that we all kind of had in our
head from the very beginning yeah which
is it's saying something because we were
definitely convinced that it was so high
scope that it was a high chance that we
weren't going to be able to do it to the
extent that we were talking about but
man you guys really pulled out all the
stops and delivered yeah it took it
wasn't just one person it was the
combined efforts of the entire VFX team
across that production timeline I mean
Nick did focus a lot on the materials
but we had NAT another one over VFX
artists doing all of the skill effects
for Drakkar and then I was able to or my
main primary focus was to sort of manage
the delivery of what both of those
artists were working on and making sure
that it felt cohesive to the experience
and that it played really nicely with
what you guys were designing and also
was hopefully inspiring for the audio
team to work off of absolutely so you
talked about you mentioned making sure
those two artists working what they were
working on was cohesive were there
points for those two what they were
working on felt like they were going to
clash or did those two things come
together pretty seamlessly no they those
things came together pretty seamlessly I
mean it's the job of any lead to make
sure that you're maintaining cohesion
within your team but more importantly
the the challenge wasn't cohesion within
the team because we sit right next to
each other and we're right interacting
all day every day and brainstorming and
going oh that looks terrible or that
looks great and you know we're pretty
honest with each other the challenge was
made
cohesion across all of the art and
design narrative an audio Department and
so that's where early on like week one
of the development we realized that it
was vitally important that we all like
you were saying come together and and
understand what designs requirements
were so that way art could express their
concerns if there was some which there
were many and then also more importantly
come up with alternate solutions to the
presentation of the art that worked with
our technology and within the design
constraints okay I remember we we spent
some time thinking about how we were
going to build the effects for the wall
transitioning and everything and we were
talking about whether or not it would be
on the prop side or on the effect side I
think it ultimately landed on you guys
actually kind of doing a synthesis of
the two where you built the effects and
then baked it into the prop yep yeah so
with that that is a great example of how
we had to work with that team because
usually the prop team would handle that
sort of request but because of the
complexity of the of developing the
shader and then also manipulating in the
shader on that prop the VFX team laid
the the baseline on sort of the the hero
props the arena walls and then the prop
team took that foundation that we laid
and applied it to all of the other areas
that you see trocars shadow so the
tunnels and and and that but that's
that's kind of what we do is as a art
team and design team you know we have to
work together otherwise we're gonna come
up with something that doesn't look like
it belongs together yeah a lot of back
and forth a lot of iteration just as you
go out throughout development just
seeing it kind of evolved over time
there's always some new challenge some
new obstacle that appears that we're
like okay how do we solve this right and
it's it's a lot of fun
lastly so can you guys jump into you
mentioned there were some concerns here
there can you guys remember points where
you had a concerning you had to back off
and find a different track
without being too scary
so I remember at one point we asked if
we could do the same thing that we were
gonna do with the walls to the floor yes
and that that you think that ok cool is
just floor just turn it sideways it
didn't work like that because our floors
are different than our walls but we came
up with another trick that uses decals
that that basically paints the same sort
of picture on that surface that the
shadow wall material did so we achieved
the same look cohesive look between the
wall and the floor but we use an
entirely different technique to achieve
that look do you remember what the
reason was that we ended up not being
able to do the same treatment to the
floor oh man I off the top of my head I
don't it may have been a her thing
because that shadow wall material is a
costly material we're doing a lot of we
have a lot of shader instructions in it
so my it may have been partly because of
that yeah that's oh I the there was an
issue with alpha layer sorting where
like player decals and effects if you
put it on to a material that was
translucent would disappear or also be
translucent so you guys if we would have
done that you wouldn't have been able to
see any of the Telegraph's or anything
that are going on right yeah did we do
we end up doing anything for that or is
that like a consistent problem that we
have it's a fairly consistent it's not
necessarily a problem it's just a fairly
consistent thing that we have to work
with in constrast
yeah yeah so when you guys talk about
decals that's pretty much exactly what
it sounds like
yep just translated the game design
that's like a it's like a sticker on a
surface and it gets projected on that
surface it's a it's a volume it's a cube
volume that because of the way that it
works anything that is within that cube
volume doesn't matter if it's a flat
surface a terrain surface or or what it
is if that surface falls within that
volume the sticker gets projected on it
now our decals do
do some weird things in some cases where
if it's a perfectly vertical surface and
a perfectly horizontal surface and
they're both within that same volume you
get a little bit of texture stretching
but that's consistent with a lot of game
engines not not just ours
it's just how it do yep but we do have
in those instances we can prevent that
that's stretching by flagging those
vertical wall props to not accept decals
and then if we really need to have a
decal on that vertical surface we do a
couple of other tricks with our decal
volumes that allow us to protect them on
that wall but there's sort of secret
sauce tricks and and I remember as well
the challenge of having the walls have
to be flagged to not accept any decals
meant that we had to think about how to
display his shadow a little differently
and that's what ended up leading us
baking it into the proper yeah yeah
exactly yeah really something else that
you mentioned you were talking about how
there's a lot going on on there and you
had mentioned a little bit when we
talked before about the challenges of
how you had all of these stacking
elements and all of this stuff going on
yeah do you guys want go into that a
little bit more so like when you have a
lot of things on screen that everything
that you have on screen impacts
performance and so one of the terms that
we use to describe that stacking of
elements on screen is over draw and over
draws basically at a high level the idea
that multiple objects are writing to the
same pixel or the same group of pixels
so for an example if you have a window
and you are looking through that window
and you have objects outside of that
window the the pixels that are being
used to render that are rendering the
window there the transparency that we
know they're rendering the objects and
and so you have two items right there
drawing to the same pixel and the more
objects or items elements that you have
drawn to those pixels the more that
begins to impact your frame rate and
performance and so with an encounter
like this there's there's a lot of stuff
going on and we had to be really
careful about when and where we use the
big visual spectacle effects so those
big impacts big impact moments where you
slamming the ground and just a nice
everywhere
and and use those sparingly enough that
didn't impact performance but then we
also augmented it with other smaller
area of effects that that continue to
fill out the scene in a nice way mm-hmm
yeah we had to be we had to try and stay
conservative because player effects
going on especially whenever you have so
many people in the open world it's easy
to forget about how much of those are in
the scene whenever you're developing it
in a vacuum and you're kind of doing it
on the test servers which which meant
that like for this encounter
specifically we tried to get as many as
people possible playing this as much as
we could throughout development just so
that we didn't fall into that trap of
making something that looks really
really good when you look at it from a
1/2 like 5 person perspective but then
gets lost in the readability whenever
you have just a massive group of people
attacking the creature yeah you were you
guys were play testing frequently
weren't you yeah yeah I think once once
every week towards the end and once
every two weeks throughout development
yeah yeah it gave us a chance to all get
together and sync up because all of the
different departments were kind of
working in tandem with each other on
their various aspects of the creature
and when you've got this release going
on alongside all of the other stuff that
we're doing it's just it's tough to stay
on the course yeah I guess yeah you've
got that listen I know you've got this
thing coming up but we really need you
to come and I'll put this yeah and
specifically like the the rest of the
episode also needs a bunch of effects
and everything so people get scattered
and are working on different parts of
the episode at a time
so it's it's important to get everybody
together and communicate as often as
possible yeah and those playtests I mean
you were bringing multiple teams working
on that in there so everybody got to see
their stuff in context and how it lined
up with what everybody else was working
on did you find that how helpful was
that getting everything in there did it
help affect some changes that would have
not been seen otherwise I think so yeah
I definitely think it allowed us to
really get a feel of how well the
implementation of everything together
was actually visualizing mm-hm right
yeah I mean in through those play tests
you know one early on we had the
conversation on the creature side do we
need to model the entire Drakkar model
from head to tail in full high-res
detail or do we model just the front
half and don't have a back half or you
know what is that that look like yeah
and it was through these repeated play
tests and meetings with the entire teams
that the our teams and design that we
realized well you'll never really see
the back half of your car in the
encounter he's always either sticking
out of a wall or he's swimming behind
the walls and we almost made the call
not to do the back half at all
because we weren't going to see it but
luckily Kate our VFX lead was very
passionate about at least having the
back half but maybe less detail and that
actually saved our team the VFX team in
the long run and when we created that
shadow because if we had gone the route
of just modeling the part they'd seen
and not had anything else the shadow
would have we wouldn't have been able to
create the shadow on the wall the way
that we did since she modeled the entire
thing we're able to use a depth
rendering process and have a very simple
animation of jakar just swimming around
and we had his full body at this point
so we can capture that and then convert
that into a flipbook and that's what
made it look like it's like he was
swimming and so having that his tail
there and the front half at the end of
the day saved miss a lot of headache on
the on the shadow side yeah been a
different kind of horror it would have
been a different gun earth
yikes yeah without it you guys would
have had to come up with what the back
half of his model look like yeah yeah
I'm sure I mean luckily we had concept
art that described what his overall
shape looked like but we would have had
to somehow fill in that negative space
if it wasn't there was something else
yeah I'd maintained from last night
we've just been a horrifying puppet on a
stick did your mags just back there it
early on in development because we
needed to make sure that we were really
starting to visualize the encounter from
his early on as possible creature team
actually gave us a really really early
model that did very much look like a
puppet but because it was just like huge
and bulky there were no details it was
all blue and everything and it was just
hilarious okay I want to see that at
some point yeah I said I think we
actually have some behind-the-scenes
pictures from one of our last yeah I
want to peek at those here in a little
bit but talking about your car swimming
around and moving away around reminded
me that I want to talk about some of the
audio stuff because attaching jacquards
audio to the movement was a cool thing
that I wanted to make sure we touched on
yeah it was a cool thing I'm very
impressed
again so well there was the whole
creation of the the gutter rules we call
them forger car all the creature sounds
and then we knew we wanted the ice
swimming sound and Andy Martin was a
vendor we worked with who's a sound
designer and he actually created all the
sounds but then Keenan got them back and
he implemented them into the build so
that we could actually hear them and
when we went to hook up these specific
ice swimming sound we realized that the
sound was playing from the shadows
swimming around the room and the sound
was playing from the center of the room
because there was no nothing to attach
the audio emitter to so he had to go I'm
not sure who it was but he had to go
talk to somebody in design or and get a
bone we call him a bone offset added to
the shadow so the sound would actually
move and that was
super important because players need to
hear and Telegraph where it is it was a
cool sound on its own but it doesn't
enhance her support gameplay if it just
sits in the center of the room and plays
um and there was a hot second we're like
well will we just fake it and kind of
have it fly around the room real quick
and you can't tell but Keenan's very
smart and collaborative and he went and
got it figured out and the the
recordings for that was a combination of
the guttural Zandi made but also we had
Andy and I had done some recordings back
in like 2017 at Lake Diablo and he had
those signal
oh there's some pictures that I took on
my Instagram but where it was very cold
and we suffered but we got some great
sounds and they got used they got used
furniture car swimming through the ice
so that was that was cool so what were
the sounds how did you capture them
right there freezing to death
Andy stood on a log like a really like
30 40 foot log that was half submerged
in water and it was all semi-frozen and
he had a boom microphone that he was
holding like this for hours and I was
sitting on a dock throwing rocks at and
this was Andy well near yeah because
he's holding the microphone it's
pointing at let's say the desk is the
thing and and was so if anybody hasn't
heard this if you look up you know throw
a YouTube you know rock on ice pew pew
pew so we were gathering rocks and I was
throwing them and we were trying to it
was weird because we were trying to go
in the lake was not completely frozen
over because if you throw something on
it then it just goes clunk you know it
doesn't do anything boat is slightly
melted so yeah I was throwing rocks at
him on the loose ice to try and get all
this movement and we did that for
several hours and then and then went
home yeah so you've had that waiting
since 2017 yeah I mean you know we're
we're sound people were always gathering
interesting thing
and no that's cool and then you you
record it and you put it on a shelf and
then someday you see you know this cool
ice dragon and you're like I got I got a
sound for that because when we're in
development there's not always time to
say right let's blue sky what sound this
should be and let's go record it it's
like well we don't have a lot of time so
what have we already recorded and so
it's kind of like the you just kind of
be in diligent when you have free time
just recording whatever you can and a
lot of that goes into the planning the
release where it's like it's gonna be a
lot of ice and ice caves and it's like
okay audio team let's record I see
things and build our backlog of our
library and even beyond the the
encounter itself it helps with the
ambience of the arena and the place that
he's into because you can hear kind of
like that sound of like ice cracking
around you glacier moving oh somebody
was playing with their headphones on I
always do yeah yeah exactly exactly do
you want to talk about some of the other
audio work that you did that we are not
going to have people listen to because
we like you guys yeah yeah we can't
nobody should have to hear that in the
raw well when we talked about your car I
keep wanting to say Drakkar cuz I think
the text-to-speech oh yeah yeah dragger
Jack it's fantastic so Jack our just had
this wicked look when it popped out of
the ice and it just like to me seems
like you should scream and be really
sharp and just cut through the mix of
everything else happening and I kept
thinking of the Nazgul from the Peter
Jackson Lord of the Rings and I knew
that they had done some wine glass
scraping and so we knew we were going to
outsource the creation of these sound
effects but we basically recorded some
source - hand - Andy Martin and say if
you can use this great if not use it for
reference as kind of what we want which
was actually one of my favorite moments
was I went to a store up here and
purchased a bunch of wine glasses and I
got like one champagne glass and the way
the person at the
check out thank you he's like tired they
were like just one champagne glass and
and I was like the the brain cycles of
explaining why I'm only by I'm good I
was in my brain I was like I'm gonna
destroy this in about 24 hours but I'm
not gonna there's a lot of what how do
you a lot of audio personally exactly I
was like I was like yes sometimes just
yes and there's like a whole monologue
in your head and just work things out is
yes yeah so joseph clark one of our
other senior sound designers here is
excellent at performing the sound and
what i mean by that is so we took the
glass and we scraped it on metal
it's the reason we're not playing that
because it is like the worst sound in
the world
I sent it to Ruby and I put in like big
bold letters three times turn down your
headphones because it'll take your head
off in red font to read it was an
alarming email yeah but I appreciated it
so much I call it mustard text it's red
font yellow highlight bold yeah I
appreciated that nobody should ever have
to hear it again but so so you can
record that just gonna rain rain but Joe
gets in there and and he was scraping
this hose and he would get these crazy
gestures and so we sent that to Andy
Martin and he didn't end up using the
sounds for whatever reason probably for
the obvious ones it's terrible to listen
to but he was like oh this is so cool I
know what you guys want I know what the
gesture is of the sound its baseline for
what what it felt like yeah it feels it
already feels like a thing a living
thing and so now it's just up to the
sound designer to kind of realize that a
little more and flush it out
so yeah glass will use it for something
that's in our library but it didn't get
it got used only as reference for this
and Andy did a great job
what do you sent us back we iterated on
that and then
plugged it in and tested it so that was
the sound effects side of it then
there's the whole music side which I
don't know if we want to come back to
that or go for it because I really like
that story is okay so that's the sound
effects Stan is amazing yeah so so early
on we were also scoping what we want to
do for the music for this and I think I
had just penciled in like three Kombat
loops intro middle and the ending where
it's really high intensity and we worked
with Stan Lepard for this track who has
worked with us quite a bit he's a great
composer and you know composers want to
know well why are there three phases
what's happening what's justifying that
and I was like well there's the intro
and then there's the second phase
where's your cars kind of sneaky sneaky
shadow and then your car comes out so
and then there's the burn down at the
end where you just blast 25% health and
so we're like okay well there's four
stages and at some point in development
somebody had talked about your car
popping through the ice through the
floor and they kept calling at this jaws
moment I don't know if it was somebody
in design or I think James Richter was
saying it one of the producers and that
just stuck with me is like well jaws is
scary because it's that like you can't
see what's happening and it's really
uncomfortable so it was cool about Stan
a couple things many things but I'm
gonna highlight a couple things he's
done a lot of work to my knowledge with
like kind of procedural generated and
textural music so he started sending us
all these really wacky textures which we
were playing in the intro and it just
had this super uncomfortable vibe and
then when your car would pop out of the
ice we play what's called a stinger
which is the orchestra gone but in a big
whatever some thing and that covers up
the transition which is happening from
that yeah that noodley stuff to
something that's a little more combat
oriented which has drums ticka ticka
ticka ticka tah and so cuz that
transitions kind of rough well yeah so
transitioning music
requires some like it requires the game
engine to be musically literate and what
I mean by that is it knows where the
beat is if I'm you know if I'm
conducting in 4/4 down is always the one
one two three four one and it needs to
know where those beats happens so that
it can look at the music that's playing
and say we're gonna transition in a
musical place we can't do that just
because our tools don't support it and
the other thing that's really cool about
Stannis he's very creative he's a great
problem solver and so he looks at those
limitations and he figured out well you
know we can go from a combat piece that
has a beat boots and cats and boots and
cats and and we can get to another piece
of music but it has to not have a tempo
so it goes to something that doesn't
have drums if we try to transition from
one piece of music that has a beat to
another piece of music that has a beat
it usually happens very unmusical II or
we leverage the stinger to just try and
it's basically playing something that's
louder than the transitioning that's
happening so you can't hear the
transition and it sounds better than if
it wasn't there so a lot of creative
problem-solving a lot of a lot of
planning of emotionally how should the
music make you feel but also technically
how are we going to implement it because
we could hire a composer and say go
write great music but if we don't know
how we're gonna plug it in it's
basically useless so having that all
having the the blueprint all planned out
before we even Commission a note of
music has been super helpful and I think
helped us ship some more adaptive music
experiences that hopefully heighten the
emotion because we were in development
on that music and we were like is this
working is it weird and then we got in a
play test with a few of the designers
and somebody was like oh my god this
feels the music feels great it's like
yes it worked so Stan did really great
writing that music and sort of designing
the implementation scheme and the
emotion of it and then that was all
handed off to Kenan and he implemented
it all and I would just come into the
room and say like this is amazing you
were all great yeah and this saga so far
has been
has had a lot of like really musically
intensive in terms of implementation
moments like we had the big concert and
the the prologue and then for the this
fight you know we needed to have dynamic
sounding music that didn't sound too
dissonant whenever a transition so I'm
sure that's a valuable set of lessons
and and obstacles to overcome especially
for the future yes yes we love music we
love what it brings to the experience
and and it's always a joy problem
solving the creative implementation
schemes and truly it usually is fun to
figure out how are we gonna how are we
gonna do this so yeah I it's funny you
said that I spent some time I spent the
long weekend playing around in Gotham
are you catching up on achievements and
we're at the concert I don't know how
many times mm-hmm it's so fun I'm trying
to get my bouncer achievement so I was
like I yeah that's been on my mind
anyway and I just all I can hear is Joe
yeah yeah Joe Clark and Keenan and no
Vera everybody involved with that whole
experience it's just it's so amazing
it's it's such a testament to the I
think the the talent and the passion
here that was another one where I feel
like I was just standing back and saying
like you were all amazing yeah that's
awesome okay so but your car distract me
with metal Legion because it's way too
much fun too so back to all of these
teams working together because you guys
all did work extremely extremely well
bringing all of the teams in super early
getting the sinks and the tests in there
once you ramped up to once a week for
playtesting and everybody sinking in
together how well was did you feel like
you had pretty much ironed everything
out pretty well or were you still
running into dissonance here and there
and feeling like different teams needed
to pull things back and change things as
you kept playtesting um honestly I feel
like it coalesced pretty well yeah I
think the only thing that really was
still the question at that time was is
this shadow tech gonna work and if not
what's our acceptable backup plan
but yeah by that point all of the teams
knew what they were doing and how and
more importantly how what they were
doing connected to what all the other
teams were doing yes it allowed us to
really focus in on the Polish of the
timing of the effects and you know when
things happen how things transition away
from each other we came up with some
creative solutions for just using some
color shifting to get more out of be
like when he puts his hands to the
ground and he's pulling up the spirit of
the wild energy you know we were able to
kind of tackle those Polish tasks a lot
without the stress of knowing that there
was a bunch of other things that needed
to be done because of the amount of play
testing beforehand yeah speaking of
different skills and Drakkar putting
down you had talked some about creating
a consistent language of telegraphing to
try to to try to help them understand
yeah so early on we we knew that
especially for this saga we wanted to
start using mechanics in the open world
that were usually reserved for like
dungeon encounters or raid encounters
fractals because like that's where
people are going to be more comfortable
kind of like practicing things and it's
not necessarily failure if you yourself
don't do the mechanic correctly because
do you have all of your friends that are
out in the open world that'll help you
and so early on in the saga we had the
the ice giant and he has this attack
where he slams his fist down and it
creates this shock wave that goes out
and you jump over the shock wave in
order to avoid it and we knew that you
know that is a that's a cool mechanic it
requires you to actually be moving
around to be aware of where it's coming
from and watch your surroundings and we
knew that we wanted to reuse it forward
your car so mechanically we try to ramp
it up a little bit so that you you see
it happen and the strike mission
and it slams down you've got one and
that's just kind of your introduction to
it and then and the ox Rhine you see it
happen whenever the orbs like come down
and they hit the ground and now there's
more of them that are going off but they
have like kind of a cadence to them
there's really still when we one at a
time and then enter a car it's like he's
slamming down one slamming down another
the first thing he does is he slams down
- so like you have to jump over kind of
both of them at the same time and
keeping that language consistent while
still allowing for the effects to evolve
it was really important to us so that we
could teach our players better how to
play the game and not create kind of
fake out mechanics where it's like oh
I've seen that before but it did
something different we did we actually
ended up doing that a lot with some of
the effects for further car didn't we
yeah the so it's sort of like a win-win
scenario right we we anytime we're given
a scenario like this make the drug our
encounter there's dozens and dozens of
initial requests and we have to vet
those all of those requests against the
time that we have to do the production
and not everything makes it through that
vetting process and so in this case we
knew okay cool Drakkar is still a jor
Meg champion and the ice giant from
prologue and then in Episode one that
expands is part of that Jorm egg army so
he's using Jorm egg fax and so it made
sense that forge a car you would also
use some chore Meg influenced effects
and we knew that the shadow wall was
going to be a massive time suck and we
knew that there is a couple other hero
skill moments that were also going to be
time sucks and so not everything not
every skill request could we make a
one-off hero effect for and so we have
to be smart and reuse mechanics like
you're talking about but also effects
and animation and creatures in in the
appropriate ways that
maintain continuity and reinforce the
the game play stuff that you're talking
about and so we had a just a small
handful of reusable effects from the ice
golem that we use as a baseline and then
made a couple of small tweaks to to just
give it a little bit extra car flavor
and then that saved us probably three or
four days just on those AoE skill
effects yeah and we were really we were
able to get those and early on whereas
like sometimes the designer puts in a
very prototype version of a skill that
uses really prototype effects to make
sure that we know that hey this isn't
final and sometimes when we do that the
the mechanics need to kind of evolve
when the effects get involved with it
but because we were building off of an
existing thing that we had shipped
before is very easy to just be like okay
and this girl goes here and it goes here
and then that's it we're done we can
focus on other things now yeah and it's
exactly like what you're talking about
with your audio library you know we we
began over the course of the saga build
a library of assets that can be reused
in similar and different ways and so the
theme for this saga obviously is ice and
snow spoiler alert and so we knew going
in that we have a whole bunch of stuff
that we have to make and and we're gonna
also have the whole library of stuff
that we can reuse that way we can focus
the majority of our time on the really
spectacle awesome moments and and not
have to do these small little coverage
yeah exactly a spice rack exactly yeah
that's a good way of putting it
yeah not my term Damian cast Bower okay
all right I'll take it that's that
sounds like a good Damian thing too yeah
but yeah to have those two have that
backlog of assets like you have been a
clogged up sounds to not waste time
making going out and okay we're gonna
get this new thing just for the sake of
saying that we did a new thing yeah so
you can focus your time on the content
and I don't know that I would see it as
a waste of time like because we would
love
- like if we lived in a world where
everything was this artisanal crafted
thing like that would be awesome
it's just like infinite time and
resources yeah yeah of course yeah but
but you know than that yeah like you
said we're we're scoping and triaging
and how can we leverage things as
efficiently as possible but still make
it great and meaningful yeah five
seconds to think about the world of
infinite time and resources No so after
we got your car shipped he's out there
he's stomping everything you got the
chance to rout that all by yourself but
the team got the chance to work on an
update yes and yeah so we we knew that
balancing world boss for the open world
is is very very difficult to get
fine-tuned with the internal playtests
that we have because everybody plays the
game differently and so damage output is
different depending on who like what
class you're playing what elite spec
you're playing how you're playing it
what kind of role you're doing and so we
we wanted to ship this guy with tools in
place to be able to watch the data of
how players were going and what the
participation rate was what the average
encounter length was what the success
rate was and use all of that data to
then fine-tune him on live to try and
really dial in on the the right
experience that we wanted and so across
the board we made some changes just to
like normal balance things like his
health and his break bar a little bit
but in addition to that Connor Fallon
and I talked a bit about hey we've got
some of these mechanics that we have
that
aren't really punishing the player for
failing the mechanic too much and we we
started to think about like what are
what are some easy ways that we can
within a really quick time span create
incentives for doing the mechanic
correctly without having to create an
entirely new encounter with a new
mechanic and have players go in and have
to relearn an entire fight that they've
been doing eight weeks surprised
everything's different yeah which you
know it's it's a little difficult
because you have to be very cognizant of
what changes you're making and so we
added in a couple of extra mechanics for
when jobbies like in her shield if
you're not out if you're not inside the
shield for a short period of time before
going out into the area where all the
ads are spawning you'll actually start
taking damage from the snowstorm and in
addition to that we also added in the
failure mechanic where a lot of people
were saying you know hey something
something cool could happen when the
group fails so that it doesn't feel like
you know like such a complete failure
right and so really how do we make
failure fun and Connor Connor looked at
me and was just like what if Connors are
like stroking his evil cat immediately I
was I was almost like no but he's like
what if players were all turned hostile
to each other because it's your car and
like and and it's jour mags whispers and
requires the mouthpiece of jour mag so
the true strength of what jor mag can
impose upon you should be present here
right and so immediate reaction was like
whoa whoa whoa no no this that's that's
crazy town and he's like is it though
and we went back forth back and forth
for a little bit and eventually he
whipped up something that I think
is both really thematically interesting
without feeling like super uber
punishing because you when you go down
you come back to your senses and you're
no longer hostile to players and so it's
a bit of this like kind of narrative
moment where your car has now turned
everybody rageful against each other and
it creates a fun little moment where you
get to do something you don't ever
really get to do in the open world which
is try and survive the massive players
that are all hitting each other and from
a design point of view there was eight
it seems like there was a lot to think
about like okay so how far does this
extend how long does it last and because
some of the concerns when it was first
discovered because I know like as soon
as Connor told me I'm just like logged
into game and I'm just waiting for
somebody to find out and Connor and I
were like messaging back and forth that
first day I was like nobody's found out
yet
nobody's failed it yet Connor do
something I I'm watching - man I can't I
can't make this go any faster
but as soon as players found out there
was concern like okay is this is this
like map wide is this forever and I just
what if I don't want this and those
concerns I mean I know you guys thought
of that ahead of time absolutely you
know one of the one of the pillars of
Guild Wars 2 is you're always happy to
see another player and so at first this
seems like it goes way against that yeah
but we also which are trying new ways of
telling the narratives that we have and
so we put on some restrictions if you
leave the fight area before failure
you're not going to get turned if you
leave it even after the fight is failed
as long as you're not in combat then you
can go back to a friendly team we put in
a lot of fail-safes to make sure that
people can grief each other this was
just supposed to be a like a fun little
thing you can down your friends you can
be like
and then you know get all your rage out
from failing the events and then come
back and try it again
and you know hopefully succeed yeah is
it's definitely something that is a
balancing act yeah because there was a
version of this where we just allowed
you to be hostile to everybody until you
were killed and we didn't we didn't end
up actually putting that into the game
because we were immediately like no no
no people are gonna like go to the the
town and they'll start like killing all
the NPC's or kill all the other players
that are just like warping into the map
so yeah we we definitely have to stay
aware that we want it to be an enjoyable
experience and not a Greek sudden mental
image of just way pointing into jours
keep and being immediately murdered
exactly what that would be like so thank
you for not I appreciate it
so well do you guys want to look at some
of the behind the scenes stuff that you
brought yeah sure okay and then if you
all have questions we will answer a
couple of those there at the end
all right the remote control is all
yours mmm let's see on it's on yes yes
this is this is the product of not
having conceptual art time all of our
teams on every given release they have
budgets and schedules and and
availability and for this encounter
we had a challenging skill that the
channel the spirit of the wild
channeling skill and the concept team
unfortunately was busy they were fully
booked and so being the lead VFX artist
I had to take it upon myself to try to I
was failing at verbally communicating
the idea that I wanted my my team to
execute on and so I had to take some
invest paint drawing lessons and come up
with this to visually describe what we
were trying to describe with words I
finally figured out I just happened to
glance over the preview monitor while
Cameron was talking earlier and I
finally figured out what it reminds me
of his head looks like one of those old
Christmas lightbulbs it totally does
what it's been on the tip of my tongue
yeah and this is actually a paint over
front end game we took a screenshot of
him in that channeling pose and then
just painted right on top of that I'm
not kidding I wanted as my phone
background alright well we will email it
to you after this thank you so this is
early very very early prototype testing
for the shadow material we knew that we
wanted this material to have flipbook
support so that we can control how the
shadow moved and the directions that it
faced and so this is our very early test
using like I said from the beginning
that this is our standardized material
and we're injecting that flipbook logic
to it we're injecting layers of parallax
and depth to simulate that this thing is
actually behind the ice not rendering on
the surface of the ice and then also
giving us the control ability that we
needed from the designs perspective for
a gameplay and we just to prototype this
material we grab assets that already
exist in game and and and we do that
because we don't want to create new
stuff until we know that the material is
gonna work and so we had this flip book
of one of the scarabs and we use that as
our shadow stand-in and that stayed in
the encounter for a number of weeks
until we finally got the shadow tech to
work just right which was really awesome
oh this is the next evolution of the
shadow and this is us going cool we now
have the depth and the parallax working
really nicely now let's start making it
look like trocars shadow and so this is
testing the flipbook logic and the
ability to move from one state to the
next and we did that with simple spheres
and it needed animate so we just
squashed and stretched a sphere and that
was you know that's the next evolution
from that previous image that we saw and
then that leads into this is the first
realization of the entire shadow shader
coming together with the flip books the
rough trocar model like this is the
first moment where all of the art teams
and the design teams narrative we can go
holy cow this is actually going to work
it's good the five weeks of effort that
this has been into this point was is
paying off that was such a cool moment
too and that came online at the plate
was just such a big win and you could
see the flipbook control here that we
have he's he's facing one direction when
he's sticking out of the wall and then
he backs up turns to the right and swims
to the right and then turns again and
faces to come out and that's that's all
done with sixty-four frames of flip book
animation that had to felt like such a
huge victory after all of the work that
went into it that yeah we've just been
looking at a tiny little slice of that
yeah it was I was super proud of the
entire team the VFX team and the greater
Art and Design teams because this was
this was the one feature of the entire
Dakar experience from the very beginning
that I was very concerned about and I
knew would be in an exciting moment and
and something that really stood out in
our in our saga but it was certainly a
concern from the perspective of how can
we pull this off will we be able to pull
this off and if we don't what's our
back-up plan
but you know we work through these
iterative steps we we don't just start
making that final asset that you saw
from the very beginning we do these
steps we go through the evolution and
that allows us the opportunity to pivot
early if we need to right it's it's such
a good look at everything that goes into
what seems like a simple little moment
yeah yeah and I'm from the player's
perspective it is a simple you know 20
minute encounter but from the developers
perspective this is like four months
worth of development time yes I still
remember the first time that I saw that
in game I like freaked out and grabbed
everybody around me it was like yeah
yeah this was this is early skill
testing of the smash or the stomp skills
that you're talking about where we
started with just this decal on the
ground and we're like wait we can just
reuse some of the icicle effects here to
really enhance this and so that was that
this is just another view of it as well
well kind of go through some of these
fast this is this is the the now you're
seeing the culmination of like like this
looks really awesome and it didn't
really cost us that much to put in the
game because this is an asset that we
already had and it visually matches
Drakkar and joram egg and the theme of
this episode of the saga so why not
leverage it that way we can put our time
into the the more questionable assets
like the shadow hall not questionable
this concept art the piece cost
effective you know at the very beginning
this was the this is what we had before
we were before we came up with that
piece of art this is the the very first
appearance of him channeling that spirit
of the wild energy and and I love this
image particularly because it looks like
a troll doll hair ever since the first
time you said that's me I'm like yep
there it is yeah and this is also
another good example of like our
overdraw challenge there's a lot of
effects going on here you see smoke just
in the environment you see those
tornados you see this the the red troll
hair on your car all these things are
occupying the same pixel space and this
is where we have to be really cognizant
of how much visual effects and and
creatures and all the things that are
being displayed in the environment so
that we don't kill performance and
everybody's framerate drop stands like
that and then it evolved into the final
implementation that you see here it's a
little more refined there's less of the
troll hair going on and you see that
channel the energy being channeled from
the lake the frozen lake bed now at this
point it's starting at his hands and
it's moving up his arm and and
culminating to around where the the
player can see which is at this point is
the head and so we had to have the the
big visual tell beyond the areas where
the the players interact mist so it's
the head and the feet and then you know
this is an example if we had a white
dragon in a white and blue room with a
lot of white and blue effects so how do
we make our effects stand out and
in an environment of sameness where
everything is blue yeah exactly and so
we the creature team identified very
early on that what has happened between
jacquard and Guild Wars one and two and
he's kind of decayed over the years he's
been asleep but slowly decaying and so
we took that idea and ran with it in
some of his visual effects that's where
we get this really viscous goo like
rotting decaying flesh sort of like just
gross Ness and that helps our visual
effects stand out against the
environment and and the creature model
and also is just kind of like hooky and
it's fun it's disgusting to think about
they I hadn't thought about it that way
yes yeah thanks for that it's what we do
we like to you know nothing fun with
disgusting things time to time now it's
coming directly at the camera yeah I
mean you can see we really liked his goo
so we showed it a lot this is again very
early what does the channeling look like
we still have the troll hair here but
we're now starting to put that a visual
tell on on the arms again because this
is where the players are interact with
with the most on this guy and the last
thing we wanted to have happen was have
players missed the visual tell and have
that screw with gameplay yeah and that
actually that effect ended up inspiring
another attack where that looks like a
bad place to stand so we ended up
turning that into a damage field so if
you're standing on his feet you're
actually taking ticks of damage from
that energy yeah okay when I'm playing
the jakar encounter
I'm usually throwing heals stop standing
there sorry carry on yeah exactly and
then kind of see the final imitation
here of the effects on the ground and
how they transition from the surface of
the the lake up his arm and up through
his body lots of tricks going on here
from decals and particles and mesh
effects NAT did an that was the primary
visual effects artist for Joe Carr
skills and
having a singular artist sort of focused
on all of his skills allows us the
strong continuity between all the skills
and that just really did an amazing job
with the treatment up your car it made
my job easy which is a psyche hey like
you that looks cool let's ship with that
yeah yeah it looks fantastic and this is
another great example of the overdraw
that we're talking about it looks simple
like there's a bunch of smoke and stuff
but all that smoke is drawing on top of
each other and this is our first chance
of seeing what it looks like winter car
sucks back into the ice we wanted to
really kind of one of the nice to feel
alive and and and magical but we didn't
want to feel totally like just a wet
water puddle and so we played a little
bit with what sort of textural elements
go into supporting that so you do get a
little bit of that surface water tension
[Music]
distortion feel mixed with more physical
elements of the snow smoke and and bits
of ice and and and those things that all
come together to create a cohesive
effect that looks like he's just sucking
back into the ice mm-hmm that's just
another view of it it turned out so well
yeah this whole encounter I like this
shot because this is like this
arrangement like the kool-aid man I
can't hear it no and actually that has a
funny little gif that we had shared
around internally of basically ripping
that yeah ripping off some audio and
putting that in and time to perfect that
it's really funny amazing oh this is the
the shadow that you were talking about
that's on the ground it looks visually
the same as the wall but we're using
different technology or to achieve that
yeah ended up working really well as a
it starts very subtle and then it
gradually becomes more apparent that
this area is not where you want to stand
which is exactly what we wanted because
we didn't want it to be too
for whelming and to like here's a red
ring and I think it really hits that
that mark anytime that we can use the
environment or the skill affects to
indicate the size of the area of effect
versus just the red wearing the more
that that makes me happy and hopefully
the players happy because we're you know
coming up with creative artistic
solutions for gameplay mechanics it'd be
kind of a boring game if all it was was
red rings and and stuff like that the
pings and the growing shadow is it's not
just ok here's a red ring here's where
you go but it's that growing stress it's
that it's that jaws something's about to
happen yeah I don't know what it is but
I know I need to run and we actually
ended up getting rid of the the pulsing
rings after looking at this effect and
just being like you know what I think
the shadow is enough it's scary enough
yeah it increases the attention because
it's it's less likely that you'll notice
it unless you're sitting right on top of
it yeah and that's a nice win also
because one of our challenges is
balancing visual noise and things that
are on the ground like that warning ring
on top of the shadow contribute to
visual noise especially when you have 80
players in a space and they're all
firing off player skills and then you
have enemies that are in that same space
doing skills as well
it gets really noisy really quick and so
having a getting to the point where the
shadow described the area of effect too
well enough that we didn't need that red
ring just cleaned up the visual nicely
oh good this is this is another example
of effective Rhys we that burst coming
up out of the ground that came from the
foundation of the eye skull the eye
skull and bursts up out of the ground
and we took that and we used that as a
base we tweaked it a bit added some
jakar elements to it
just so that it wasn't exactly the same
and you know is something that initially
took us four or five days to make for
the ice golem in this case
it took us a couple of hours oh wow can
I say that previous one was are my
favorite animations because in the
animation editor you didn't see any of
you didn't see the bubble and it'll
lower bought his body wasn't animated so
we always thought it was him sitting
driving a car his legs were just out
well that's just that's what it is
forever now well that's a lot of snow Oh
a lot of snow yes that was that was
actually that environment zone was what
we had before we ended up shipping it's
so bright it is incredibly bright and so
we this is an example of we dialed that
back a lot thank you to try and pull
back the visual noise because while it
looks really like you're in a blizzard
which you know always has low visibility
yeah it just it really did make the
gameplay a bit more difficult to read
yeah a little yeah so luckily it's not
like this anymore yes a lot of this is
is just different views of the the same
stuff that we've seen but it's showcases
you know the detail that we put into
this and the the things that we have to
consider when we're creating these for
the design team yeah and hey that last
gif actually is a it's a bug but it
showcases what you're talking about
earlier Oh with the decal yeah yeah
where it's a it's actually just a volume
and since he's in the volume that since
your car is a mesh that can be rendered
upon you see blue stretching on half of
him and that's the size of the decal
volume that's drawing on the floor you
see that sort of stuck away but because
he's inside of that volume it's also
drawing on top of them so we have to
have the prop artist and the map artist
go and flagged your car did not accept
decals because that doesn't look good
great but these are these are good looks
at some of the things that you have to
catch ahead of time wait
yes this is why playtesting is so
important yeah for sure yeah
like that Blizzard wasn't great but that
was it's good that we caught that
beforehand and we're like hey it was a
not white screen for everybody and then
you guys played the encounter you've
seen this this is these incredibly angry
yep
got to melt that wall to get your car
yeah I mean this is pretty much what we
got I love by the way in that encounter
she does that and she's you know she's
just just like taking everything out of
her and she was like see it's fine it's
easy yeah it's great they really got
such a great read for her we in the
audio hall we were playing that we're
like oh my goodness like jeez we all our
view is great but like they really she
had the mood and the energy it was such
a great read as Debra right I don't know
I was about to ask I know I know it's
I know it's actually Williams from Mass
Effect that's what I don't know yeah she
really brought a lot to this performance
or a lot of her performance brought a
lot to the encounter all right you guys
might answer some questions yeah sure
all right are there plans to have more
world bosses liked your car in the
future so not any solid plans right now
I mean world bosses are really fun and
so they're always something that we're
considering I think based on how popular
your car is we can consider that for the
future as well
was there any tech develop for this
episode we're excited to utilize further
in the future yes the shadow material
the underlying tech that we developed
for that can be used in a whole bunch of
other ways not just for shadows behind
ice walls because at the primary core
what we did is we made we create a
shader that allows us finite control
over flipbook animations and and their
position and and speed within the
flipbook so we're gonna be using this
tech a lot more throughout the rest of
the saga in vastly different ways than
shadows on icy walls yeah that's one of
the cool things about when you guys put
all of that work into something like
that is all the ways it can be realized
in the future yeah
yep you would think that it's only going
to be used for ice but we've got some
big plans for it in the future yeah
quick talk about something else how did
you come up
pardon my reading level come up with the
music theme the musical theme of your
car it is really great
well the short answer is we threw a lot
of money at someone very talented
there's been a great collaborator and
they're great but they're a better
answer to that is around the episode the
pro metal bound by blood
what was the episode named prologue non
blood blood we I sat with narrative and
said like where are we going for the
saga and we outlined the major beats and
jour mag so somebody keep an eye on me
if I think we can talk about jour meg
yeah okay all right everybody jour mag
is a thing
so we knew jour mag was a thing and we
when we actually did the announcement
trailer for the saga that was that like
gag we spent the time with Stan and said
we need a theme for jour mag it needs to
be manipulative and all these things and
he wrote something and surged your car
because they are the the amplifier for
the voice of jour mag it wanted to be
related to that so again Stan worked his
creative juices and and melded the
structures of your mags theme which is
kind of complex and and kind of tone
clusters and all these things and then
mesh that with the function of the
situation which is combat music which
mostly means big drums
if you sorry it to like as far as the
design of that
Bhangarh our villain right now he's very
if you listen his the the themes are
designed with a lot of intent and his is
very simple it's very percussive and
warrior oriented and jour mags we kept
saying was very cerebral because tour
mag uses magic to influence people so
it's very musically it's much more
complex and sowed your car's music leans
into that complexity if you will from a
harmonic point of view so we money and a
lot of planning is how is how we came up
with that yeah so we'll Drakkar
continued to receive balanced updates as
the saga progresses so one of the things
that we did with this guy as we are
using some new tools to be able to
balance him adjust his balance a little
bit on the fly as we get in more data so
if things start to see or if we start to
see that things are getting like crazy
hard or crazy easy then we have those
knobs to tweak when redesigning your car
compared to gb1 where did the
inspiration for the new look come from
that is a really great question and
cater creaturely could go into great
detail about that but from a high level
we in DB one you only saw her car from
kind of far far away and you never
really got a good look at the detail of
its form and and what it was made of and
really what it fully looked like and so
we had a bit of leeway to play with that
to a degree and so the two main
inspirations that I recall was that they
played with forms of whales so you see a
little bit of the jaw shape of a whale
and in your car and on and also the tail
which you don't ever see dinger cars
model but you see on the the shadow and
then Kate really wanted to play with the
idea that this her car had been in the
ice for a very long time between gb1 and
and now and so that's where they played
with how did your car decay during that
time what did Joe makes influence how
did that influence the way that the
decay was treated and so you saw sort of
shaggy fur like like almost like shag
fur that was left out in the rain and
and you saw like just blubber and this
like just that was a big inspiration
yeah a lot of goo
okay I have one that I hadn't meant for
us to talk about and I forgot until just
now so if people saw the let's play with
that Clayton and I were doing at the end
we were messing around after the fight
and put out a bubblehead tonic yes and
that was just for fun I didn't know this
was going to happen but when you put out
a bobble head tonic at the end of the
joke our fight what happens yes
depending on depending on where you're
looking it's not easy to first yeah it's
not easy to miss he's got a big ol head
and it just kind of sticks out right
which kind of allows you to pull back
the curtain a little bit and yeah so
jerk ours is interesting he's a complex
encounter the way that we ended up
building him was that every single
position where jerk are can come out and
be attacked or do an attack with the
jaws attack from the ground or the one
that comes out of the wall those all
have to be separate props separate
versions of him and so the encounter
with your car is is mechanically a bunch
of them talking to each other and
telling each other hey my house at this
point so you're next up on the block and
so make sure your health is at this
point and when they deactivated they're
really really far back they like play
their animation to come back and then
the the the asset is still there the
prop is still there so to get around
making sure that like you can't see him
when he comes back we actually bones
scale him down really really really
small but the bobble head tonic seems to
override this bone scaling and so it
takes the Drakkar that is deactivated
that's supposed to be hidden and you
know smoke and mirrors and just Boop
shows this head like right there it's
quite hilarious yes so my question
when we talked about this the other day
is that you said what you think might be
happening is that the rest of the body
is still bone scaled down yes but the
head is filling the entire chamber were
you able to confirm this I I cannot
confirm or deny it I'll let your
imagination run wild is I will say that
the truth is far more interesting than
you might think
but I'll have to get a screenshot in
order to actually show you we have to go
right now you know but if you haven't
yet use a bobble head tonic at the end
of the trokar encounter because it's
amazing it looks like his giant head is
mounted on the wall it's fantastic yeah
so did your man create your car or only
corrupted is more of a narrative
question I don't think that's anything
any of us can really I don't think we've
answered that in-game that's yeah that's
not sure if that's some narrative
question
yeah well the audio guy seems to have an
answer well I know in the instance the
whispers inside mm-hmm your car so
that's the thing yes yeah but it's like
that's as close as I feel comfortable
venturing to the to the mall okay
well that's yeah yeah it does beg the
question of Westrick are a natural
creature that was then inhabited by the
voice of jour mag and that's why the
corruption like transform the body or
anything that is an extremely
interesting question that I like a lot
yeah so all right we are approaching
1:30 it's getting late thank you all
very very much I appreciate it thank you
all for spending some time with us if
you would like to spend some time with
us in person and you are on the East
Coast we are heading out to PAX East
next week we'll be out on the show floor
we would love to see you guys if you're
heading out to PAX East swing by the
guild wars 2 booth on the show floor and
we will see you there otherwise we will
see you next time on guild chat thank
you all thank you all yeah thank you all
right
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