Guild Chat - Episode 107
Guild Chat - Episode 107
- Title
- The Icebrood Saga: Champions
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Brett Nellermoe
Joe Kimmes
Bobby Stein - Date
- January 23, 2021
- Official video
- YouTube
The 107th episode of Guild Chat aired on January 23, 2021.
Transcription[edit]
Introductions (6:25)[edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hi Tyria! Happy Friday and welcome to Guild Chat! I'm your host Rubi and it's really awesome to be hanging out with you guys again. I appreciate you coming in and watching today. Um, we're going to be talking about Truce, the last chapter of Champions, that came out back in November and we're also going to be talking about Power, the episode that released this week, so quick heads up that there will be spoilers for everything. We're not hiding anything.
- SPOILER ALERT!: [klaxon sound effect]
Rubi: So if you do not want spoilers, you are welcome to just hang out, wait, come back and watch the video later. So with that said, let's go ahead and meet our three dev guests.
Rubi: Um, Brett, why don't you say hi first? I'll have you guys talk about what you do here at ArenaNet and what you worked on for these two chapters.
Brett Nellermoe: Sure. Uh, so I am Brett. I am the QA owner for uh all of the episode five content, wrote test passes, did self-testing... all the fun stuff.
Rubi: Awesome. How about you, Joe?
Joe Kimmes: Hey, everyone. Uh, I'm Joe Kimmes. I'm a content designer on Guild Wars 2. For this episode, I was the team lead and handled a bunch of the overall episode framework stuff such as the story over arc quest, some of the shared behavior, and the Dragon Response Missions, the Eye of the North updates, and recruiting events, the mastery, and some of the rewards stuff that you'll be seeing later - more on that to come - and I also handle the festivals for the game.
Rubi: So a few things. How about you Bobby? Yeah.
Bobby Stein: [laugh] Yeah. Joe's only slightly busy. Uh yeah. I'm Bobby Stein. I'm the associate narrative director and resident old guy at ArenaNet.
Rubi: [laugh]
Bobby: For Living World, for this release, I basically kind of came up behind the writing folks who were working on that, who have then kind of transitioned over to work on the expansion. So, wrote most of the non-VO stuff in the release and also worked with the design and audio teams on doing things like dialogue timing and just narrative design cleanup.
Rubi: Awesome.
Bobby: That's it.
Summary of Chapter 1: Truce and Chapter 2: Power (8:57)[edit]
Rubi: You know we joke about you guys being super busy, but you really are so thank you all for taking the time to come and spend some time on the show today. It's very much appreciated. Um, why don't we start since we've got two story sections that we're talking about today. Um, Joe and Bobby you guys worked a lot on the story and the writing. Why don't you give us a rundown of Truce and Power to get us going.
Joe: So, I'll jump in and give you the really quick summary of Truce. So-
Rubi: Awesome.
Joe: The big plot point going into it, of course, is that- Spoiler warning again! Spoiler warnings for episode four!
- SPOILER ALERT!: [klaxon sound effect]
- [Rubi, Brett and Bobby laugh]
Joe: We're thinking it was only episode five spoilers. I'm sorry. Uh, Jormag is awake now.
Rubi: In the game we're talking about it.
Joe: Jormag was awakened in episode four and that is causing its sibling dragon Primordus to awaken as well and as we enter the episode, going to Rata Sum to find out more about that with Taimi. Primordus is a major threat, right? Jormag is kind of tactical and Primordus is the opposite. It is just all offense: destroyers attacking all over the place. We've got to deal with it. But we also meet Ryland in Rata Sum, who is now Jormag's champion and is saying, "Hey, Primordus is a problem for you too. Jormag also hates Primordus. What do you say?" So we kind of have to, you know, I don't say we trust Ryland, but we have to kind of live with that for the moment because Primordus is this major threat. And he's working with the Arcane Council in Rata Sum towards Jormag's ends because the asura are also ancient enemies of Primordus who drove them to the surface back in Guild Wars 1 times. So from there we head into the Dragon Response Missions where we see some of that imminent threat from Primordus. In Metrica Province, we hang out with Braham and Taimi to fend off destroyers that are attacking just outside of Rata Sum and get to hear a little more from Braham about how he's trying to deal with some of the norn prophecies surrounding the defeat of Jormag and his earlier claim that oh, he is going to be the norn of prophecy who defeats Jormag and it turns out, you know, that's not all fun and games. This is starting to actually weigh heavily on him. Yeah. It's hard, Braham, right? Having the weight of the world on you?
Rubi: [laugh]
Joe: Maybe, maybe sometimes your friends aren't like helping you out with it? They're off doing their own thing? Boy, that must, uh, it's a struggle for him, you know?
Rubi: [laugh]
Joe: Anyway. [laugh] The next DRM is in Brisban Wildlands where we get to meet up with Caithe and hang out with her a bit, protect some asura- sorry, sylvari areas and we're actually assisted there by Ryland who shows up to help out. And he's kind of giving you a little more of his motivations post-Jormag awakening and also taking the chance to size you up, I think. But, you know, we don't fight him there. That's nice. And we move to Gendarran Fields where we get to meet up with Jhavi and Marjory again to defend the of- the always in trouble Ascalon Settlement. It is one of our favorite places throughout the series to, uh, you know.
Rubi: To attack! Like‒
Joe: It happened a couple times, okay? Uh, I think in Guild Wars 1 there were like three or four quests where you had to defend the Ascalon Settlement. Maybe it shouldn't be there. I don't know.
Brett: [laugh]
Rubi: Can they possibly be building a fence of some sort?
Bobby: They built (???) apartment there is not doing too hot.[verification requested]
Rubi: [laugh] Alright. So we‒
Brett: Poor investment.
Joe: So after that-
Rubi: It is. Go ahead.
Joe: So at that point there was a to be continued delay going into the Power chapter. So Bobby, you want to talk more about the new Power?
Bobby: Cool, yeah. Thank you. So yeah, so the second section, the second release subtitled Power starts off with Roaring Flames, which is a sequence that starts where you go back to the Eye of the North to sync up with Aurene and your friends. You get in a conversation where she's kind of wondering what's going on with Jormag, so they have a conversation. Jormag starts to show us a little bit more what their motivations are. There's a real resentment with their sibling Primordus, you know. So, ice dragon not really a big fan of fire dragon. They're two sides of the same coin, they're siblings, and one of them is just really getting tired of being tethered to the other one, right? So there's this idea of wanting freedom from their brother, but then also wanting to take what comes when an elder dragon is destroyed, right? Big release of power. So from there you start to see the rise of Primordus. You do a couple of Dragon Response Missions.
So Ebonhawke, you know, in Fields of Ruin, basically is under attack by Primordus's destroyers and you have to kind of navigate this uneasy appearance of Crecia being there on behalf of the charr in a human area that is still kind of coming to terms with the whole like ceasefire. After that is resolved, you get called over to Thunderhead Peaks and again destroyers are coming. Braham is actually there and you start to learn a little bit more about what's going on in his head. He's starting to really wrestle with this whole norn of prophecy thing and kind of wondering what his role is in all of this. Kind of caught between wanting Jormag dead and then also kind of dealing with the threat of Primordus. So after that, it kind of kicks off into the Jormag's world section. We go back to Rata Sum, to the Arcane Council, and Ryland is there. He's just finished talking to everybody and the Council basically gives you some of the intel that basically you and Ryland are looking for. Ryland's obviously working on behalf of Jormag. You're there to kind of deal with just the overall dragon threat, even though people kind of are looking at you like, "Hey! Aren't you Primordus's friend now? What's going on with that?" right? So you learn about this feedback loop with magic, with Primordus, you know: they destroy things, it feeds back into the dragon, and it's basically creating this power spike. And whereas normally the balance between Jormag and Primordus is level, now Primordus is awake and getting stronger, and we can't have that, right? It's going to be disastrous.
So, at any rate you get called to Lake Doric thinking that, "Oh, no! Here comes more, you know, Primordus attacks!" But actually, it's- Jormag and Ryland are there and, you know, the icebrood is basically testing out- armoring themselves up if they encase themselves or encase, you know, denizens in ice. Can they shield themselves from an assault from the ice dragon and they get their answer and they're basically saying, you know, we can toughen ourselves up against a fight against the elder fire dragon, so peace!
So they take off and then you get called to Snowden Drifts where you meet up with Braham and others and basically, you're hearing- well, he's hearing Owl's call- Owl spirit who had previously been kind of hiding away from Jormag's advances, you know? They're looking to absorb power however they can and corrupting Spirits of the Wild is one great way to get a little bit of a power boost and, you know, can't let that happen. and Owl actu- well, spoiler alert! It doesn't end so well for Owl and we certainly kind of leave off in this kind of tenuous thing where Braham is kind of seeing the impact of this dragon war that's going on. He's still got it hanging in his head that he has some sort of role to play, but it's not clear. So that's kind of where we leave off before we get started in the next chapter in the near future.
Joe: Yeah, so we're starting to see the scope of Jormag's plans here that by either, you know, tipping that balance itself or getting you to help tip the balance, it can gain the advantage on Primordus and end that age-old conflict. So next step is going to be hearing a little more about that in the chapter to come.
Rubi: Yeah, I'm excited for players to see that one. For Power, there are a couple of things that I noticed that I wanted to call out. I jumped in just as I could. I've had a super busy week so I've been just like playing at weird hours. I got up at like five in the morning to finish it one day. But I really appreciate- I mean I'm up anyway. I just- I get up early. Something that I really enjoyed and appreciated- First of all, I liked the Dragon Response Mission boss fights. Those were super fun. But the- this growing feeling of "this is a serious issue" and it doesn't matter which side you're fighting on or how you feel about this. Unpleasant stuff has to be done. Whether that unpleasant stuff is right or wrong in the views of us and the NPCs- Something that you alluded to a little bit, Bobby, was basically freezing people to use later and the awfulness of that when you think about it and they're just like, "Yeah, but I mean, you know, it kinda sucks, but we got to do it." And I'm just sitting here going, "Well, you did that! You just- right in front of us! And you're cool with it!" It was-
Joe: Yeah and we're really starting to see kind of a different side of Ryland here-
Rubi: It seemed a rough truth.
Joe: Yeah, where he's very "ends justify the means", right?
Rubi: Yes!
Joe: He's saying, "Hey, like, you know, you didn't immediately jump on helping us go kill Primordus, so hey! This was the reasonable alternative that we had is permanently freezing a bunch of people."
Rubi: Yeah, he's just like, "Gotta do what I gotta do."
Brett: Rubi, did you just say that these two villains with ice powers were cool with it?
Rubi: [sighs]
Bobby: Yeah, she did.
Rubi: I regret nothing. It was an accident, but I regret nothing. Thank you for that. See, when I try for puns it's just bad. I mostly just trip over them and, "Oh, look! That happened! No... that... I didn't mean that." So I mean on a slightly less horrifying note, regarding that just- we're going to be pragmatic about this no matter what, I really enjoyed Crecia versus Kasmeer's approach to what they thought of as diplomacy in Fields of Ruin. I was really listening to the dialogue and enjoying that Kasmeer is very much- we have to enjoy- we have to appreciate the realities of what happened. We have to acknowledge the realities of what happened and how that currently affects people. And Crecia's like stomping behind her going, "Do you want this done or not?" That clash where they're both trying to get to the same end, they're both trying to accomplish the same thing, but the difference is enormous. And I was just- I had stopped playing and I'm just sitting there going, "Talk more!" and so it was- there was a lot that I enjoyed as a player, so thank you guys for your work on that.
Story Development (21:02)[edit]
Talking about story and story development, something that we've talked about on Guild Chat before is that we start working on these stories way way far in advance. I mean, there's incredibly long lead time while we're doing work in the background. Sometimes that work begins before we decide to make the next expansion. So, Bobby, do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Bobby: Yeah, so I don't remember when-
Rubi: Things have to change.
Bobby: Yeah, we did- Do you remember when we did The Icebrood Saga announcement? That was sometime around PAX, wasn't it?
Rubi: Yes. That was both a million years ago and in 2019. Yes.
Bobby: It was late 2019. Yeah. In the before times. Anyway, at that time we knew at a high level what we wanted the entire Icebrood Saga story to be at a high level. You know, we know where it begins, we know where we want it to end, and we have a pretty good idea the shape of the story throughout the season? But you know a lot of times when you actually get down to the work, when the teams actually get together and really flesh these ideas out, things can change, right? So at some point throughout Icebrood Saga development, we were gifted with the opportunity to work on an expansion which quite frankly was something I think most if not all of us really wanted to do at some point. But it was a bit of a surprise and and what we had to do then is say, "Okay, well, if we're going to be able to deliver a satisfying end to The Icebrood Saga while also, you know, getting to work on an expansion, how can we how can we do these things, right?" So it became a real challenge, you know, to get people together and to solve this as a group. And, you know, it took a little bit but we rewrote the story, reframed how we tell the story, you know. So design was heavily involved in figuring out like "How can we, you know, satisfy this story and build something that's also repeatable?" And so, you know, a narrative went back and forth about, "Okay, what plot threads can we see through to the end? What things do we maybe need to cut or down scope or whatever", right? So it was a pretty big shift but I think, you know, we definitely got to a place after working together on it that I think we're pretty happy. And you know I'm excited to see what people think once they play it and the whole thing is out there and they can, you know, experience it from beginning to end and let us know what they think.
Rubi: Oh my gosh, yeah. There's this loop when we're working on things like expansions where there's this brief time where it's such a relief to finally be able to talk about it and finally be able to tell you guys, "Hey, this thing is coming!" But now we're in the pain of all of the other things that we can't tell you and the pain of waiting until we can get it into your hands and it's like every bit of it is so incredibly exciting that I'm both extremely excited that players finally get to know about End of Dragons and I just... Can it be release time yet please? But yeah, it's-
Bobby: We might need a little more time to finish it, but yeah.
Rubi: I'm not telling- I'm not trying- I'm not rushing you, I'm just very excited. But yeah, you had to- I mean juggling- Okay, we're working on the story, now we're simultaneously working on an expansion. Making sure everything was scoped right, that all the production schedules came to what they were supposed to be, that was a lot!
Joe: Yeah and that was a facet with choosing to do the episode kind of broken up over the four individual chapters was that both, you know, it gives everyone something to do as we're eagerly awaiting End of Dragons and it gave us some more leeway on finishing the writing, getting the voice acting in. At the time, we had episodes three and four that now have voice acting, but initially we had to find workarounds for that.
Rubi: Yeah, and even-
Joe: So it was really a crazy period there-
Rubi: It was, and even after-
Joe: But it also gave us a chance- Go ahead.
Rubi: Oh, go ahead. You and I are on a little bit of lag together so it's the realities of remote work.
Joe: Oh, I was just saying something nice there is that it's given us the chance to adapt to player feedback through those episodes. We made a bunch of changes to the Dragon Response Missions with Power release and I've been really pleased that both the team was able to jump in and make some of those corrections to make things feel a little better to players and make the Dragon Response Missions as fun as they could be. And it's been really heartening seeing players respond to that this week.
Rubi: Awesome.
Joe: A lot of people excited about it so that's great.
VO (25:56)[edit]
Rubi: Actually I want us to talk some more about Dragon Response Missions shortly, but one thing that you mentioned was adding VO and that was an entire massive saga that we haven't had a chance to talk about because adding- like just getting VO in a single episode release is a lot. Adding several episodes worth of VO in one release was kind of a monumental task. I'm gonna tap you for this again, Bobby. Sorry, it's just the way it's shaking out.
Bobby: Yeah!
Rubi: But that was- I think we announced in September that we were starting to record, planning for November and it was still a tight squeeze, wasn't it?
Bobby: Yeah, so typically in any given Living World release we're going to have 1500 to 2500 lines of VO on average, you know, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less.
Rubi: That's just in one language.
Bobby: And that's just in English, yeah. And then we have to translate it and record it in all the other languages that we support with voiceover, right? So it really can add up. And when you have basically three plus episodes that you're trying to record all at once, it starts to balloon. So things that would normally take like, let's just say- For example, before COVID it would take us a week to record VO for an episode. A week, week and a half, something like that? Maybe it takes a week and a half to two weeks to do it remotely because things are a little bit slowed down. We had to get remote recording kits that had to be delivered to the actors's home studios and then we had to patch them in with the engineer and then we're, you know, we're all on a Zoom call or whatever. And long story short, it took us longer to do an episode anyway because we were working under COVID conditions from home. But then when you stack three plus episodes- and the reason I keep saying three plus is because episode five is bigger than a normal episode. I'm not gonna get into the specifics, but it was more than just doing one more episode, so...
Rubi: There was also the fractal.
Bobby: Anyway, having to do that- What's up?
Rubi: There was also the fractal.
Bobby: Yeah, there was that too, right? So we had a lot of content that we had to do and we chose to save it all up and do it at once, so we were basically recording for a month straight. We were on the phone with a different actor or multiple actors every day and with the studio engineers down in, you know, Burbank and the voice director and what not. Actually, Tom did a bunch of the voice direction for this too. But yeah, so it was a lot. So instead of being like 2000 lines, it might have been 6000 or 7000 or 8000 lines when you add it all up, right? When you do that, there's a lot of files that have to be cut, that have to come back, that have to be imported, they have to be normalized and audio processed, they have to be key weighed,[verification requested] they need to be hooked up by designers, the riders have to- like there's a lot of work that has to be done and when it all- when the train kind of crashes at the station there's just a lot of work that people have to do. And in order to get it ready- Well and here's the other thing! We had to undo all that Simlish stuff that we had the characters-
Rubi: [laughs]
Bobby: That were sort of as a fallback so they're like, you know, [gibberish] when they're talking and giving their speech and you had to read what it said, right? We had to undo all that and then re-hook up all this new stuff, time it out. And thankfully we had a small army of people who dedicated about a full week. So normally a team of of designers and writers and QA, like everybody's doing different portions of the game? Everybody was doing VO finalization on top of each other for three episodes worth and it was scary and hilarious and, you know, I had to give a crash course on how to do dialogue timing to like, I don't know, 15 people to all just go, "Okay, here's how you do it! Go!" And of course there were little mistakes that got made so then there was a lot of bugs that came in so thank you to everybody who assisted in that. Brett, I'm looking at you and Joe too. You guys know that-
Rubi: Thank you, QA!
Joe: Oh, a few little things, huh?
Bobby: Yeah, so all said, this was an interesting time and way to do all this stuff and to play catch-up but, you know, at the end of the day I'm glad that we went through it, but it really was a lot tougher than normal and I think a lot, you know- This is how the sausage is made and it's sometimes kind of a ugly process, so, but we got through it.
Rubi: Yeah. Something else that we had mentioned about that just internally is that we have a fairly large voice acting cast. So it's not just like, "Yeah, we needed to- we need to get like a couple kits out and coordinate with a couple of actors." We had a whole lot of actors to coordinate which kind of helped that ballooning that you talked about.
Bobby: Oh yeah, I think it is...
Rubi: It's an herculean effort.
Bobby: Oh, totally. Well, in a typical release, I was going to say, we usually have, you know you have to count on all 10 player character actors right, so that's 10 people right there always. And then the additional cast, you might have like another 7 to 12 actors on top of that, but when you're doing all these episodes that might not have the same characters in them, it goes from like 17 to 22 actors up to like 30 or 40, right. So over the course of a month. Well, and the the player characters always have a lot of lines, so you know multiply any player line times 10, and then you start to see how the scope really gets a little nutty, um you know, uh in hindsight maybe having 10 voiced player characters as chatty as they are might not have been the wisest choice for us, at least in terms of... Yeah, but that's something... I mean I don't regret it, but it is a big undertaking, so yeah, please be thankful, please, it is a lot of work.
Rubi: It really was, and for, for the players I know it was really hard for you guys to wait and I know, we saw a lot of people, we had, we had what Bobby called simlish and I will never think of it otherwise again. But we have those, we had like those grunts and those noises in there to help guide players to where they needed to be in the absence of voice acting and I know it was a long difficult wait and I know that kind of got under some people's skin a little bit, so we are super thankful for your patience while we got all of that stuff spun up and on the ArenaNet side they're super thankful for the massive effort you guys made.
Joe:Yeah, yeah, very huge thanks to everyone for sticking with it and being understanding.
Brett: Glad that we got it to you.
Rubi: Thanks to all of you. Yes, so glad we got it to you! I wish you guys could have had a party when you got the last of that kicked out the door and 'we are done with this job', so yeah thank you guys for that very much. Um, so back to Dragon Response Missions, thank you for helping us cover that, Bobby. Joe, you talked a little bit about how it was nice to have the time to work on Dragon Response Missions and kind of respond to player feedback. But going back to the locations, especially in this latest one, do you want to talk about how you guys choose these locations? How do you, where these happen?
Joe: Yeah, so, early on in the episode we were talking about the goal was showing this kind of wide-reaching threat from the destroyers across Tyria and we hit on the idea of okay, we want to go back to some of these early maps and show you both like 'Hey, this is a threat close to home!', you know like the destroyers are attacking places you're familiar with, places you've been before and also getting to see some of like 'Hey, how are these areas doing?', can we put kind of a different spin on something you've seen before or get you to go somewhere you don't normally run off to a lot? So for some of the ones in the initial release, like Metrica Province was a great example of one that really early on we were like, well, the first instance we know, the story is going to have us in Rata Sum so that we can get everyone together and meet up with Taimi, learn about this threat. We want to have an attack on Rata Sum itself, so having you there defending kind of the gates of the city in Metrica Province was like one of the first ones we really nailed down. There was actually kind of a really fortunate thing there, that something else we wanted out of mission locations was 'Is there going to be a good place to have some of that destroyer aspect set piece?' like a lava cave or an existing destroyer event that we can sort of harken back to, and for my part I had actually completely forgotten there was a fire cave right next to the starting area in Metrica Province, and one of our designers pointed out and was like 'Oh, this is great, we can put stuff here!' and I'm like 'Wow, that is great, that's, that's really lucky.' So we tried to look for areas like it. Yeah, someone planned, someone eight years ago was like, just in case there's ever a huge destroyer attack event, we're gonna make sure there's this cool lava cave. So we tried to use the existing areas or look at how can we change something up. One of the really fun things that we got to do was, one of the other really early candidates was going back to Lake Doric, because that had been a living story episode location where, like we got to see the White Mantle attacking there and there was a question of what's Lake Doric like now, what's it like normally? We didn't quite get to show you what it looks like normally, but we were asking ourselves, 'Can we raise the water level there, so that you can have the kind of the normal experience if the dam is rebuilt?' and there was some back and forth on that, changing the water line is actually like kind of difficult, and we hit on the idea of okay, well, this is going to be one of the maps where we start to see Jormag turn and start to see some of the fighting the icebrood and the frost legion. What if it's all frozen over? So we rebuilt that lake as a like giant ice sheet with these, this massive like ice crystals there and it's really really cool when we got to go into there for the first time, we were like oh this is incredible, like it really changes the feel of that map and you get to be running around in that lake area that normally you kind of just run over to get to the invading White Mantle.
Rubi: That's, that's extremely cool. And some of the places, just like meaningful places to players, something that you had mentioned to me was like the asura starting area and we, we wanted that close to Rata Sum but also asura players are like, hey, wait a minute, you're, you're burning my starting zone, that's...
Joe: Yeah, yeah. One thing our designers did a really good job was importing a lot of the, uh, like, trying to take a look at those areas and say like, okay which npcs should still be here like, let's cast some of them as the innocent fleeing civilians and people you have to go rescue. One of my favorite things about the Metrica Province one is that during the boss fight you're actually aided by several golems that appear during a really early open world event there, there's the four elemental golems that aid you initially and then, for the big climactic boss fight, if you pay attention, they'll combine to form their ultimate golem form, that you got to see in open world as well.
Rubi: This is the worst voltron ever.
Everyone: [Laughter]
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Note: The text below was auto-transcribed and not reviewed. It could be that text appears for the wrong speaker. |
Rubi: I just. We talked, we talked briefly about you guys were able to have that time to change the new Dragon response missions in response to player feedback and Brett, something that you had mentioned was that, that, that can still be tricky even though you have that extra time.
Brett: Yeah, so there's extra time in between all of them. But I mean stuff still gets finalized at a particular time and responding to feedback being agile. It can add risk to a release and I'm. Really glad that we made the changes because obviously they've been appreciated and. It's just really cool when putting in extra effort. People get to see it and it works really well.
Rubi: Yeah, it's, it's nice. It's nice. Once it's out there and you can see. OK. Yes, this work paid off. People actually liked it. Excuse me. All right. Break for a cough. Well, it's the the added work was appreciated. I know I mentioned earlier. Just speaking as a player, I had a lot of fun. So why don't we talk about some of the behind the scenes stuff from development? Just some of the because it can get a little bit weird there in the background. Uh, Brett, you had talked about while you were testing a crystal Bloom faction recruitment event. And you were kind of. Flying solo there for a short amount of time.
Brett: Yeah, we had all of our QA resources allocated to different things when we came to testing the global events. So I ended up in a situation where there was no one to cover. Checking the achievement for doing drag and. And thankfully, we still had documentation from when that season ran, so I found out that as long as you have access to multi clients and the debug commands that were set up back then, you can solo the event, which is a very unique experience that I don't think. Very many people get to have.
Rubi: Yeah, kudos to Nick for extremely, extremely good testing notes.
Brett: Did all of Dragon haulers? Yeah flex emoji?
Rubi: But you you solo self, yeah. With GDQ a tools now, but you did. You had help afterwards. I'm trying to remember who you said stepped in, but you did have help for.
Brett: Sam Clark Wilson, who is clearly in charge of testing festivals, but he had some extra time and helped me out the second run through of that.
Rubi: The next round. Yes, thank you. Yay. Well, thank you and thank you. Sam's going back to I have the north. Joe, do you want to talk about the table?
Joe: So it's just a story about something with the whole faction recurring events that we worked on.
Rubi: Special project.
Joe: Something we really wanted to show was have some kind of visual representation in eye of the north of which factions have joined you, who's here to help and get kind of that. Like, everyone is coming together even after the events themselves have ended. And some of the NBC's have shuffled away or gotten merged into the generic vendors. One thing I hit on was adding this, you know, kind of round table there in eye of the north where? All of your initial friends are there who have shown up to help you in the Dragon response missions and then. As each faction is recruited, they have kind of their representative, who initially is over in the center area handling the recruitment event, and then once it ends they go over to the war table. And to kind of join there and if you have any. Questions or like need to go catch up on their particular lore. You can still go talk to them so you don't miss out on any of that. And managing all of that, having those NPCS appear at the right times. Some of them like Krishna and Logan, if you notice, aren't there when you're at this story. That were there about to be in a response mission. So there's a bunch of little details there that had to get sorted out and make sure they all work with the different chapters coming out and stuff that is. On a certain timetable. But it was a lot of fun. And there's a lot of good details there with going and talking to the NPC's. Bobby wrote a bunch of incredible dialogue for characters like Lord Farron, who are helping you out. There it was all terrible. Logan's dialogue is my favorite. In the best way, something something there that when I had the initial version and I was like, OK, I need to do a little extra effort here was flunt is the Assyrian represent? There you've met him before. In previous seasons. He's a very helpful bureaucrat.
Bobby: A beloved character to all.
Joe: He's great, he's great, he's got, he's got. He's got a good heart. Maybe, yeah.
Bobby: Ok. I didn't even think he had a heart.
Rubi: Going on.
Joe: He helped you the one time. I was really, really impressed by him. Anyway. I wanted him to be the Assyrian representative, cause we haven't seen him for a while and he's a fun character. And having him standing by the table there, just like it didn't quite feel right. So I built him this a serin chair to sit in. He's got this kind of, like, custom built floating chair modeled on the Assyrian Council chairs. And he's got his little data pad there so that he can be kind of looming over. The table at eye level with everyone. And the contrast there that I really appreciate is that the Crystal Bloom Representative is also an Asura and they're just standing there next to him, like trying to peek over the table. They don't get a chair. Hunt only brought the one chair. Sorry.
Rubi: It's it's an extremely fluent thing to do.
Joe: Maybe there should be support that's not. Yeah, there's a little bit of subtle storytelling there.
Rubi: Yeah, it's it's very much like.
Joe: Something else?
Brett: Was nearly gay.
Joe: Something else with that table was that. Everyone, every single tester I've seen and every like time we went to eye of the north where I was like, OK everyone like take a look at this table that we spent a bunch of time on like how does it look, do you think this looks appropriate like talk to the NPC's? Everyone jumps on. Top of the table, like everyone's first reaction is I'm going to get on top of the table and like start promoting at the NPC. And we went back and forth a couple of times on like. OK. Like, do we push people off the table? Maybe there should be an invisible collision there, or some things that you can't stand on the table and ruin everyone's immersion. And every time I put something like that in, I would get feedback saying Oh no, I want to stand on the table. Just just let me jump on the table and like, crash in all of their war plans. So we eventually decided to just let people have their. Fun and.
Brett: Run around on the table. So enjoy that. Yeah, you hear? Heard it hear. First player characters in Guild Wars 2.
Rubi:I feel like.
Brett: Are on the table.
Rubi: Hey. Ohh thanks, Brett. Actually, yes, I did we we'll come back, come back. You know what, though? We can confirm player characters. So yeah, sure.
Bobby: Can't be here.
Joe: Something surrounding there was I don't want to talk about was selection of the different ally factions was something that we had a lot.
Rubi: Fair characters to me. Oh yeah.
Joe: Of discussion. About because the player character has a whole lot of allies, you've been helping people. Your entire career ever since, whatever you're starting event was. And there are so many different. Factions and races and allies who have come to your aid at. One time or another that even though we wanted to have this kind of big, like, OK, like all of our old allies are coming back for this big confrontation with the. Literally, we had to make a choice. So like one thing we decided early was the pact and its forces are just gonna be considered kind of baseline, like, they're not gonna have a big event. It's just the pact is always on your side. They always have forces present. Here and there and we actually ended up making them be the reasoning for some of the challenge missions is that the pact is helping you less if you opt into challenge missions, you're diverting forces elsewhere. The same goes for the different races. Kind of. Normal defenders like the serif and the wardens for the salari. They're all kind of the base factions that help you out in the drug response missions, and then as you recruit people, you get more, but those ones are all just always there. So we had to. Pick which ones we're gonna have recruited, and I can't spoil them. Obviously, I don't wanna tell you what's coming up. But there were a couple that were standouts, like we really wanted the delta more dwarves because they're the ancient enemies of the destroyers. It made a ton of sense and we had just had the stone summit appear in the forging steel mission. And we're like, OK, we can have dwarves. They all have to be ghost dwarves. Uh, like? Just need a little bit of effort to get the cool stone skin effect which turned out really well. Really pleased with that and then we can have the dwarves come back. It was one of those dreams from Guild Wars one, right? And there were some others like the Ebon Vanguard, is another kind of classic Li faction. And since we wanted to have Ebon Hawk come under threat. That was a really natural.
Rubi: It was kind of a good choice.
Joe: Yeah, we had some that came really close. So here is a teaser for you. We really wanted Centaurs as a ally faction. They were made it all the way to implementation and then they were one of the last ones to have a tough look at them and get shuffled off so Centaurs will not be allying with you at this time. Part of the reason there. Was that? The more we looked at it like the centaurs haven't been helpful to you in the past, right? They are actually an. Enemy faction and we wanted to have kind of this, you know, enemy of my enemy. There are some good centaurs. They wanna help you fight the Dragons moment. But explaining that was going to take a lot more effort than the other. Factions and it kind of came down to like, OK, do we do? Do we put all this effort into Centaurs? Or do we shelve that and we'll revisit that in the future? So hopefully at some point, we'll have that sent our focused arc and do that justice.
Bobby: Yeah, there was some cool stuff that was planned for that actually, before we move on to the next thing. Funny story so. Joe, I I I know you probably remember this. So do you remember how Ogden appears in the personal story, right? And then also in some of their earlier living world seasons, and he's just always kind of standing there, right. So the whole thing was one of the considerations about having. The dwarves come back. Was, hey, we actually have. A dwarf in the. Name, but we never built animations for him to move around and do things right. So one of the challenges that we had was, yeah, well, that's why, like in, in living world and and I think in the personal story I'm trying to remember but like he just stands there. He's either in a cinematic or he just. Stands there and you talk to him. He fidgets. He does. Those goofy. Like you know, he stretches and, you know, does one of these things with this cracks his knuckles and all that right. But I remember when we were talking about can we have the dwarves in this? I said. They don't move or fight right now, so if you try to use them, I think he would skate around on the floor cause he didn't have a run animation. So so like I I think there were like prototypes where it looked like he had little, you know what they call Heelys or whatever.
Brett: I didn't know that.
Bobby: Those little rolly shoes. Yeah. So he would just. He would just look around. And I. Was like. You needed to have like you know.
Joe: You can chart over the course of the living world, episodes or progression in the dwarf animations where early on we would have Ogden just conveniently be wherever you were going. It's like oh, he's already down here in the Priory stacks, you know, he was waiting for you here and then. Later on we had. Backed me up. Was it Robin? Who is the dwarf?
Rubi: Yeah, I was just thinking about that one. That was just a thumb.
Joe: Yes, well, he's just a you get his thumb also, he's.
Bobby: He's ahead and.
Joe: Been then, he's turned his throne.
Bobby: Try not to.
Joe: And split the pieces so you just have his head. And so people can carry. It around so he's he's as mobile as. Other people, because they just carry. That and then I think we had ghost warms. Show up so like they had more animations, but they don't have to fight because hey, they're just ghosts. And then we got the stone summit who were actually fighting. But thanks to being the stone summit, they're always, like, fully covered.
Rubi: That's amazing.
Joe: They've got their full plate armor and glowing red eyes because they're evil.
Rubi: And sign.
Joe: So we eventually made. It up to having the start to work again.
Bobby: Yeah. So just so people understand, if they're like, why can't you just do this? It's like, well, we don't actually have that built and anytime we create a new. Movable or playable thing. It has to have a ton of animations and other things factored into it, and it was just so funny because I thought we would never get dwarfs in in Guild Wars two, so this was sort of a big momentous occasion I think for.
Joe: A lot of us, yeah, their event is ongoing. You can get in there and start earning your stoneskin Ora, I think. People are going to have enough tokens to buy it starting this afternoon.
Brett: I think it might have been last night I saw the I saw the timer jump up so I assumed that all of the people bought all of those. If they were those to the grindstone with it.
Bobby: Right, right.
Rubi: I am I am not one.
Joe: Yeah, alright. Well look forward to calling people who?
Rubi: Of those people.
Joe: I'm I'm working on it, I'm close, but I think I'm not gonna be there. Day one.
Rubi: That's that's hilarious about about the fidgets and the animations, and I honestly can't stop picturing Ogden just zipping around on. I don't know if we tried pocket Raptors his feet or what, but I love it and I need it to happen.
Bobby: Inline skate.
Joe: There was a proposal. To have him on like a cart, yeah.
Bobby: That was a thing and we're like, do you pull him or does it, like, is it like a a segue where he just kind of rides around? But and I mean, you know, I'm glad that he can walk now.
Joe: But yeah, silly, I can still can't walk.
Rubi: No, but more than Segway. Let's talk about this.
Bobby: OK.
Joe: No, it we updated the other dwarf whoops. We're close. We're close. We're. Close like the technology is all there we could get moving Ogden as soon. As we need it.
Rubi: What if we put? Him on Frozen Lake, Doric and just push him around.
Bobby: You just kind of like it. It's like, yeah, it's sort of like curling, but not yeah.
Joe: For a really good point.
Rubi: They're brooms in our game.
Bobby: I mean, I think, Joe, that's a new event type, right? Could we we should talk about it offline.
Rubi: No reason. Dwarf and curling. OK. Yes. Make a note for dwarf and curling. Ohh well OK.
Brett: In Dragon bash.
Rubi: OK so. Man, I just want to sit here and like, brainstorm about what we could do with this, but it feels like we probably shouldn't. That seems irresponsible. Joe, something that you mentioned was challenge mode in Dragon response missions and we had we had extra mobs in that for.
Joe: Ohh yeah.
Rubi: A while, didn't we?
Joe: Yeah. So that's a good segue to cause. We were talking about adding things to Lake Doric, so something we want really wanted to get out of the Dragon response missions was having those opt in challenge modes like we had for forging steel where you can kind of pick and choose whether you want to deal with different extra hurdles. In order to get some bonus rewards at the end. And one thing one thing that we initially took directly from fording Steel was having a challenge mode that spawned more enemy mobs. And then that stacks with. If you take the challenge to make any mobs stronger and we kind of had that prototype for a while. And in general, people would look at it and be like we wanted the new mobs to feel distinct. So it wasn't just, oh, there's more destroyers or there's more iceberg. And so we had placeholder mobs, which I think we have a screenshot of.
Rubi: It here? Yes, this will explain the confusion.
Joe: So we had a lot of people who were like, why are there Troy here or in other in other areas? It was different. It wasn't Troy. Everywhere there were like. Fighters and like different things that you can counter and it just felt confusing to people. They were. Like why? Why am I dealing with the ogres here in ebonhawke for? So it and we had concerns with like if I'm over here fighting the destroyers and there's a whole bunch of Choi over here fighting destroyers elsewhere. Because, I mean, they're not allies, right? Then, like your frame rate is dropping because there is 100 destroyers and combat at once, and the Troy aren't winning, so they're not winning their ranks. We ended up changing it to just be the timer challenge that you see now where you get a time limit and then it expires. You don't get as much. Look at the.
Brett: Yeah, we aren't ready for the Primordus minions and Choyo being allied lower bomb quite yet.
Bobby: We're working on.
Joe: We have a we needed to explain a lot. There probably can show the Dragon minions. Can they get?
Bobby: I don't even think the Dragon would would want them personally, but. We'd have to ask them.
Joe: This navari camp.
Rubi: We talked about destroyer choice for a second. We should not. Ohh my gosh I.
Bobby: I still can't get over the fact that when you, when you kill them, they split open like a a melon and it's disturbing.
Rubi: OK, but first they. Just completely freak out, which is great.
Joe: There's a lot of questions.
Bobby: Yeah, they're like, yeah.
Rubi: Yeah, there are a lot of questions, Joe. You're absolutely right. So I do want to back up to something else that you had said, Joe, because you were talking about writing additional dialogue for just little side characters that needed some more fleshing out, and you and Bobby worked together on that, didn't you? This might be a Bobby thing. Joe was just the one who brought it up earlier.
Bobby: Yeah, I. Let me ask.
Joe: Mean stuff like the characters showing up at the table and eye of the north and some of the conversations you can have with them and find out what Logan's been up to for the last bunch of time.
Rubi: What has Logan been up to?
Bobby: Play and find. Yeah. Now he actually we.
Rubi: Yeah, that's a good answer.
Bobby: See you next time now. So I think with all these things, right, Joe and I and everybody else involved in the release like you know, you're like, OK, why is this character here? What is the relevance to what's going on? But also if you, if you're gonna catch up with. You know, touch base like what else are they going to talk to you about, right? Because if it's all business all the time, it it kind of gets boring and it's very one note and it's uh. We have to. Kill the dragon. Blah blah blah. Right? So I think we could look at these things as opportunities where you can also, if you haven't established friendship with them that maybe they'll have something. You know, unique to say to you, right? So that's why, you know, having Lord Farran there, it all was kind of a, a quirky thing. So then we decided to kind of lean into it a little bit and could put a little silly touch base with him at regarding his injury or whatever or whatever.
Joe: He's been growing his girth.
Bobby: Well, totally right. And it was, I mean, well, you know what, the fact that he's in there and he's wearing pants is is real character growth because usually the guy is oiled up and kind of in inappropriate places and you know.
Rubi: It's a victory.
Joe: So yeah, I like the plan. Yeah. And well, and and his his role kind of doing the tactical oversight thing there in either N is showing some.
Brett: That's great.
Joe: Like you know well. You used to. Be kind, we.
Bobby: Also wanted.
Joe: Ho I'm going? To join the front. I'm a hero guy.
Bobby: I'm gonna run in there and then get knocked over. Yeah. So, I mean, that was also another thing where I think for some people, Lord Farron was kind of a fun and funny character and other people were like, it's just some annoying guy. Right. So I think by the time we were ready to.
Joe: So you know.
Bobby: Resolve him as a foreground character. You know he. Assist the commander in missions in season four and gets injured, right? And that was sort of the last we saw of him, he. He does sort of stop from being like the lovable goofball into somebody who's actually trying to be useful and. Less of a like a. A punch line, right? So I mean, he's still a punch line, but at least I think we tried to treat him. With a little bit more care. So it was kind of fun to to use them as a character, but like in regards to all this stuff, yeah, I just want to be very clear to the release itself, the story and the, you know, narrative presentation, it being a A-Team effort, like everything we do is right. So it's a, it's an intense collaboration between narrative and design and art and all the other teams, right. But I was not the lead writer on this episode. You know, that was novera who had taken over throughout the season. She finished up her work, and then, you know, we wished her luck. She moved on to undead lab. So we miss you novera. But you know Alex and.
Rubi: Unless you got there. Thank you.
Bobby: Aaron and Shane, Michael, like a lot, you know, people. From the team all. Contributed, but then also the designer has pitched a lot of great ideas. They stubbed in some dialogue and we kind of looked at it and said, hey, what can we what can we do with this? Right, so, you know, I think the challenge that Joe and I often kind of took on was, you know, if these factions are, you know, joining the cause, how can. It makes sense. And how can it feel like they're invested not just for their, not just for the fact? It's like, oh, you know, together we're stronger and, you know, like a lot of the kind of trophy things, but also what are they actually care about it as individuals? And can we bring any of that? And in some cases, there's opportunities to do fun things. And. And that was sort of the. Challenge, but yeah, we're also fighting against deadlines and line counts and everything else. So. Hopefully what we. We got in there was good enough, but I guess our fans will tell us.
Rubi: It is it. It was a lot and we've, we've joked before on the show about the incredible games that could be made of time and space. We're not constraints and and we're a little more malleable. So you know that it's time and space.
Bobby: Well, that was that was our development was that where for a few years. It was like. Ohh, it'll take us two years to get this done and then that turned into three years and then it turned into four years and then four. You know what? It's 2012 and it's like we actually have to kind of figure out what's going in the box cuz. Like like can we please? This, but I will say this, the advantage of an online game is we can keep kind of building on it and those ideas, and if not for things like living world and the expansions, you know we wouldn't have been able to do some of these you know. Off beat ideas and stories and you know, gameplay conventions and things like that. So it's, you know, I'll be the first to admit I just hit my 15 year anniversary and I still like just the other day, I was doing a playthrough for. No, thank you. Old guy here. Do I get a watch or something? Like what? What do I get for 15 years?
Rubi: I don't know. I have a pen.
Bobby: Like you get to this point where you look back and you go, Oh my God, I'm so lucky to still be doing this after all this time. So. We were playing end of Dragon stuff and I was kind of really amazed at how it was coming together. And last night I was on live playing, you know, the new release and enjoying myself and enjoying, you know, listening to what the players thought or what they were messaging to me. So it's just sorry to get all sappy. I just wanted to say that. Every day it's just I still. Appreciate that I can do this day in. Day out.
Rubi: Well, congratulations on 15 more. Yeah, thanks. Let's just, let's just keep you for 15 more years. Alright, well there's there is one more thing that I want to touch on. If nobody else has development stories. One of the things that I know players like seeing and hearing about are some of the weird bugs and. Development oddities that you guys came across while you were working on this content. So do you. Want to talk about that?
Joe: Yeah, sure. OK. I guess I'll jump in with my favorite out of a couple of things. We thought through in advance, so. One thing we've talked about, the voice acting going in and something that happens there is we'll have there'll be place holder voice acting initially that's just. The like robot speech. That's in there. Then we get the video back and we have the unprocessed voice acting go in. Where? OK, it's now just the clean voice actor read, without maybe like some of the char guttural noise or without like. We have the Norn owl spirit in this chapter who has like some. Spiritual, echoey. Effect going on and we had this bug where when the AL spirits base view went in, there's a section in the Snowden drift. Response mission where? The owl has a line that is agonized. Scream like the owl scream so. And one great thing was that initially, before we had the proper voice acting, it was just the robot voice saying agonized scream. It's like ohh.
Brett: Yeah. Remember this?
Joe: To get the. Actual like owl spirit screaming, we had the voice actor do a bunch of takes right cuz. Like when you're in the studio recording, you don't necessarily know like, OK, this is exactly the kind of screen we want. So instead they were like, hey, just scream for a while, like give us like. 10 different kind of. Screams, you know, play with. It a little. And we'll figure out we'll, we'll cut it down to the one we want. Or maybe process a little bit? It'll get sorted out, so when we had just the base voice acting in initially, I got this bug where one of our QA people was saying, hey, this dialogue is like way out of place. Kashmir starts giving Bram her kind of like. You know, like spiritual guidance, we've all needed it. Speech in the middle of the boss fight. OK, that's weird. And I look at this recording of it and I look at it and I'm like, OK, the problem here is that the owl spirit is screaming constantly during this.
Rubi: Not right now, cashmere.
Joe: Like so, the elf. Scream instead of being like a like one second. You know, you heard this agonized scream. Was like a solid minute of the different different. Ohh. On the screen file with all.
Bobby: The screams end to end.
Joe: And it caused it. Yeah. And it caused the whole dialogue to get offset, right. Everyone following up on like Ohh I heard that scream happened. Actually, later in the middle and until then you just had this continuous owl screaming in the background and I was like is that?
Rubi: Fantastic. I'm glad we fixed.
Brett: It but it's.
Rubi: Funny I.
Joe: Think that's the. Real problem here like.
Bobby: Owl, are you OK? You don't.
Joe: Sound. So yeah, when you get to that.
Rubi: Alice, not extremely, not a. OK.
Joe: I mean in that mission, imagine if the else screaming went on until the boss fight and you can picture it.
Rubi: Ohh boy.
Brett: Another one that I really like. So we we had. Ryland, for whatever reason, is a character that shows up in eye of the north, a whole lot of times, and there was a situation you could get yourself in. If you're on a particular story, step for forging steel, a particular story step for episode 5. And also, we're only partway through your achievement for talking to Bangor and eye of the North. You could have up to three write locks all standing next to each other. I think we actually have an image of that as well, right? Locks. So I only got a picture of the two. Just imagine that there is 1/3 riplock within sight range in the hallway behind this.
Rubi: That's his brother. That's yeah, Whitlock other Whitlock. Definitely not.
Bobby: We don't talk about him.
Joe: To be honest, I. Think you can still get? I think you can still find yourself in a situation where you have two blocks, but you can't get up to three anymore. I think. Don't take. That as a challenge, please.
Brett: Yes, that's. That's just standard for it. It was all a.
Rubi: Ohh yeah, so that's definitely not gonna happen.
Bobby: Dream. Actually, yeah, I got. I got one.
Rubi: Oh my God, some of them.
Bobby: For you so. That's true. So the scripts that came in for release 5. Have definitely came in hot and you know generally we like to do drafts and iterate on them right so that we get them in early. And we're we're. Workshopping them. We have this process on the narrative team that we kind of been formally called office hours and really it's just workshopping, right? Somebody brings a script in. We read it out loud. We talk about it. We make suggestions on how to tighten it up and, you know. It's kind of like a a group critique. And that's usually where we can hone in on the character voice, make sure that we're hitting all the plot points and whatnot, but then also, you know, make revisions cuts or additions as needed, right? If we notice that, you know, something's not working. And it was funny because you could tell that some of the writers were really. You know, working up to the last minute and maybe stressed out because sometimes the scripts would come in and the characters would be talking and next thing you know, one of them is dropping an F bomb. And one of them's, you know, just cursing like a sailor. And. And I remember kind of raising my hand in in teams chat and I. Said yeah, we can't. Actually let this go live like that, so we may need to drop the F bomb. Yeah, this one and it's.
Rubi: Actually literally not allowed.
Bobby: Just like, oh, yeah, we vote. Yeah, like, yeah. Unless we want to get an M rating, I don't know. It's a live game, maybe. Actually, though, we had a a thing a while ago where a character ended up cursing like we had an outtake where they said I'm getting too old for this, you know, and the wrong file got import.
Rubi: I remember that.
Bobby: And it was live for I don't know, maybe a week or two. So it was funny. You'd go to. This event and. The I'm getting too old for this, you know. And then like, yeah, it was a little bit of a mistake cause like the. Actors when? You're in between takes. They will sometimes, you know, have some fun with it, or they'll they'll add lab or. Yeah, they'll be kind of goofy.
Rubi: They will be silly.
Bobby: And you know, we could not publish or, you know otherwise. Show all this stuff. In fact, I don't know, 5-6 seven years ago, I worked with the audio director at the time and I said let's do a supercut of all these outtakes. And it was like 20 minutes of one of our actors going off on all these tangents and cracking jokes and imitating other, you know, characters or actors or whatever and. It got filthy and finally my job was to listen to the whole thing and say, yeah, we gotta take this out. We gotta take this out. They gotta take this out. And the audio director is like. But then, like, the whole thing is gone. I'm like, dude, we cannot. Like, no, this cannot go out live with and it was. Yeah, it was trying to manage you with time. So can knock. And he's cursing like a sailor and making all these really raunchy jokes. I'm like, uh, no. Like, maybe when we're all, like, out of a job, we could, like, leak it. But no, we're not putting this out under the company brand.
Joe: The rule is that.
Rubi: You know, I think I remember that.
Joe: We can still be picture 13. With one of them, right.
Bobby: Wait, what's up?
Rubi: We have to, I think I remembered that because it's talking to me about that way back when and she because she came to me and she was like, hey, I don't know if this is something we can do, but I have this file. Is this something we could like release is an outtake and I listened to it. I was like, that is not something that like, I'm not even being no fun person like.
Bobby: Oh yes.
Rubi: We actually cannot do that. But I remember listening to that and I like I started laughing and.
Bobby: Yeah, it's.
Rubi: I was like, whoa, that is, that's a lot.
Bobby: Yeah, yeah. They they like to have fun. Sorry Joe, you were saying?
Joe: Something ohh I was saying it's. Still, PG13, if we have just one F bomb right, I think that's the rule.
Bobby: Uh, yeah, maybe now, I don't know. We'll have to ask production.
Joe: So stay tuned, we've got. That up we.
Bobby: Always say that, like when the game actually ends, when you get to that final story moment. Yeah, that's when we'll drop it and then you know, the screen goes black. We uninstall the game and. It's like it never happened. Harsh. Ohh my gosh.
Rubi: So yeah, you. Had to fix that in the script before everything.
Bobby: Live. Ohh yeah and. I would say some of the the character dialogues gotten a little saltier over the years, but you know. But yeah, we. We do need to kind of comb through it and you know police it for either you know, language or even just like tone or voice. Right. Like some of the characters can get a little colloquial and they might say things that. Might sound a. Little out of place interior if it's a if it's a character trait, then sure. If it's just breaking character, then that's something we want to try and avoid. And you know, sometimes things sneak in, but other times we we can successfully kind of. Pull it out. For tonal reasons and you know, replace it with something that's a little bit more appropriate. And yeah, I I often feel like the destroyer of fun. Sometimes when I tell people like, please don't. You know, put this pop culture reference in or please don't have the character curse like this or whatever. But you know, it's the job. Have done worse, yeah.
Rubi: Alright, So what else?
Bobby: Like we had a.
Rubi: List, didn't we? We, we Joe. How about the one with the stone skin infusion?
Bobby: Ohh yeah.
Joe: Oh, well, unfortunately, we don't have a screenshot of this messing up, so you'll have to kind of imagine it. But the stone skin infusion that I mentioned, you can earn right now or finish earning very soon with the dwarf event. It has a whole bunch of custom tailoring for the different races because to get a really nice like you've been completely turned to stone kind of effect on you. The artists had to size it to the different. Different like race, body sizes and you know limb length, what have you. To make sure you didn't have a bunch of like weird looking seams where like your arm hits your torso and so on. And we had a problem where I had all of this set up, so like, OK, you apply the infusion, it figures out what race you are. It gives you the proper, like, reskin effect on you. And it looked great. And then I get bugs back from QA where they're like, I applied the infusion and now my character looks completely wrong. Like you had very visible seams. The stone effect was like going the wrong way and I'm like, what is going on here? We finally figured out it was. After you zone like if you move to a different map or log out and log back in. It ends up with the wrong effect, but it's fine right after applying it.
Rubi: So it's much like Ogden. It's fine if you don't move.
Bobby: laughing
Joe: Yeah, exactly. It was one of those. Like, it works until it like it works on casual inspection, right? It works the first time. Unfortunately it didn't work any time after the first. But we fixed that, it should be. All good now.
Rubi: I feel like there's a parallel here between that and Ogden not being able to move and.
Joe: Yeah. Any any teacher finish?
Brett: Out then he'd be fine.
Joe: Anytime we do something with having like a anytime we have something where we have the like full body kind of special effect go on. That's always something that can cause issues. I think we do have. An image here. Brett, do you want to talk about? We have the other stone skin, the revenant, jade wind attack? Yeah.
Brett: Yeah. So. I think that this bug has been in the game for a while, but it became front row center again because we have the destroyer. Army is something that you're engaging with. A whole lot. So a tester found that if you use the jade wind skill, it'll apply an overlay effect on whoever it hits, turns them into jade and destroyers really did not like that happening to them we have an image, jade wind, so all of their fire effects would turn into. Giant checkerboard boxes that would be flying around. So, happy to say that our new Army is working for that, but also all of the Porteria destroyers are also all fixed up for this as well. Good. Something that we got to do with episode 5 that I was really happy about is we took the chance to kind of revisit the core destroyer. This is.
Joe: I mean, which hadn't really been we had the like vine touched and death touch destroyers in a. Previous episode, but the base destroyers themselves had never been changed since, like the launch of the game, they had a bunch of very old skills or simple bars and they were all invulnerable to burning. Which boy on some of my characters it's just been. The bane of my existence. So the new destroyers are not invulnerable to burning. And that's just. You can always make something burn, right you. Just, yeah. Gotta work hard.
Brett: Right. My to go ask.
Bobby: If you're curious about Elementalist, thanks you.
Rubi: Same, yes, anything can anything can burn if you try hard enough. So, well, there's there's one that I want to save for the end. UM. But Joe, do you want to talk about the story and PC locations changing and?
Joe: Yeah. So this was a bit about we talked earlier about having the voice acting come back in and needing to like tailor it to the scene or change timings or figure out whether it needs processing. And one thing that we have to do a lot of processing on ever since we introduced this is a. Capability that the player characters friends have is calm lines where you have the like communicator crackle of you saying something through the radio sort of deal. It's advanced to certain technology. I don't know if it's radios. But a really common thing that we can go back and forth on there is how distant somebody is for their lines, because if you load into the map and Logan is supposed to be somewhere else. Then it makes sense for him to be, uh, doing the communicator lines. Sure. We had an issue where some of Logan's lines in the Lake Doric Dragon response mission. Had that communicator processing, so it sounded like he was. On the radio. But then. In the process of design feedback and arranging the mission, we actually ended up changing as the Logan was next to you at the start and he wasn't off somewhere else. And so we got this bug where you load in. You can plainly see Logan in front of you, and he's like doing like, hey, commander like.
Brett: I'm on the radio here.
Joe: And you need to know about all these ice brood and gridlock standing next to him doesn't have the. Processing and he's in that sense it it created this really interesting kind of past progressive thing where Logan is talking to you over the communicator. Like he doesn't want to, like, actually talk to you. Right. Like, yeah, out. You should go help.
Bobby: Riplock you tell the commander that Logan's mad at him and he doesn't want to have dinner?
Joe: Yeah, I think Logan is still a little bit upset about Dragon fall. Like, I don't think he.
Rubi: Felt included. Oh my.
Joe: God ever since, ever since you were like, alright, it's time to kill. Crocker Toric and Logan's like. You'll need good old Logan Thackery for that. Right. And you're like, no. So we got this next.
Brett: There was also there was another one in that same instance where the player character actually spoke to themselves over the Comm. Yeah.
Rubi: I like so much.
Joe: We had some lines where you were talking and it was coming out of your. Like backpack with the. Blue text.
Rubi: She did the metal.
Bobby: We had actually that same thing happened in the Ascalon settlement thing where you'd come in and the idea is Marjorie is off somewhere else. Javi, I think is right in front of you and. There's this like. 3 way call going on or whatever and it was like do we just? Have them. Do we have you hear them? As if they're like within shouting distance? Or are they on Coms? Or do we have it? Where? Like if you get close enough it switches and it's just. Ohh man that that was. A lot of fun trying to. Get everything figured out and reprocess cause I think we did like someone had marked an entire scene as everything on comms and yeah the player was on comms, Marjorie was on comps. The person right in front of you was on comms and we're like this doesn't sound right, so yeah. We have to. Sometimes redo a whole bunch of that stuff and and poor Joe because I think he was. Doing a lot of the audio processing and he had to like or him and Marissa. They had to like undo and redo a whole bunch of those files cause they. Got marked wrong.
Joe: That one.
Bobby: They're they're. They're heroes. Yeah, yeah. Joe. Joe Clark.
Rubi: Well, that's. I thank you for the gift of picturing that passive aggressive Logan on Coms.
Bobby: Like now we should actually do a scene where they're like on comms, right in front and.
Rubi: I'm not talking to you used to know.
Bobby: He's like hiding behind a tree or. He's just like facing. Away from you talking on the comms.
Rubi: I love it.
Bobby: I'm washing my hair tonight. Goodbye. Yeah. It's from. It's from.
Joe: A previous episode, but it's one of my favorite moments in this in ice Root Saga has been when Whitlock is trying to call you as you were doing, I think you get transformed into a majestic eagle. Is it screech? Yes. Yeah. Adventure Eagle and Redlock is calling you like, hey, I got I need an update. Like, how is that going? And you yell at him as an eagle and he's like, OK, I'll call back later.
Bobby: You're busy.
Rubi: Really a bad time? I love it. The.
Brett: That that was fun.
Rubi: I that was that was super good. I don't, I don't know because I never experienced it on Dev. Did robot voice give the annoyed Eagle screech line please say yes.
Bobby: Ohh of course. It's just. I'm pretty sure I know it, eagle screech.
Joe: Set it.
Brett: Out you're annoyed, eagle, screech.
Rubi: I love it. Oh my gosh. OK. So the last there is one last development bug that I want to talk about. That's a little teaser for what's coming next. Also quick shout out to all three cats who have joined this three. Because what's the hammer behind you?
Bobby: Stuff going on back there.
Brett: Yeah, they're having fun.
Rubi: They are. They're having a very good time and then Joe's char is now. Off camera range but.
Brett: Yay, good. Good. Here. There you.
Bobby: Go. Alright, zoom in quick. Well, we can now watching it, yeah.
Rubi: We're going to do this 40 more times, so my I I had to close my office door so I have no cats. To share today, maybe about time.
Joe: All right, so.
Rubi: So yeah, let's talk about this bug that you worked on for upcoming content.
Joe: Yeah. So one thing that's coming up soon when the next faction arrives in, I believe early February. Being able to upgrade the dragonslayer weapon set to another tier by imbuing it with Dragon Energy. Uh, it would have been a spoiler earlier, but there are two versions of that. You can either imbue it with destroyer energy, or the ice brood energy. Now that we're fighting the ice brood. So we wanted to give that kind of a. Like have more of a moment to that. Then you're just crafting the weapon. So there's a special thing you do where you craft the unfinished weapon and then you can take it into a response mission, stun the boss and stab it with the weapon to imbue it with that particular energy. And that was something that was kind of a passion project to get, like the special skill where you can. You know, stab your dragonslayer shield into the boss, to imbue it with energy. We had kind of a. Feedback thing there where? So the way you do that is you'll get the little pop up skill. To use your weapon and. We had a question where, OK, like what happens? In the rare case. I mean some of you are gonna take this as a challenge in the rare case where you have multiple weapons where you're like, OK, I have my unfinished sword, my unfinished great sword. My unfinished staff like. And I'm gonna stand this boss and get him. With all of them, right? You ended up with kind of this.
Rubi: Doesn't work on everything in your inventory, yeah.
Joe: Inventory. Juggle where? You're like. Yeah, you were. You were. You you ended up with this kind of interior struggle where you were like, OK, like I gotta get the skill for the staff, hit it with the staff. I go back to my inventory, I double click the item, I get the skill. For the shield, I hit him with the shield. And it was kind of unfun doing the inventory jiggle. So what we did was we made it. So that whenever you succeed at imbuing one of the weapons, it checks your inventory to say hey, do we have more still to do? And it'll just chain into it. You'll just do this combo attack where you start hitting it with every unfinished weapon you've got. And there was a bug where. Because there's a lot of things to do. Right. It's got a bunch of checks for like OK. Did I have an unfinished axe? Then trade the axe out? Did I have an unfinished dagger trade the dagger out there was a bug where I think it might have been the dagger was trying to trade for the wrong weapon. So the. Trade would fail. And it would still do the check and say ohh well we still got an unfinished dagger. Keep trying. And you would just. Hitting the boss with different unfinished weapons with nothing happens. And you kind of. Get stuck.
Rubi: We have, yeah, we have a. Gift of that.
Joe: So yeah, so. This GIF is actually. The test where I had like one of each weapon that I was trying to go through. You can see here this is in development. Bad news. The boss is in this version. The boss gets stunned for free by those skills in the live version, you'll have to stun the boss and then hit it with the skill. So quite the opposite. So. You won't have. The benefit of the boss continuously being staggered as you're doing this.
Rubi: Oh my gosh. And something that uh, Brett mentioned about this is that it wasn't a situation where you could just be like, OK, I give up, I'm going to stop attacking and leave this situation. You're trapped.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Brett: Yeah, even using debug tools it was not easy to get out of that. It was very nearly a soft lock. I think that the only way you could. Get yourself out of it is by weapon swapping, which cancels your animation. But like.
Rubi: Oh my gosh.
Brett: Teleporting did nothing. Trying to run did nothing.
Joe: For a while.
Rubi: But the good news is you got it figured out and that's coming.
Joe: Yeah. So.
Brett: Pretty. I'm really excited.
Joe: Soon you. Will be able. To do that combo attack on life looks so sweet. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to see how many people try to. Get a big pile of those weapons. Although you can only make as many As for as long as the boss is stunned, so there are probably some upper bound on that. Unless your group is very cooperative. With starting the box.
Rubi: Awesome. Well, on that note, with a with a little teaser for you guys, I'm going to tell you all. Thank you for joining and let you get back to work unless there's any other bugs that anybody is remembering at the last second. Otherwise, I will thank you and your cats. And thank you guys for joining and watching us.
Brett: They're flush. Thank you.
Rubi: Alright guys, enjoy.
Joe: So have a good one.
Rubi: Enjoy power. We will see you in game. Bye everybody.
Joe: Yeah. Thanks everyone.
