Guild Chat - Episode 13
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Guild Chat - Episode 13
- Title
- @TwitchCon, Story Missions
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Leah Hoyer
- Date
- October 2, 2015
- Official video
- YouTube
The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.
The 13th episode of Guild Chat aired on October 2, 2015. Listen to Leah and Rubi discuss the design and challenges of writing Story Missions in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns live from TwitchCon on September 25-26 2015.
Transcription[edit]
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Note: The text below hasn't yet been converted from raw subtitle text into pretty print like above.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p4IPjVhTwA |
welcome back to Guild chat uh Leah is still here with me we are going to talk some about Guild Wars 2 heart of thorn Story Mission what I am so glad you made it into I know I didn't mean to surprise you or anything I I told her she was sitting up here to get a present and the present is to talk about Story Mission it is kind of one of my favorite things so I know I know you pretty well all right so things that we're talking about today is just the differences we've made in story missions making the player more a part of it giving the player more choices and we're going to kick that off with a quick run through of one of the first story missions if you've participated in the beta weekend events up to now you've seen this and this is a really good illustration of all of the things that you and the narrative team have done yeah and it's it's there's a there's so much that we're just like oh where do we even start so yeah I think it'll be nice to kind of look at the video SE and things so we can point at those but absolutely The Narrative team had a real desire um also working not just the folks on the narrative team but the folks in design the folks in all these other areas who really wanted to make sure that the players here is feeling like they are the commander they're in charge they're really doing a lot of things and and that their choices matter and that their experience and their actions in this game matter um and yeah I think this is a really good example we can let started off by seeing how much more involved the player is in the choices that you get so let's take a look at the [Music] video Stay Shar people mod moth hit the Packa hard it's up to us to pick up the pieces oh Gods so much wreckage I was expecting Carnage but this m moth actually took down the entire fleet Spirits could anyone have survived we need to get down there fast I see a camp and a camp means survivors let's go BM get back here I'm a to Goan son I want to know where she is FM you mustn't run off like that we're in enemy territory lenia glad to see you survived I need a status report now you're a welcome sight Commander the situation is grim M moth tore the fleet apart The Pact is in Ruins trahern and Destiny's Edge were taken prisoner they were alive but now Mia and the remaining soldiers no longer trust me and you're surprised Scarlet Aaron and now this mamoth always uses svari to do its dirtiest dirty work we need to strengthen the defenses around here our priority has to be salvaging weapon parts from the crash site what about our comrades in the cavern The Pact does not abandon its own look around sir there is no more PCT and the prisoners you want to save are probably already dead think it through Soldier we need greater numbers or any Salvage party we send will disappear like the others this isn't helping just tell us where Destiny's Edge is please Len there stand by I believe you're still on our side but I need to think this through lener is right this time we have to rescue the packed prisoner ERS it's both logical and our duty Destiny's Edge were taking prisoner too R doing Len the's soldiers might help us pick up the trail let's focus on protecting the soldiers we still have I say we scare up some turret parts to defend this position we need supplies and Salvage to build up this position or we're all going to die every everyone listen up we've suffered a serious setback but we're far from beaten I trust lener if you trust me you can trust him we're all still on the same side understood yes commander lenia will join the search and rescue team if you're not on that team dig in and fortify this position now fall in and let's get to work it's not worth risking more lives to save svari prisoners they're already gone svari belongs to morum off you're a fool only weak-willed svari are vulnerable the rest of us myself and the commander especially fight back he's right mamoth wants us to turn on each other are you going to play right into the enemy's hands no but who says you're not the enemy gunnard Gat come on we're better off on our own count me out of your tiny Mutiny my duty is to my fellow soldiers I'm staying it's your funeral this Camp won't last another night good luck you're going to need it sharpen your blades and guard your vitals I'm back hope you don't mind me joining in Commander it look like you could use some help help Tribune you're alive but where have you been and what's that new magic you're using later CB all you need to know is that I'm back and I'm better than ever right now we've got comrades to rescue and dragon minions to kill rl's right we need to find Destiny's Edge and hit M moth where it lives let's go Tribune time for us to kill another Elder Dragon there is a lot going on there's so much to talk about so the community team grabbed some of the things they were really excited to talk about and put this together and it's the first time I'm seeing it all pulled together which is cool so there's so to look at rone on the European side of our community team did a lot of work on this so big congratulations to raone and thanks for the work yeah so you have you have multiple choices that you can take different paths you can take you have NPCs pitching in their opinions and letting you know what they think and special shout out to the tiny mutant ni Sur we were like we were looking at each other and laughing while that was going on that was such a great line so where do you even where do you even begin to put this together from a technical standpoint ah well we came at this uh next story just saying hey while we know we it is going to pick up really right after season 2 ended you know you really are this this is a continuation of the story with no pause absolutely but we also knew that there were something that we wanted to do to help even improve that player experience and so there's a variety of things that you'll see in there one of them um that is new for this is there's the optional sort of discussion icon that we're using a lot more in this so you have the ability in that instance where you're being asked to make a choice one from the other you could just make a choice based on your gut instinct or you have the option to go around and talk to various people get their input um and understand so that can can be as indepth as you want it to be it could be faster it could be more like no I know that this is what feels right to me immediately and that I think is really big because it's something I appreciate because I really I personally in my gameplay I like that kind of thing I want to know what's going on and I really like to delve into the story I know not everybody does some people just want to get to the fighting part and I like that we've made it so that can happen and we want to enable that so it's entirely possible not to go um and talk with any of those people people who have that optional thing you can just make your choice right away but I do like the fact that we then give different play Styles and different amount of some people do they want to see they want to turn over every Rock and see does this have a message is this person going to talk to me is this thing G to give me some great piece of information so they're going to go poke around a lot more things than other people do they just want to progress the story they want to move on they want to get the big pieces and I think that's one of those things that we've given as a great option that we're using whenever we can um and of course putting in player choice um and player choice I think comes in a lot of different packages I love the fact that that clip had a svari player character um and I was like very important to me that we had it was a svar and what is interesting is that's a choice people probably made depending on when you joined the game you could have made that choice three years ago but that choice absolutely has an impact on what's going on in this particular game and and so having those Choice moments but also really building upon things that you've done in your past as a character was important to us as well um other things that you'll notice about some of the technical pieces there is you saw the beginning the characters now have the ability to walk and talk in a way that they they really couldn't before and it seems like kind of a minor thing but it's so isn't it's more complicated so much more complicated it takes a lot of bandwidth it does a very you know various things about how our engine is built and stuff we really had to think about um how can we make this effective but I love the fact that you are creating story your characters talking other characters are talking to you while you're in the action because you it's to me so much more satisfying to have that information all delivered to you while you're in the midst of gaml while you're in the midst of action and moving from one place to another cuz it's so much more natural so much more the way we all live granted we're probably not in a dragon infested jungle you know fighting off those I know isn't that good for us uh but at the same time you don't just stand and have a conversation and then go do something it's so much cooler that you can actually be doing it while the gameplay is going on and I know players I know players like that I think that was something that you noticed and you probably enjoyed as much as me when players started realizing that this was happening it was a huge deal and they were super happy about it yeah and not to mention the other thing that players are really loving is the fact that player character voice is back so you know we just had this awesome segment from Jennifer hail I hope everyone got a chance to to tune in to our cooking show um but you know she plays the svari female character and there is that um just awesomeness that comes when you know oh when I started off playing this game this was the character that I was working with then and it just it feels kind of like coming home and it really is part of that giving that sense of player character agency and how important it is for the player character to be the one sort of leading the action making the decisions making the choices and giving them a voice is a big part of that so it's something that we're really excited that we are able to bring back um into the game now yeah well these are your characters and the more they can do and the more like you said player agency the more they can do as far as that goes the better it is M absolutely so I think the amount of work it took to put that in there was totally worth it yeah yeah it is it's it is tougher because you think about the fact every time you have a player character say a line there are 10 actors just in English who have to say that lineup and of course we're not just recording this game in English we do this in foreign languages and that's so it exponentially in increases it and of course you're writing variations for things because it's not the case that an Asura is going to say the same thing as a Char is say the same thing as a svari all the time and so um but that you know I will say that stuff that the narrative team gets so excited about is when they get the chance to to really bring life to that player character that really is you're playing a role you want that player character to be doing something different you want that because of the choices that you've made on your gender on your race on your profession on your all those kind of things you know um that is something we tried to play a lot with um in this and so it's I think that's a really good example of a few of the ways that we're able to I think make that come um into fruition a lot more yeah so you mentioned the svari player character and how important that was and we talked about that just a little while ago this conflict that's coming internally inside the game with player characters who are svari and maybe not as trusted by other by other player characters and other NPCs as much it how again I I just keep asking this because it's how did you even begin figuring out how to make that work without it feeling like it's just shoehorned in there well goodness I think because it's so natural to where we are in the story right now that svari are having a really different experience um I think a lot of the ideas as we were sitting around in brainstorming meetings and everything a lot of them kind of present themselves and that's when you know that you've got something special and you've done a good job both with your your world building your lore but also the characters and the position of of how they relate to the world when a lot of things the ideas just start to come kind of naturally and you start to realize what if oh this would be a great place for something different to happen if you're a silvar or something different to happen if you're in a Surah some place different to happen if you're a CH whatever the case may be um and even we do do a bit of profession variation and things like that and I think that naturally comes even the the portion that uh you had in the video there that um the way that all plays out and the way people respond to you um particularly there obviously was the the Char NPC who is is not a fan of Len they are not a big fan of syari at this point and you kind of understand why you know there's a real logical reason for people to distrust sari look around at the wreckage man if you play that with a sari character you do get a sense of how that plays when you play it with a non syari it plays out differently than that and it's something I don't want to get too into it you should play all this both um but it's you know lots of little moments like that that we found throughout the entire game that just really pepper a different experience right and it just it matters it's not just this is how my character is shaped totally matters yeah so something that we've talked about quite a lot over the past year or so is the storytelling in the game we have the storytelling in the open world and then we have instant story and these are different things and it's something that we've been working with for quite a while absolutely when one of my I was say one of my missions I think um when I came and joined Guild Wars is is ideally I want people to think about the story as being something that is part of the totality of the experience um I don't think personally that story is more important than gameplay or less important or that the art should override the audio or whatever it all comes together to make one really great experience right and in line with that I think it's really important that we also are making sure that we're kind of telling story in all the ways that we have available to us and so when a person say would get an episode of you know Season 2 A lot of times people think of okay well what that is is there are these say three story instances that I will go to and I'll follow the green star and I'll go there and I get to the end of it and it's done but they're really both in those seasons of course but as we're looking at Heart of thorns we are striving so much more to tell a story that doesn't just happen within the confines of those sort of more traditional story chapters right um and as you look at the story Journal this time I think you're also going to maybe be surprised to find out that we have some of these story instances that happen in those confined spaces but we also are putting story steps out in the open world where you can encounter other NPCs where you can encounter other player characters and you get the chance to while there are certain things that you are exploring kind of in a step by step I'm going through this story that's being told in this portion of the open world you have so much more ability to then go off to the side and explore other things for a while and understand how the story that's going on in the open world is really part and parcel of the whole thing and how it supports what's going on in the story instances and how the story instances lead to a lot of things that are going on in the open world and we're really trying to do a much um more thorough job of integrating those and I think it is it's it's absolutely a big step in that direction and something we're going to continue to do as a company as we sort of go on to you know the next steps of story and all of that kind of thing I I am excited to see it because yeah we do have open world steps and we do have more traditional instant steps um nice job making all of this more cohesive as we go to everybody involved yeah absolutely it's it's something that the narrative team can't possibly accomplish on their own this is part of you know narrative is working with design is working with the audio is working obviously with our cast is working with art to make sure that there you know ideally isn't anything out in the open world that's contradicting something that's going on in the story and all of that and vice versa that we really are working together and you know it's it's quite a challenge cuz there's a lot of people who make this game um and a lot of conversations that have to go on um in the back and forth and and trying to make sure that somebody has a great idea over here and they're working at a corner of a certain map and they start building on something and then we find out about it we're like oh wow that's really cool but there's this one aspect of it that's kind of goes counter to what we're doing over here could we do this other thing with it and and when you start to have those moments I think those are the things that people who are working on this game those are the kind of things that get them super excited because they start to realize how everybody's ideas are contributing to this whole experience and how they are so interwoven in the more ways we can find to really weave them in together and to have things that just you start to seize upon these little opportunities to help pay off something that happened maybe in the more linear story that happens in the open world in a section and that's awesome like that's just super exciting when that comes together I think doing story for game development has there's an extra layer of complication because you have you have all of these pieces that need to fit together and you have all of these teams that are working together and you could have you could have an amazing story idea and present it to the rest of the team and you could be presenting something that the game engine there's no way can possibly be rendered so if you can get that working together well and you can get everybody working together and cooperating and bringing their ideas and making sure everything fits you can come up with something really great and I think that's what the we're in the process of now yeah absolutely which is just so exciting to see the in order to make this all come together it would never have happened had they're not at the outset of thinking about heart of thorns and looking at the production getting all the different disciplines that go into the game sort of in the room talking about things at the same time and that from a very very early stage it's not that the narrative team always just completely decides oh we're going to start the story here we're going to hit these five beats and we're going to get to this end point yeah make it happen that's so not the way it can possibly happen because there are there are gameplay constraints there are engine constraints there's a whole bunch of other things but it's not even about the constraints design will come to us and say you know what we'd really love to do this kind of gameplay do you have something that would help us you know kind of is there something about the story that can go in that direction and you all of a sudden find out oh this is a really nice marriage of these two things and you wind up really working in that idea and it yeah that as much as anything shapes kind of the totality of the story that you're telling so it is it's absolutely like you said these go every direction it's so much more complex and it is harder you know I I used to work largely on story and stuff for TV I can tell you so much easier cuz you know it is it's just all about telling story and it is it's a straightforward narrative the player can't choose what happens next you know in most instances and so um when you introduce that Dynamic it becomes so much harder but it's so much more fun and so much more rewarding the payoff is completely huge well I'll tell you what I have one more thing that I want to talk to you about we have just a couple minutes as we wrap up we've talked a lot about the svari and their effect on the gameplay but we're not we're meeting some other races that aren't playable races but they do have a big impact on the gameplay in the story yes so I'm going to make you pick one oh goodness surprise you know who I'll talk about and they've gotten some we've talked about them a bit in blogs but you know I want to talk about a bit is the hilac I will say the H are so much fun and what I will say to people who when you've been if you've been able to play the beta weekends you've gotten a chance to get them to know them a little bit but you haven't really seen how they can be integrated in the story how they impact the story and that sort of stuff anded in arenanet right now is part of our like we're trying to polish everything and make it as good as it can be everybody in the company is playing this game and I will say we get so many really fun positive comments about these tree frog folk they are are just a great blend of they are allies they come with their own really in and fun yeah that's true um well Morty has the power to convert pretty much anybody to be sort of evil jerk yeah I know so I would say I think people are going to really enjoy the fun of these characters and getting to know them and their lifestyle and the F they live in these tree houses and they these just tall lanky frogs who have just such a knowledge and affection for the jungle and it's been disrupted lately and you get to come in and sort of help be part of trying to help them find a solution I think it's a really it's a it's a cool segment so talk to them find the find the high look find the IL hang out in the hang out in their tree houses and talk to them see what they have to say about the story and you can do that in the upcoming beta weekend event for those who pre- purches hot we will see you in game thank you Leah yeah thank you so much bye guys we'll be back in a bit yeah
