Guild Chat - Episode 26
Guild Chat - Episode 26
- Title
- Plans for 2016 and Music
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Colin Johanson
Maclaine Diemer
Lena Chappelle - Date
- January 8, 2016
- Official video
- YouTube
The 26th episode of Guild Chat aired on January 8, 2016.
"Host Rubi Bayer is first joined by Game Director Colin Johanson to talk about how plans for 2016, with details about the first big upcoming game update. Composer Maclaine Diemer and Game Designer&Composer Lena Chappelle then go behind the scenes on the Heart of Thorns music."
Transcription[edit]
Introduction (0:33)[edit]
Rubi Bayer: (muted) ...host Rubi if you're watching for the first time welcome and we're very glad you're here. I want to start off today's show with something that I'd, I'm planning on doing for every guild chat here on out. This is just to give you guys as players a little bit more insight into what we're doing, what we're working on, what we're creating, what we're improving here at Arenanet. Um, we're going to start with two things today. I talked to a couple of our developer teams. I talked to game designer Matt Pennebaker and you may have already seen this on the forums, but Matt's been doing a lot of work on Legendary collections just things that you guys have been giving feedback on things that you've been running into. And Matt's been putting in some work on studying and improving those. Some of them are going in next Tuesday... (looks at Colin Johanson)
Colin Johanson: Yeah.
Rubi: ...on the build on January 12th, but Matt's had a lot of things to say he's been answering a lot of questions on what he's working on, things that can go in now, things that are taking a little bit longer to fix and why that is, and you can find we've gathered all of that into a post on the Guild Wars 2 Forums. You can look in the bug forum and find that to see what he's doing with that. So I know that's the thing a lot of you guys have been interested in, so we wanted to let you know what we're doing with that.
Colin: Yeah you know quick, quick to add to that one is uh I think we've said before. We've got a whole new set of legendaries that you'll see slowly roll out over time. Uh you know he and his team are are going to be building those out. Right now they're focused on making sure that the one, the precursors and legendaries we put in the game today, uh, are all functioning the way that we want them to, that we're listening to player feedback and iterating on those. Uh and then their next big project is to start building out uh more and more new legendaries for the game as well, uh, taking lessons from the ones we've put in so far. So that's just one more thing to look forward to from from Matt and that team.
Rubi: Yeah I had an interesting talk with one of our producers yesterday about that, that made me really excited about what's coming so.
Colin: I've seen some of the new Legendaries. They're amazing.
Plans for future updates (2:19)[edit]
Rubi: I haven't seen them yet, so please email me or something guide me to these because I've been not spoiling myself. Um, so the other thing I wanted to mention. I know some of you are curious about a balance update, and we're pulling together some news right now about our goals for balance in each class. We're going to have a really big blog post about that next week, and Carl McLean is going to join me next Friday on Guild Chat to talk a little bit more about what's, what our goals are for balance in this first quarter. So that's a little bit of news for what's going on behind the scenes. Um you can find that in every Guild Chat coming up.
Colin: Yeah that's, that's going to become a regular thing. We talked about this around when HoT launch, but uh one of our big goals for the game uh is every 3 months or so every quarter to have a big balance update that kind of shakes up the meta for the next 3 months. So we have uh, next week we'll be revealing all the information like Ruby said about the the first big balance update of 2016. Uh but that's something you'll be able to look forward to every 3 months after that as well. Uh is a really big update uh and then obviously between those updates smaller tweaks like we've been doing um. But yeah it'll be really nice...
Rubi: Yeah.
Colin: ...to settle into that. I think we've heard a lot from players over the the last few years. They'd really like more frequent balance updates. They want to know exactly when to expect them and how often uh, and they'd like to see you know strong changes to the the meta in the game when those happen uh and that is exactly what you're gonna see, so uh.
Rubi: Awesome.
Colin: Yeah looking forward to being able to tell you all about that next week.
Rubi: Yeah so we have we've got a lot of cool stuff coming next week um. Since we got colin in here we're going to take really good advantage of your time. (laughs)
Rubi: I'm, we're going to talk to you guys today about what we're, what we're planning for 2016 and what we've got coming up. Um you've been working on a blog post for next week about this this will come out on the 12th. We have a lot going on on the 12th. (laughs)
Colin: Yes. Next Tuesday is a big day, a build and a blog.
Rubi: Yeah. But we're going to give you a preview today um first can we talk a little bit about, how about development balance and how we're planning on doing that in the 2016 year.
Colin: Yeah uh you know next next Tuesday I have the the next state of the game blog will come out, um and that'll cover both a combination of what's coming up uh not everything but a lot of what's coming up in the next 3 months, uh and also kind of a high-level view into where we're going with Guild Wars 2 in 2016. Uh and we're going to give you a little bit of a preview of some of that stuff that's in that blog here today, um and then a lot of it we're going to say for next Tuesday uh. But uh development balance uh...
Rubi: This is always, this is so hard. (laughs)
Colin: (laughs) Development balance is the kind of the headliner, the the start of that blog uh, and I think if you look back on what we've done development wise in 2012, in 2012, uh 2013, uh 2014, uh predominantly our focus was on regular updates to Guild Wars 2. Uh you know, we had for a long time every 4 weeks we were doing updates uh, and feature packs occasionally uh. We reached a point where actually even every 2 weeks we were doing updates with living world for a while, um and that was insane. Uh and uh, you know, 2015 was the year where our development focus shifted to be very heavily on uh Heart of Thorns in our first expansion, with a little bit of updating as well to the game. Uh this year, our focus is really to find a balance in development between the two. Uh we want to have more frequent game updates for everybody, and we want to be able to continue to work on the next expansion simultaneously. So that's a lot of what you're going to see this year is a combination of more frequent game updates, more regularly uh, and more balanced across different parts of the game uh. We really want to treat PvP, PvE, World versus World um as all of them, as our core game modes for Guild Wars 2, uh and frequently update each of them, uh and, within them uh continue to update the core content pieces that make up those you know. So we want to have updates to fractals and have updates to Living World, uh have, you know updates to World versus World and PvP, uh all, all of those are things that we'll be focusing on um, new Raids. As we kind of balance development across this year where we're also working towards the next expansion as well. So that's, that's really kind of what balance development means to us, and what you're going to see in 2016 is, is a much more balanced strategy development-wise.
Rubi: Yeah so I, I kind of want to emphasize again, "All the game modes".
Colin: Yeah, yeah. That's very important and you know, if you look back on uh what our plan was for 2015 and a lot of what we wanted to do with Heart of Thorns. Uh, it was really kind of a broad development strategy uh, and I think that's been true of ArenaNet really for as long as I can remember uh, is we're a company who works on tons of different stuff we experiment all the time. I think everything from Living World to uh the way that you update live games to looking back to Guild Wars 1 like, you know, having some of the things we did with expansions like 2 expansions in a year, uh that was crazy...
Rubi: That's, that's so ambitious.
Colin: ...and most of us out horribly. But uh, you know, we, we really try to do a lot of different things uh, and i think we're at the point now with Guild Wars 2 three years in, where we really need to start focusing on depth instead of breadth. We've spent all of this time building out all these game systems and different types of content, and ways we can deliver cool things to the players. And I really want our teams to focus on "Let's take those things that we've built and let's just polish those and add a lot more content to them", instead of trying to do different experiments and trying to add new game systems. We're past the point now where that really, you know, that's going to provide so much value. We know what Guild Wars 2 is about. We've learned what works over the last few years. Let's just start doubling down on the things that are great uh. I think there's one part of the game that we haven't accomplished that goal yet uh to be at a point where we can just add new polish and add new content, that's World versus World. Uh, our goal last year was actually to get our big overhaul for World versus World out before Heart of Thorns. So that when we added the new borderlands map when we added things like Guild Claiming, they complemented the a functional game system that had all the core structure to it we needed to have. That project started to be much larger than we ever anticipated.
Rubi: Yeah it really is enormous.
Colin: Yeah I mean they've been working on the on it for over a year now, uh, in particular the, the principal program on that Chris has been working on the World versus World overhaul for like a year, to get to the point where a whole bunch of other people can work on it, which is kind of where we're at right now um. So I would say World versus World is the one part of the game where we still have a lot of core fundamental things that we need to do between population balance and scoring and rewards, uh, night capping. John Corpening, our game director in charge of that project has kind of summarized a couple times his thoughts on where that's going. But that's the last kind of broad project that we have on the books uh, and then once that's done we'll be at a point with World versus World where we can focus on depth as well, which is just adding more content and just polishing the experience. And every other part of the game that we're going to continue to build on. That's really what you're going to see from here on out is, let's polish exactly what we've got, let's deal with any bugs that came out from, from Heart of Thorns, any feedback we got from Heart of Thorns, let's continue to iterate on that, and then let's just start adding new content to all of those areas. Um, so yeah that's that's what you have to look forward to in Guild Wars 2. And uh next Tuesday we'll put a blog out that actually makes some of that uh real and shows you some of the things that we're gonna do.
Rubi: Yeah. So this is I mean we've got this coming up, toward the end of the month.
Colin: (nods) Uh-huh.
Rubi: And then for the rest of 2016, we're kind of planning on seasonal updates.
Colin: Yeah and we're we're going to talk more about...
Rubi: We're not going into that in detail.
Colin: Yeah we'll cover a lot more of that in the uh the blog next Tuesday uh, with the announcements of kind of how um some of the stuff that you have to look forward to uh. Later this year, we'll go into more details on more of the things that we'll be adding to regular updates for Guild Wars 2. Um, some of those are things you'll see in the next 3 months some of those are things that we're going to get into later this year that we'll talk about down the road. Uh I think the pvp team actually published today. Their plans for all the updates they're going to make to season 2 of leagues.
Rubi: There's a huge, huge forum post out right now in all four languages. So if you missed that go find it in our forums.
Colin: Uh and I think that's a great example of this this uh, depth rather than breadth strategy, right? It's like, we have leagues now, they're one of the core components that we're going to be using to update PvP in the future along with obviously new, new types of PvP maps things like that. Um, you know, those all of those types of things basically that's our focus now let's polish, and let's add content uh, and the PvP team's plans for PvP season 2, uh is ideally hopefully taking a vast majority of the feedback we've gotten from the players. I hope you look at that and say, yeah it looks like they addressed almost all of our feedback. We're probably not going to get every single thing in season 2, but I think we got probably 90, 95 of the, the big feedback pieces we're going to be able to address, and we'd like to be able to do that for each of the other parts of the game as we go forward too.
Rubi: Yeah all right so we have a lot coming up I, I feel like I'm not even, I shouldn't even say anything because something's going to slip out. But...
Colin: Yes, wait till next Tuesday. (laughs)
Rubi: Yeah next Tuesday is going to be a fun day, yeah. So all right we have that was like a lot of information packed into a short amount of time, so we'll let you guys digest that for a few minutes. We have a couple more guests to come on. We're going to switch you out and...
Colin: That was the fun part, that's right.
Rubi: This was the fun part too! This is always the fun part. Um, so we're going to take a short break, and then come back with a couple of other guests. I feel like the piano here has already given it away unless you're going to play.
Colin: I am going to play myself out now. All right.
Rubi: That was terrible. All right. We will be back in just a couple of minutes stick with us...
Colin: There's no music happening.
Rubi: There's no music happening, you're not good at this. We'll be right back. (laughs)
Maclaine and Lena (14:21)[edit]
Rubi: And we are back with Maclaine and Lena. I am so glad you're both here, especially you. We had to like get you on a plane to get you up here.
Maclaine Diemer: Yeah you had to get me out of my pajamas...
Rubi: I'm sorry.
Maclaine: you had to get the cat off my lap and...
Rubi: I understand the pain of both of those things, it was just "I'm on my sofa in comfy clothes and there's a cat. I don't want to leave"
Maclaine: Yeah. I'm happy to be here.
Development of Heart of Thorns Theme (14:41)[edit]
Rubi: So yeah, I am very happy that you guys are both here. Um, so we're going to talk today about the music of Heart of Thorns, which I think is kind of a given with everything on here. I'm assuming that you have more to say on the piano than Colin did because...
Maclaine: Only a little bit. I'm only slightly better at the piano than Colin.
Rubi: Yes, this is not a live concert just FYI. All right so why don't we let you, why don't we let you get started, and tell us what you want to start talking about.
Maclaine: Yeah, so um I, I thought it would be really neat for fans to hear the evolution of the main theme. I think some people kind of got a window into it when it changed from the the last beta, or the second beta, to the final beta and then the release version. It's two different versions, and...
Rubi: I loved hearing the story when you told me yesterday.
Maclaine: Yeah i so there's there's way more evolution to it than that um, and most of it is, is my own, the dissatisfaction with it. You know uh it's, it's a, it was a long kind of difficult process to get to something that I was comfortable with, and most fans never get to hear it. In fact, most people at the company haven't heard any of these earlier versions, so i thought it'd be fun to just kind of run through it and uh let people hear how it evolved, and see behind the curtain of uh you know writing music for Guild Wars.
Rubi: Yeah. So this is the main Guild Wars, the main Guild Wars 2 theme. This is the main Heart of Thorns theme and then we will kind of dive into all of the music as we go farther down, so let's start with this.
Maclaine: Yeah so um the very first thing I wrote for the expansion was about two years ago, uh and at that point this the story was kind of, it wasn't it was unclear but you know audio and music comes in at the very end. So I only had a very small amount of information as to what the actual story content of the game would be. And there was some information that I'd gotten about a golden city, which of course now we all know is Tarir and and we've seen how that all played out. But at the time it was, it was a little bit less um, it was a little less clear what it was going to be. So I thought "all right, uh it, that maybe that'll be the focus of the expansion and I'll write the gold city theme, and then that will also double as the expansion theme. And I had this idea for a melody that came to me when I uh to keep it uh G-rated, I was, I was getting up to take a break from my desk and uh taking a walk through the office, and I find that a lot of snippets of melodies come to me then because it's a moment for me to just be clear-headed, you know. Something will just pop into my head because I'm not sitting here at the piano seeing like oh my gosh...
Rubi: Yeah like stressing over it.
Maclaine: ...like all these chord, they are all wrong, you know. Um, so when you kind of relax something will just enter your mind like people come up with ideas in the shower or at night. Um, and this melody kind of popped into my head almost fully formed , and uh I had to drop everything I was doing at the time I was working on. I think it was Living World Season 2 stuff and I just stopped for about a week while i tried to get this idea out. Um, and fans will recognize it so I'll play it we actually ended up recording it live at the very first orchestral recording session we did in Germany.
Rubi: Yeah.
Maclaine: for Living World Season 2, and no one's really heard it. I think it's a piece of it got snuck into a trailer a few months ago. Um but up until now no one's heard it in this form Because i was really unhappy with it so i'm just gonna play it.
Rubi: Okay let's hear what it sounds like.
Maclaine: We'll talk about it afterwards.
(Plays the music)
Rubi: Nice, I love it.
Maclaine: Great.
Lena Chappelle: Yeah.
Rubi: And this is what you weren't happy with?
Maclaine: Yeah I wasn't, I wasn't psyched about it, um so, it's so good. It, uh, savvy listeners will probably know that uh, that's the music that eventually turned into Lion's Arch rebuilt. Last summer when after, you know a year of being destroyed, after Scarlet's attack, we finally decided to put it back together, and i thought that it needed this new theme, so I'll get to what it turned into in a second but it, um, when we recorded it the I wasn't happy with, it wasn't the performance, it was my, my writing, right.
Rubi: Okay.
Maclaine: I didn't think that the orchestration of the of the melody was strong enough. Uh, I didn't think that on the day that we were recording it, I got enough out of the performers it needed a little bit more energy that I didn't sense, and I just thought you know I'm gonna let this sit in the can. And it's a shame that this piece of music no one's ever gonna hear it until..
Rubi: Until now.
Maclaine: ...today of course. Um, but yeah I thought uh, I thought it wasn't good enough basically and, and I, I wanted to let the idea kind of marinate a little bit so I could come back to it. So two things about it, one is that a it's, it's, it is in the game now it's now the Lion's Arch rebuilt music. There is a piece of it in the middle though that you might recognize from somewhere else. So the middle section the form of it is, is very much like a pop song, it's like the main melody, A, main melody again, then there's a B section, and then it kind of returns to the A, and then finishes very much like a simple beatles song or something.
Rubi: I haven't thought of that until just now and I can't unhear that now when I hear this piece.
Maclaine: Yeah you'll see that pattern a lot in, a lot of the stuff. I'm not, I don't want to give away my secrets, it's a big one. But uh it's, it's just an easy formula to follow. So the B section I thought, okay this is a really strong chord progression and I want to use this in something else, and so I carried that out probably a lot further than I, than I ever should have. Because in the end I ended up not using it for anything but... yeah. I, I repurposed the Lion's Arch music, which I'll play a little bit uh, as sort of a special treat. We ended up re-recording that piece at our, at the Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns recording session that we did for the expansion back in August. We had a little bit of extra time and I thought, oh I want to get back in there...
Maclaine and Rubi: ...and try this again...
Maclaine: ...yeah. So, so we ended up re-recording it and no one, this is another one that no one's heard. I'm just going to play a little bit, but we're going to, we're going to put this up on Soundcloud after the show and I'll give you guys a sneak, pre-preview of what it sounds like now. A lot more energy, let's put it that way.
Rubi: Okay here we go.
(Plays the music)
Maclaine: So yeah, that was uh, that was just a tidbit. I didn't want to sit here and listen to the whole thing again, but we will put that in the Lion's Arch rebuilt, built. So those lines are to reborn so i named them and I can't get them straight...
Rubi: (laughs) I asked him yesterday, we were talking and he was like "um the quieter one".
Maclaine: Yeah the quiet, we'll put the quiet one um, that uh you heard it in the music between when Colin was on and when we came on um. We have a live version of that a new version, and then a new version of the Lion's Arch reborn music, rebuilt.
Rubi: I don't know. If this is a thing, I would ask you.
Lena: There's a rebuilding Lion's Arch and then...
Maclaine: The rebuilding of Lion's Arch, that's right.
Lena: Yeah.
Maclaine: Okay that's the quiet one, and the Lion's Arch reborn is the loud one.
Lena: Yeah.
Maclaine: Okay so we're going to put both of those up after the show...
Rubi: A little bit loud. (laugh)
Lena: How do I know those better than you?
Maclaine: I don't know. (laughs)
Rubi: Cause you're good. (looks at Lena and laughs)
Maclaine: So uh, so as I said the old B section from the very original version of the theme. I thought that's a really strong chord progression, I want to save that. So then i went back to the drawing board and I thought, well okay I learned more about the expansion and I said what's, what is this about, it's about the jungle, it's about the sort of gathering of forces to fight the jungle dragon, so it needs to be less like majestic landscapes and it needs to be more about energy and driving and percussion...
Rubi: Yeah.
Maclaine: ...and more jungly right. And I was worried about the balance between cliche jungle sounds like a lot of drums and flutes...
Rubi: First song.
Maclaine: Yeah and, and, but still maintaining some sort of war-like energy. Um and I tried again and I thought, okay I nailed it, and then, and we'll listen to that in a second here. Um and it has those elements, and it has elements that that still ended up being in the final version of the theme, but I didn't think the melody was very strong, and I didn't think that. Well let's just listen to it.
Rubi: Yeah let's see.
Maclaine: I'll talk about what I didn't think it was after we hear what it actually is all right. So this is version 2 of the Heart of Thorns thought theme.
Maclaine: (murmuring) Oops a second, wait a second. Let's start at the beginning, okay, it's a very good place to start, okay.
(Plays the music)
Rubi: I love it.
Maclaine: Yeah so, that one I mean, you can hear what I was talking about. What's that?
Lena: Maclaine didn't.
Rubi: Yeah it could be better I mean.
Maclaine: I like it, I don't know I liked it when I was done with it, but then you know that's kind of that's the advantage of working on stuff so much farther out than the release date is you can let stuff sit with you. And it can be a blessing and a curse because you can sit there and overthink it and, and end up ruining something that was fine, but I feel pretty good that that wasn't the right direction to go in. There was elements that I thought were cool the heavy percussion I thought was cool. Um, the end is very similar the sort of big fanfare epic ending, is very similar to how it currently ends, but there's some other stuff in there that. I don't like the sound of the drums I should preface this by saying that that's just a demo version, it's not live. So it doesn't quite have the same heart and soul and energy the other live recording would have. Um but i don't like the way the drum sound which is uh my fault. I have nobody to blame but myself.
Lena: (laughs)
Maclaine: Uh and there's like this cheesy flute thing that i threw in there I'm like, oh it should at least have some sort of nod to like some Shakuhachi bamboo flute kind of thing, but it doesn't work. So and the feed and the most important thing is I sent this out to the studio, and i got some feedback. And it was people were like, "yeah it's good", you know, that's good. But uh and, and I try not, I try not to take that stuff personally because it's a collaborative process, and I don't want to feel like i'm this musical overlord. And so I'm very open to feedback, and most of the time people have been very gracious and they don't have a lot of criticism. So that was a huge red flag to me was when I sent this out and people were like, "yeah it's okay", you know. So, then I thought, all right let's um, let's think about it a little bit more and then come back to it. So by this, at this point Season 2 is starting to wind down, and I'm starting to think about planting seeds for uh, music for Heart of Thorns. For people who are kind of savvy and listen to that stuff like, people will know the uh, the Mordremoth theme that's been popping up and stuff going back all the way back to season, Living World Season 1.
Rubi: And we talked about that.
Maclaine: Yeah, so I'll play it. Okay very, I need to preface this by saying that I'm a very, very poor keyboard player and I'm just, I'm not even gonna attempt to play anything other than plunking out a couple notes. But the Mordremoth theme is very simple, it's so, it's like this. (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: Right it's just those notes. (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: And it's built around these... (plays the synthesizer) minor seconds.
Maclaine: Right so in music the simplest way to explain musical terms.
Rubi: Thank you.
Maclaine: A minor second is the shortest distance in uh, in music that you can move between two notes. So you have this note, and then the shortest distance you can move to the next note is a minor second, right. (Plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: So it's, it's built all around that kind of stuff, um. And I wanted to create uh a sort of underlying. Um not, it's not so much a theme, it's not really melody, it's more just like a little bit of movement between some notes that, that could be used as almost like the background canvas for other melodies to be put on top of it throughout the whole expansion, uh. You know, all through almost every piece as many times as I could fit it in there. So I came up with a similar sort of variation on the Mordremoth sound, which is these three notes that goes like this. (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: Right it's like similar, it's a minor key. (Plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: Right and it has the same that same minor second kind of movement so. (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: Right as, as sort of a string uh, pattern that they could play, and I started dropping that in into trailers here and there. So I'm going to play a couple clips of some trailers. This one I don't actually know, I don't know if this one went out. So this was part of a teaser that I think we cancelled uh, despite it being finished. I wrote some music for a teaser for Rytlock coming back from The Mists, and it has this, this little motif you'll start to hear it in there. And I'm just going to play about 10 seconds of this, okay.
(Plays the music)
Maclaine: Okay so you could hear it in the strings and you could hear it uh, doubled by the woodwinds, and it's just something that that creates some energy and a sort of sense of menace as it is pulling you forward right as the music continues to build around it. Um, and then we did another trailer, this was the trailer at the end of season 2. The big animated trailer that you see that ends with the Heart of Thorns logo and it was the first time we kind of said, "Hey we're doing a big expansion". So I used it again, and then this time I can't really duplicate it on on the keyboard but the, the strings play the same notes. But they do what's called "tremolo", which means they are moving the bow as fast as possible, and it gives it this like shimmery sort of buzzy sound instead of just, you know. (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: It's... I can't do it but instead of just being one...
Rubi: It's okay.
Maclaine: It's, it's not possible to do the same way on a keyboard. But um, it gives it this a little bit more tension, it's a little bit more uneasy because they're sort of shaking you know. So I did the same thing again in, at the very end of that trailer so let's play that real quick.
(Plays the music)
Maclaine: So you can hear it, it's a little bit lower in the strings that time which also gives it more of a throaty kind of growl sound. It makes it a lot more like I said menacing it's like bump-bump, you know. And I thought, okay that's really cool, so now I'm going to use that as the basis for this new version of the theme and, and the version that I'm about to play... this is the version that was in the first couple of betas. So we recorded this one live, um, about a year, a little over a year ago here in Seattle. And I was like, great, we did it, we have the theme, finally. And you, people will recognize this, it sounds very close to the to the current theme. So um I won't play all of it I don't think, just...
Rubi: Uh-huh, you can if you want to.
Maclaine: Okay maybe I'll play all of it um so let's just play and then I'll talk about it afterwards okay. This is so version now we're on version 3 of the theme.
Rubi: Okay.
(Plays the music)
Maclaine: So that so that will be familiar to people who played the beta. It's like out there on YouTube. I, we put it up we did a big like blog post with RPGFan.net I believe, forgive me if I got that wrong, where we said like, "Hey here's the debut of the Heart of Thorns theme", and then I was like wait a second, nevermind. Um and so you can hear how it's really really close, uh but there's a couple things I thought were problematic with it is again the orchestration is I thought it, it was just a little bit dull, right. I thought it needed more right to the point of it is, you want the game to fire up and you want to hear this music and immediately be transported into the world that you're about to embark on an adventure in right the same way, whether it's Star Wars or Game of Thrones or you know Star Trek. Anything that you hear that within 5 seconds less, 2 seconds you're like, oh my gosh here we go, right. And I didn't think it had that quality. And i still wasn't super happy with that middle section that you hear, the B section that's been transported since the very beginning, and I eventually got to the point where i just had to scrap it, which is that's a very difficult thing is to throw out something that you really believed in like, for almost 2 years I'm like this is, it's going to work, this is going to work...
Rubi: This is it, this is what we're doing.
Maclaine: ...and it never did, it never did so so now we come to version 4. This is uh last summer, um I panicked, I freaked out, and I'm like nothing this is wrong, everything's wrong. So I'm gonna throw it all out, I'm gonna start again which is you know that happens about for me that always happens about three quarters of the way into the writing process. I'm like, everything is garbage start from scratch and then I usually think about yeah I'll come back around after about a week of freaking out. So I decided to start over again and this was very short-lived, uh but I'm gonna play this so this is really airing my dirty laundry this is an incredibly unpolished demo version with digital instruments, so it's gonna sound like crap and I'm not...
Rubi: Stop that.
Maclaine: ...yeah I'm not uh, why I am apologizing, but I'm not really sorry.
Rubi: No stop it immediately. (laughs)
Maclaine: But you'll hear there's a couple elements that I did draw on that ended up in the final theme. So let's just take a listen to this real quick version 4.
(Plays the music)
Maclaine: Yeah I must really like you guys to let you hear that... (Lena laughs)
Rubi: Oh my gosh.
Maclaine: ...um, especially the ends. So okay, so um that was as far as I got before I'm like, no this is even worse, I gotta, I gotta go back to the original idea. But there was a couple things I pulled out of it so again, the percussion I thought was stronger the energy was higher, and felt more, there was more danger. The other thing is that motif that I was telling you about that the strings play that's like... (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: I thought, you know even though I've planted the seeds for that I don't like it, I am going to throw that out and I'm going to start over again, with a new idea. And, and uh I'm going to try to explain this quickly so um, the Guild Wars 2 or the original Guild Wars 2 theme music is simply up and down a minor scale right it's like... (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: Right?
Rubi: It's like a nostalgia wave every time I hear that.
Maclaine: Yeah and, and it's, it's great because it's so simple it allows you to adapt it in a ton of different ways, all of which have been done by me and Jeremy and Lena over the years. Like we've all taken that bit of clay and turned it into a lot of different stuff, which is I love how simple it is you know. (plays the synthesizer)
Lena: It's really malleable, like, you know. If you're doing anything in a minor key just like throw it in there and...
Maclaine: Exactly.
Lena: ...it'll totally work.
Maclaine: Yeah and and uh, it it, it imparts that information of this is Guild Wars but then you can say, well but it's Guild Wars, but it's a little bit different, you know.
Rubi: But it's recognizable.
Maclaine: Exactly, exactly. So I thought, well all right let me see use that as a basis, but let me, let me you know, get a little clever with it. So if you go, if you continue to go up the minor scale. (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: That's the next note, right? And I thought well this is the first expansion for Guild Wars 2, so let's add that extra note. So the instead of the motif going... (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: You know it goes... (plays the synthesizer)
Maclaine: Right. So it, it covers those first four notes of the Guild Wars theme and it keeps repeating them, but then on that you know the sort of final repeat it, it adds that extra note. So it's like, all right super music nerdy like no one's ever going to think about that, but to me that was sort of my rationale to say like here's, here's a new element like let's make this Guild Wars but let's push it a little bit further, you know, and how can I do that musically. So, so that's now the underlying string pattern that you hear in the most recent version, um. And then the other piece from my, my panic version 4 that I took is, the B section like I said I was really unhappy with it, so I threw it out, and I thought I needed some new chords that add. It was very it was, it was a little too happy sounding for lack of a better term and I needed more tension right so this these are, these chords at the end of version 4. I'll play them again even though they sound awful.
Rubi: Stop that.
(Plays the music)
Maclaine: Um so, so that element even though it's not flushed out at all in version 4, I thought okay that's something to build on. Um and so that leads us to the current final version uh, which has bits and pieces of every version before it, but is the theme that we all know and love. So should I play it?
Rubi: Please.
Maclaine: Okay all right this is the last piece that we're gonna listen to.
Rubi: We've gone through all these iterations, we may as well have the payoff.
Maclaine: Okay.
(Plays the music)
Rubi: Tada, yeah.
Maclaine: So there we are, Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns...
Rubi: Nice.
Maclaine: ...musical evolution.
Rubi: That was real, that was really neat to see the iteration of the evolution and how it progressed and what you loved and what you didn't love.
Lena: Yeah I usually don't see all of that especially not some of the, you know the sort of rough spots that you showed like, you know. It's, I certainly wouldn't, I don't think I even kept them, I probably just like delete them instantly.
Maclaine: Yeah.
Rubi: No. (looks at Lena)
Maclaine: I'm bad about about uh, holding onto things too long, but I do think it's I think it at least illustrates the point that, you know they say inspiration is, it's one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration, which is like a really cliche thing to get your kids motivated to do their homework or something.
Rubi: I've never even bothered using that. I don't like kids, I'm like just do it.
Maclaine: Um but it's true I mean you know it the the, the inspiration for a melody or a chord progression that comes instantaneously.
Lena: Oh yeah.
Maclaine: I don't know how to explain that, I don't, I don't think anyone can really explain that. But then it's all about working it until it's right, and that's just hard work and it takes a long time. And people only see the final product and think oh this minute and a half long theme, you know, whatever this person obviously came up with this instantaneously and, and was like, Amadeus just like uh scribing out like brilliant you know oh my gosh. But it's definitely not like that.
Rubi: If you are Amadeus, you could sleep one night, so, you know. So, if you...
Maclaine: So anyway, but that's uh that's that, so let's talk about something else.
Rubi: It's. (laughs) It's still gonna be music, is that okay?
Maclaine: Yes.
Development of Tarir Theme (49:07)[edit]
Rubi: Okay. So you were talking about just like feeling disappointed at one point we had put that out, and I know you've been through that too or you're going through iterations. When you're, when you're iterating on this and as it's progressing you're figuring out what you don't like, what's like the ratio and you don't have to give numbers, what's like the ratio between satisfaction that you're making it better and disappointment that you lost things and just frustration that it's not done?
Lena: Um I, I think like it's always the whenever like something starts to work like the the frustration that, it's like you know taking, you know, that you didn't get it right before it kind of goes away because it gets me overwhelmed by like, yes it's finally...
Rubi: Yes, progress!
Lena: ...it's finally there. Yeah progress. And like um, to give an example of like something coming to you like I was working on um, in lieu of Maclaine actually having written the the Tarir theme uh, in the beginning, which eventually turned into the Heart of Thorns theme um, uh eventually I took over the the Tarir theme and obviously saw it through to completion. Um but for a long time I was having a really hard time with it, because I was really kind of like picturing this like really big epic thing in my head. And I just kept listening to like you know John Williams and all of these like you know just sort of seminal like you know big bombastic uh, but melodic soundtracks. And I was just like, I've gotta like you know capture that and I've gotta, you know, and I got to a point where I was just like, I'm trying to write someone else's soundtrack for them. And I and, so like I got to a point where I realized like, I, I'm not writing what I'm what what I would write, and so...
Rubi: You're writing someone what someone else would write.
Lena: Right.
Rubi: And has to make it harder,
Lena: Yeah and it was, it was incredibly hard because I kept writing all these things, and I was like but it's not exactly what I wanted it to be, but what I wanted it to be was not actually my music. And so, and so eventually which is like, okay no I'm just start over much like you know Maclaine did uh, which would and just say like, okay, what would I write. And just kind of like trying to rediscover that is like you know what would I actually write for this. And, and so what I ended up going back to for the Tarir theme um, was instead of starting off with just like, because I was starting too soon or uh, I was starting too far in rather um, so like the, the moment that I was trying to start from and I kept on refer, referencing back to the like the sort of announced trailer for Heart of Thorns.
Rubi: Okay.
Lena: Where um and if you remember back to the very first uh, pre-recorded live stream that we talked about I was talking very like obliquely about this. Because, because the Tarir wasn't actually an announced thing yet and so I couldn't say like oh yeah it's that gold, you know, it's the gold city called Tarir, the Forgotten City.
Rubi: Am I allowed to talk about that?
Lena: Yeah, I can say that now. Um, but yeah so like you know the moment when Rytlock's like busting up the doors, and like suddenly the camera zooms through and you're going down the waterfall and everything. And I was like starting from that door opening moment.
Rubi: Awesome!
Lena: And that well I mean that's, that's what it was in this mistake was starting from that moment.
Rubi: Really? See, that seems like this is why you do what you do and I do what I do. Because that take sounds wonderful.
Lena: (laughs) But I was trying to burst in through the door before I even like established where I was, and that was kind of like the metaphor that I was going through when I was like failing over and over again to write this theme. And so I was just like, ah here's the theme and, and I had to like kind of step back, and then so if you actually you know if you've heard the I don't have like a fancy uh, you know, tablet or laptop to play this one but...
Rubi: (inaudible)
Lena: (laughs) But. But I mean you can go through it's on the Tarir themes on the Soundcloud, so you can easily go to that one or you know we can talk about other ways to get the soundtrack later.
Rubi: We should do it.
Lena: But yeah, but you know if you listen to the beginning of that. It starts with just a very simple like harp thing and sort of establishing the the little sort of arpeggio and everything... and just kind of like um, going into that sort of arpeggio and everything and kind of establishing the jungle first before the door opens. And sort of like, you know, flying around and just kind of like getting that really like nice table setting for like here's, here's where we are and then you get to, get that like door opening moment of like then it goes into like the big thing. And it was kind of a lot like you know when I was writing for um, Labyrinthine Cliffs. It was about that ascent it was about that motion through the area, and so when I was realizing that I was writing for a very like specific just like, static shot, I realized I needed to go back to kind of what I did before and like kind of score emotion rather than just like one screenshot.
Rubi: I'm having a weirdly difficult time with this and I understand why you wanted to start there because my brain doesn't want to step, my brain doesn't want to sit back and establish the jungle first. It...
Lena: Sure.
Rubi: ...feels like it should be at that and I can understand why you had such a difficult time with that.
Maclaine: Well it's, it's, it's uh like a counterpoint to what I was talking about with the main theme, right. This is, this is scoring a place, let's create a sort of half-baked metaphor here.
Rubi: Sure. My favorite.
Maclaine: So this is sort of place and then the main theme has to score a mood, and you need to feel that mood instantly, but with a place you want to encounter that same sense of wonder that as a player. You don't start the game in the most beautiful city/map in the whole game, you, you have to eventually un-uncover it, you know. What I mean you have to kind of wander through difficulty and then the reward is oh my gosh this beautiful landscape.
Lena: Right you start in Shaemoor before you turn around and realize there's a giant Divinity's Reach behind you.
Maclaine: Right, right, and it's...
Rubi: It's like a slightly startling moments.
Maclaine: Yeah it just creates more drama. The, the moment when it hits that peak...
Lena: Yeah.
Maclaine: ...is much more stronger because you started down here rather than saying like, bam like we're gonna hit you in the face with some gold city.
Lena: Right. But it's also like, it's also a very...
Rubi: Why did (inaudible) like that? (everyone laughs)
Lena: Bam hit you in the face with gold city. (everyone laughs)
Lena: Um, that would make a really interesting acronym. Um but no uh, but there's always like that kind of like toss-up between writing something cinematically for a space and getting too cinematic with it. Because there's also the danger of just like, sort of you know wandering off and just like writing an imaginary film when technically a player is directing it themselves, and they're not going to be like seeing everything that you want them to see with the music. And so even though you're kind of writing a more of a cinematic sweeping or even though I was writing more of a cinematic sweeping thing, like, I still had to like, this could be for just looking at you know the the pavement in gold city, or it could just be for like actually like running through literally the entire city. And so like it kind of, it had to have that versatility to it.
Rubi: Um you know what that kind of brings me to something. Do you mind if I pick your brain some more about Tarir and Auric Basin in general?
Lena: Yeah.
Rubi: So I was just kind of going through and listening to the different themes and I, then I realized, oh Lena did all of these.
Lena: Yeah.
Rubi: So that's super handy. Did you try, I mean, because you have like the, you have like the battle theme in Tarir, and then you have general Auric Basin work.
Lena: Yeah.
Rubi: And you have just the regular Tarir, were you trying to like weave those together?
Lena: Absolutely.
Rubi: Okay. I was...
Lena: Um yeah there's a lot of...
Rubi: I think they sound alike, but I'm also musically stupid so.
Lena: You would be correct then.
Rubi: Yeah!
Lena: Um yeah...
Maclaine: About the musically stupid part. (laughs)
Lena: (laughs) No, no, no.
Rubi: I didn't go there until you... (laughs)
Lena: Thanks Maclaine. I wasn't actually trying to consult Rubi...
Maclaine: I need, I need to clarify, this is on records.
Lena: ...but then you turn it around.
(Lena and Rubi laughs)
Lena: Um but no, like...
Rubi: But he's right, carry on.
(Lena, Maclaine and Rubi laughs)
Rubi: I'm sorry.
Lena: But there's a lot of like um, uh thematically similar uh, well like literally similar elements in. Sorry, there's, it's kind of a trilogy of pieces that I kind of consider the core Auric Basin themes. There's uh you know, Tarir. There's the attack on Tarir, which is the combat theme, and, or for the big meta. And then there's also a lullaby, an exalted lullaby, which is what I originally sort of considered like the sort of night theme for the area, but it kind of you know evolved into more of just a, you know, general area music for uh, for it. And then there was uh, a fourth theme that I wrote actually first, which was kind of more of like, here is the jungle and has a little more of the sort of uh percussion and, and uh sort of you know, those instruments that kind of like set the the tone for a jungle environment. But those three like um, they all, I started with the city theme with Tarir.
Rubi: Okay.
Lena: And uh there was two, two main elements and I actually learned. It's funny like I, this was how I wrote anyways but I learned kind of like how to define it by reading. Uh, one of my favorite composers Bear McCreary, who did Battlestar Galactica and all that stuff.
Rubi: Ohh.
Lena: He has an amazing blog. Um, and if I, I forget what the website is but you can check it out if you search for Bear McCreary blog. Where he basically just goes into like in-depth like composition uh, just kind of what Maclaine did just right now but like in a blog format. And be like, here's, here's this like arpeggio that I did for this theme, and here's this theme and, you know, he'll show the sheet music for it, and he'll talk about his process of actually writing and scoring these TV shows that he's working on. And so what I realized with the Tarir theme is I had kind of two established uh, motifs with it. One was the actual melody, and then the other one was the little ostinato that kind of starts in, ostinato is a repeating phrase, that starts it off with a harp, so... (hums)
Lena: And so that kind of like kicks everything off and then uh, when the melody comes in... (hums)
Lena: That one um and so that's sort of those are the two motifs there, and so for the combat theme. I took that uh ostinato the repeating phrase and I turned it uh into what the violins start in um when it when it kicks off. And so instead of going you know being all pretty like... (hums)
Lena: It goes... (hums)
Lena: So it kind of like takes that same uh, progression and then moves it forward into the instruments and brings it, you know, energetic and combat and all this stuff and just kind of played with everything. Um and then the, the Tarir melody comes back in sort of the victorious section in the attack on Tarir theme um, and, and then also with the lullaby uh, the night theme um, the uh, the flutes are playing kind of a modified version of that same theme. So it's all kind of taking these elements and reconfiguring them. And, and uh, it's kind of like what I was saying earlier with like the Guild Wars theme like, um and I was uh, on a podcast and asked about what makes a good theme uh a while back. And I after racking my brain, I was like, I think it's the versatility of the theme and I think like the theme's versatility is what gives it the most strength, because you can involve it in the most amount of music. So if you're writing for, you know, a setting which involves like the people the Exalted, you know, you want to be able to write theme that you can then apply to a whole bunch of different setting or different pieces of music that still kind of conveys that same uh, you know, the character and, and, and everything about it um melodically as well as you know and it helps tie everything together. And so, yeah. It was a lot of fun to just take one, take one thing and then just kind of start finding other ways to, uh to, you know, to transform it and evolve it into different uh, settings.
Rubi: And you know working with various settings just as a player, one of the things that, well, and this is just some of the most fun I've had in Heart of Thorns so far when you're, when you're doing the meta in Tarir.
Lena: Yeah.
Rubi: And I don't know how much both of you have done the various areas, but there's, I can't remember which, I can't remember if it's south, I don't know. But you go in there and you you fly up and you hit your glider and you have to swing around and drop bombs on the octovine, that's so fun. And the first time I did it, usually I'm, I've kind of got like the music in one ear and my guild mates in voice chat in the other, but this time was like just the music and I still had it up. And I'm you know, I'm soaring around in battle, and I just had this moment of this music works. This works with it so well because, you know, I've just flown up in the air and I'm, I'm doing this amazing aerial attack with like four or five other people, and I have background music that matches this that works for this and it felt good. And so nice work.
Maclaine: Yeah.
Lena: Thank you.
Rubi: I actually...
Lena: That's always the best feelings, like getting comp-compliments like that, just like it works like hey...
Rubi: It works.
Lena: That's pretty great.
Rubi: It felt amazing. It just elevated, it elevated the gameplay and I don't care if that sounds completely hokey. (laughs)
Maclaine: I mean that's what we're trying to do right at...
Lena: Yeah exactly.
Maclaine: That's exactly what we want to happen. We're not just writing music for the sake of writing it, you know, it's just to bring out the emotions that we want players to feel.
Rubi: Well, it was, it was pretty cool. It, it felt good. It was fun. I should have checked into it soon. I didn't even realize you wrote that entire thing until two days ago when I was going, okay I want to talk about this thing, which one of them do I need to talk. That was Lena. I have to tell her that felt really good.
Lena: (laughs) Oh my god. Thanks.
Maclaine: Yeah I should say that the, so the very first thing I played was the original gold city theme, which obviously turned into something totally different. And I realized that I didn't have a grasp on what the uh, of what Tarir and Auric Basin needed to be um, and that's why I handed it over to Lena who I did, who I did, I think did a much...
Rubi: Nice work.
Maclaine: ...much better job than, than I was capable of doing.
Lena: Awesome. Appreciate that.
Rubi: Well that seems like a really good note. We're getting, we're actually past one o'clock right now.
Lena: Oh wow.
Vinyl release (1:02:39)[edit]
Rubi: Um, I know, we just we're having way too much fun. But we have a soundtrack where you guys can get all of this music, and this seems like a good time to talk about that. So you can find everything at guildwars2.com/shop because you can get it on Amazon, iTunes, iam8bit. Do you guys want to tell about the vinyl?
Maclaine: Sure.
Rubi: We can show it.
Lena: It's on vinyl.
Maclaine: Yes, it's on vinyl.
Lena: Well I mean it will be.
Maclaine: I think um...
Rubi: It's so cool.
Maclaine: So the iam8bit people uh, they have we've been working with them on some, on some stuff for merchandise and some promotional marketing things I think for a while now. And they sponsored TwitchCon with us.
Rubi: Uh-huh.
Maclaine: Um and so I was there at TwitchCon. We did the live performance thing...
Rubi: That was so much fun.
Lena: Yeah.
Maclaine: ...which was really cool, and then we were I was talking to some of the people, you know, behind the scenes uh when other segments were happening at TwitchCon, and they pitched the idea of vinyl I had kind of given up.
Rubi: What? That was John and Amanda?
Maclaine: Yes.
Rubi: Seriously?
Maclaine: Because they have a pretty, they have a pretty sort of thriving section of their shop that's, that's game soundtracks and vinyl and, and, you know, they were like let's do one, and I thought what, you know, we can do a physical release. So it seems strange to skip uh a CD and who knows whether or not that will happen in the future, it's not up to me.
Lena: He-huh.
Rubi: Or me.
Maclaine: Or any of us in this room so please don't bother us. (Rubi laughs)
Maclaine: But uh, you know, to have something tangible in this day and age is really cool...
Rubi: Yeah it is.
Maclaine: And it's, it's something that gets uh touted a lot about how nice it is to hold in your hands. And it's not just a cheap record, it's high quality vinyl, it's amazing artwork, high quality printing. The whole thing that they did all of it, you know, we just sort of consulted and said yes or no.
Lena: And that's like the benefit of vinyl too is like you get just such a cool package out of it.
Maclaine: Yeah.
Lena: It's something that you can just display, hey, like that, um. That is really cool, like high resolution prints of art and just open it up and it's just art. Um, and then there's uh, you wrote some liner notes uh for it too, right?
Maclaine: I'm going to. (Lena and Rubi laughs)
Maclaine: Um, yeah. I'm going to do that, you're going to do that today, I think. Yeah it's, it's just a way to encapsulate all the things that we feel and say about the music in situations like this. This is a physical way of saying, "here's the thing like we worked on this aspect of the game really hard and now you can own that piece of it", you know, as a beautiful package.
Lena: And just like honestly when you mentioned like, you know, I made that was going to be uh doing vinyl for us. I was just like, just like a deer in the headlights because I was like, oh my gosh, like you go on their site and like look at the soundtracks that they already have there, and it's like, we're gonna be there.
Maclaine: Yeah, right.
Lena: That's really cool. (laughs)
Rubi: They're a good company.
Maclaine: A great company.
Lena: Yeah.
Rubi: Or all of them are in good company now. Whichever. Yeah.
Maclaine: Uh and we should say too that when you get the vinyl when you pre-order it.
Rubi: Yeah.
Maclaine: You'll instantly receive the digital version of the soundtrack for download.
Rubi: Yeah. Within 48 hours because the vinyl is releasing later this quarter, so you can pre-order the vinyl now through iam8bit, um but the digital you can have now.
Lena: Yeah.
Rubi: So I love instant gratification, it's the best.
Lena: And do you want to reiterate where the digital itself is?
Rubi: Yeah. You can get the digital at, well again, if we can show the album art again, the link. Wow I totally forgot the word. I was like, what's a url...
Maclaine: The letters, dot com.
Rubi: ...the url is right there, and you can find that will take you to the Amazon uh, link to the iTunes link and to iam8bits link. Iam8bits is where you get the vinyl, and then the others are purely digital. So, all right. That was a lot of fun.
Maclaine: Yeah.
Rubi: Thank you both, thank you Maclaine, thank you Lena.
Lena: Thank you yeah.
Rubi: Yeah. Thank you to your girlfriend for letting us borrow you.
Maclaine: Yes, my cat, most importantly.
Rubi: And the cat will send him back home to you both very very soon. All right, I will let you get back to work and we actually are going to steal some more of your time before you leave.
Maclaine: Oh okay, okay.
Rubi: Let's see how I, I do that on camera and you can't retaliate.
Maclaine: (laughs) Yeah. Oh wait we should talk about the Lion's Arch music putting it on Soundcloud. We're going to do that.
Rubi: Oh, that's right we're going to do that after the show. We have two pieces.
Maclaine: New, new live versions of the previous Lion's Arch music that came out last summer when the city was rebuilt. Forget about those old versions, they're they're terrible.
Rubi: Stop it.
Maclaine: These new versions are way better.
Rubi: Stop apologizing for your work. Stop calling it terrible. We all think it's pretty good.
Maclaine: All right. Well, that's really still terrible okay.
Rubi: Oh my gosh, guys. (laughs)
Rubi: All right. So we are not technically, we're running late for on point. Um, we do not have on point today because Jebrow's ISP is doing work and they were like, hey we're cutting off your internet now and you can have it back on Saturday. So that was totally not his fault, we miss him and we will have him back very very soon for on point. Um, for now make sure you follow our channel here on Twitch, so you don't miss future shows because they're going to be pretty great And thank you both for coming.
Lena: Absolutely.
Maclaine: Thank you.
Rubi: Yep. We will see you guys next week. Oh and I'm going to do one more little thing here. Can we scoot this just a tiny bit?
Maclaine: Oh sure.
Rubi: Thank you. It's just a little thing here in the video. Okay. Hey Mark, can we show off this over here? Thank you. You know where I like...
Maclaine: Jump.
Rubi: I like Orr.
Lena: That's cool.
Maclaine: Ohh.
