Guild Chat - Episode 41

The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.

The 41st episode of Guild Chat aired on August 8, 2016. Join host Rubi Bayer and her developer guests as they talk about the story of the latest update, Out of the Shadows.

Summary[edit]

Transcription[edit]

Introduction (0:25)[edit]

Rubi Bayer: Hey everybody and happy Friday. Welcome back to Guild Chat. I'm your host Ruby. Last week, we had some devs on talking to you about the new fractal updates in the most recent update. So this week it's time to talk about the Living World return and the new story. I'm going to start with the three devs we've got here. Frosty, I'll let you introduce yourself first. You guys go down the line and talk about what you worked on with this update.

Andrew Gray: Uh, so I'm Andrew Gray. I'm the, uh, I was the team lead on episode one and I worked on a lot of the, uh, Bloodstone map.

Ross Beeley: Ross Beeley, narrative designer. Uh I wrote most of what you will see in the instances and a little bit of the open world.

Benjamin Newell: Benjamin Newell. I was a Content programmer on this episode and I was in charge of the Out of The Shadow or no.

Rubi: You can call it "Kate's cave".

Benjamin: Kate's cave, fine. That's the only way I'll remember it

Rubi: Shadow.

Benjamin: The Kate's cave instance, uh, as well as doing a bunch of, uh, more programming assistance.

Andrew: And the amazing achievement names.

Rubi: Wait, that was you too? This has not come up until now!

Andrew: It was him and uh Nick Hernandez one of our QA embeds came with the just dropping down or was it just dropping by?

Benjamin: Just dropping by, yeah. Yeah, my two favorite were, uh, Magic Unbound the Gathering and mantle pieces.

Rubi: Mantle pieces, I, I like that one. Okay, so I am going to ask you to delve a little bit more into what a content programmer does-

Benjamin: Sure.

Rubi: -because it's kind of a very cool sounding but sort of mysterious title.

Benjamin: So, a content programmer is. um, a programmer who is embedded as a designer to a team to help develop the content. It's kind of a way of dogfooding, making sure that we understand where the flaws and our tools are and getting all of the bottlenecks taken care of as much as possible. It also means I get to be whoever, uh, whenever a task comes up that is really, really horrible and tedious, they throw it at me because I will not want to do it and find a way to make it better.

Andrew: Yep.

Rubi: And we're all looking at Andrew suddenly.

Andrew: Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Eir's Memorial (2:36)[edit]

Rubi: Yay! All right, thank you guys for helping us start jumping in here. I do want to let you guys know we're going to take some questions at the end, so if you have any questions as we're going through just drop them in chat and somebody will pass them along to us. We'll try to get to a few here toward the end, sound good? All right, let's talk about the story instances first. Let's start with Eir's Memorial; that one we talked about because it was such a big opener and it felt to me like there was a lot that you guys had to cover. I mean we had to, we wanted to get you know some fun in there and make it a good time, but we're also dealing with the death of a very important character in the story. So how did you find that balance and make a Norn celebration of life on top of everything else?

Ross: That was really pretty much the trick, is framing it more as a celebration rather than a just a pure, sad funeral. We didn't want to not have those elements, but overall we wanted it to feel more, um, celebratory. So it was kind of like a touch and go, kind of like, "oh let's put a little bit of this in and see if that works" and like "that feels a little too sad we'll take that out" and like you said, kind of just getting that balance correct.

Rubi: Yeah, and without being disrespectful about it.

Ross: Yeah.

Rubi: Yeah.

Ross: I mean, you know, Rytlock says some funny, maybe even cruel things at one point, but you know coming out of his mouth it's like: yeah, it's Rytlock.

Rubi: It's a very Rytlock thing to say and that was some of the humor that I really liked that you got in without making it disrespectful or too flipped? I mean we have this Norn kid who's participating in the celebration of life and I know she turned out to be, like, the hero of this instance. She wants to hang out with "Rytlock Trombone".

Ross: Yeah, she wants to be part of, uh, you know, Fate's Razor.

Rubi: Fate's Razor!

Ross: Who wouldn't, with a guild name that awesome?

Rubi: Well, Rytlock.

Ross: Yeah, well, Rytlock does not want to- (inaudible)

Rubi: Does not want anything to do with this. Yeah, I liked that he was telling these great stories about Eir and he's remembering who she was and at the same time like, "buzz off kid, you bother me", "but I've got my Uncle Beemish's sword". So what were some of the things we talked a little bit about iteration as you tried to find that balance. Can you talk about some things that didn't quite make it because it didn't feel appropriate?

Ross: One of the ones that people will see kind of the echo of, is that at first when it was like find some tasty meat for Garm. It was just like "oh yeah, we should just kill a rabbit and then feed the rabbit to this wolf". And everybody was like "yeah, yeah sure" and then you know someone's like "are we sure we should be killing things the funeral?" And everybody's like "oh, oh yeah, that that does feel weird" so that kind of went by the wayside. But you can kind of see there's still a little remnant of that when you click on a bunny.

Andrew: When you try to kill the bunny?

Rubi: Yeah, I did that.

Ross: If you try to kill the bunny, the game will reprimand you a little bit.

Rubi: Yeah, it said something about how this isn't really a place to create more death you cretin.

Ross: Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin: Who would think of something so dark?

Andrew: Surely not us.

Rubi: I'm pretty sure I apologized out loud, was like "oh gosh, I'm sorry, it was an accident!" Yeah, there's been some enjoyment and some awareness that I've seen, and I told you guys about this yesterday. Something that someone let us know on the Guild Wars 2 Twitter. And it was joking, but not in a hateful way, so don't be don't be awful to them. They said: "So I wasn't thinking and I accidentally went into Eir's Memorial instance and the mini pet I had out was the Vinetooth Faolain. Was that in poor taste?" I said it kind of was, maybe don't do that.

Ross?: Too soon.

Rubi: Way too soon, always too soon. That needs to be a mini pet you don't take in there.

Andrew: We should add a trip wire and if you hit it with that mini pet, you should just- (punches air)

Ross: Please leave.

Andrew: Bouncers show up-

Rubi: Could leave the instance and think about what you've done.

Andrew: Throw you out the gate.

Rubi: Alright so-

Ross: We're going to find Vinetooth Faolain and she'll be like (shrugs) sorry, boss.

Research in Rata Novus (6:49)[edit]

Rubi: It's not my control they just brought me out, I'm with her. Oh, man. So at the end we have a letter from Taimi coming in and that kind of moves us on to Rata Novus, which picks up a ton of story threads. I mean we've got would you call it Rytlock cleaning out his spam folder?

Ross: Yes, him throwing away that note. We've got just kind of a general catch up with Taimi and see what she's been up to. And then there's always you know, Phlunt.

Rubi: I love Phlunt, he's a good love to hate guy.

Ross: He really is, and his voice is amazing. Like the voice acting on him is just superb.

Rubi: He really is. It's something that hadn't occurred to me, I just accepted it as yeah he's this cranky old fart that is terrible to Taimi and then I focus back on her.

Ross: Yeah

Rubi: Can you guys- I want to back up for just a second and talk about the handoff of the paper because you had talked about animating that and that was such a good story I want you guys to hear it too.

Andrew: So-

Rubi: Because it looks simple.

Andrew: It seems simple and that's why when a narrative designer asks you to do something like throw a piece of paper, it seems like it should be a really easy request but it actually end up-

Rubi: Just a few lines of code, perhaps?

Andrew: Oh yeah, just let me crank that out.

Ross: Let me hack this.

Andrew: Two people one keyboard, double hacking!

Rubi: Anyway-

Andrew: It ended up being a combination of emotes and delays for gadgets turning on and a bunch of other things. It turned out all right, not as perfect as I'd like it to be. In fact as the build was going live I was like, oh if I'd made it a skill with a projectile and the projectile landed and it was just getting crazier and out of hand.

Rubi: Some serious feature creep.

Andrew: We already spent a lot of time just making him throw the piece of paper on the ground, so probably don't need to go back and spend more on it.

Rubi: I mean, I don't know, do you have other things you should be doing?

Andrew: Nah.

Rubi: A few. Ben, was it you that said you had heard people say that looked really good?

Benjamin: Well, yeah. I mean, like I think a couple of our content creators commented on it in their videos, where they're talking about the instance of how great the animation was on that. Well, there you go.

Andrew: Yeah, it's funny we kind of get tunnel vision on these things, like we're trying to make everything so perfect. That we're always just like, is this is this okay, is this okay? And then we release it and either like (A), nobody notices the thing that we were worried about or (B), they are actually like, oh that's great. And I think we were a little self-critical at times when you look at something for as long as you looked at it.

Benjamin?: Over and over again.

Rubi: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah.

Rubi: It works for me because it kind of fits with what we were talking about. We have all of these little things that are more than they seem and that from a design standpoint. But going back into story, we've got like we said Rata Novus isn't deserted anymore, Rytlock is doing his thing, we've got Canach coming back and dealing with the residual people being afraid of sylvari. We've got Taimi, Taimi's continuing to grow up which was a nice touch, her pointing out that she was 16.

Andrew: She's also a little bit taller.

Rubi: I don't believe you.

Andrew: You underestimate how small she used to be.

Rubi: We keep having this conversation and I keep looking. I've played through the story on a very small sylvari, like the smallest sylvari model you can make. And after we talked about this I kept going back in and looking and I'm like, I'm not seeing it. If I go back to an older story step, will she be smaller?

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Rubi: I'll be back. I have to go do that right now.

Ross: I can't believe you don't notice when we scale her up point zero zero three.

Rubi: I'm sorry, I am the worst.

Andrew: All that work.

Ross: Yeah, where's your sense of nuance?

Andrew?: Changed attention.

Rubi: Well, I was admiring the paper hand off.

Ross: Yeah

Rubi: I was very excited about it, I mean I was in awe personally.

Andrew: Well, thank you. Actually Angel did a lot of that work, I just went in kind of polished it at the end so she should take the credit for that.

Rubi: Thank you, Angel.

Ross: It's basically Pixar level, I would say.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I'm expecting that job offer any day now.

Ross: Yeah.

Andrew: I'm joking.

Rubi: Like, could you not?

Andrew: I'm not even an animator, they would be very disappointed!

Rubi: The job offer is not coming, I'm sorry. All right, so this feels to me like this instance was to pick up all of these story threads. Is that kind of where you were going with that?

Ross: Yeah. I mean, you know, it had been a little bit since HoT so it was kind of a matter of like reminding people the state of the world. While, you know, starting new story threads as well to kind of progress everything on, you know, a certain level.

Rubi: Yeah, and maybe hint that things are progressing here and there and will continue progressing. I mean we've got Rytlock throwing away this paper. We've got-

Ross: We don't know what that's about yet. There's Taimi-

Rubi: Yes.

Ross: -doing some experiments on a Chak organ.

Andrew: With blighting pod fluid.

Rubi: With blighting pod fluid. Taimi, sweetie! I love you, but come on, help me out.

Ross: Potentially irresponsible, we'll see.

Andrew: Or brilliant, depending on how it turns out.

Ross: I know, we'll see.

Rubi: Possibly both. I do like, it's a good indicator of Taimi's character that's something that you and I had talked about, about how much fun you have writing for Taimi and Canach.

Ross: Yeah.

Rubi: Our player character is like, Taimi, so the blighting pod fluid here's what it does and you've got a chak organ are you sure that's a good- and she's like I'm sure it's fine, it'll be- I don't know let's see what happens.

Andrew: What could possibly go wrong?

Ross: Yeah. She, you know, she's feeling out this new role in Rata Novus as being like kind of king of research, or queen is it maybe.

Rubi: Even if she has to hide in a separate little- keep Phlunt out.

Ross: Yeah.

Rubi: I like Phlunt and I want to drop kick him at the same time.

Andrew: Love to hate.

Rubi: Yes. Okay, the last thing I want to mention before we scoot on to Bloodstone Fen because it's so cool over there, is this little touch that you added because it doesn't progress the story in a huge way but you've got this thing in Taimi's Dragon Lab where you can push buttons and eavesdrop on the other asura. You just get a little insight into what they're thinking, what's going on out there, but it's not an enormous earth shattering moment. What made you want to put- what made you and not you personally but the team want to put that in as a nice touch?

Ross: Yeah, well that was all Angel I believe.

Rubi: Thank you again, Angel.

Ross: The eavesdropping thing?

Andrew: Yeah.

Ross: You know, she's just really good at kind of building that flavor and that, you know, rounding out the world. And it's just such an asura thing to do, to want to like eavesdrop and like want to know everything.

Andrew: And some of the snarky comments that she overhears are very asura as well.

Rubi: Yeah, it's very true.

Ross: So you know, it's just the- it kind of gets back to like how good we are when we pass off paper. It's the details that make the difference and, you know, whenever we get the opportunity and have the time, you know we definitely love doing that.

Blood and Stone (14:04)[edit]

Rubi: All right, so everybody please appreciate the paper handoff because a lot went into it. All right. We get all of this, we've got the continuation of magic gone crazy because the first thing you come in and you're attacked by a Haywire Golem and you're still feeling the after effects of killing Mordremoth and then Canach shows up, scares everybody half to death and off we go to Bloodstone Fen.

Ross: Yeah because a certain human minister-

Andrew: Yes, has been misplaced.

Ross: -has gone missing.

Rubi: This guy.

Andrew: Yeah, Caudecus Beetlestone who was, if you played the what is it called, Caudecus' Manor. I always call it a state, internal names. If you play that, at the end of that the Queen's like, hey you got all this this bandit problem in your house here, why don't you come stay with me for safety and he's been there since. But recently he left so Canach has been sent out to return him to safety.

Rubi: It's super sweet of Canach to worry about his safety. And I know it's-

Ross: He's so worried (inaudible)

Rubi: He is and I know he's done this totally of his own accord.

Ross: Yeah.

Andrew: Oh yeah, nobody's pulling any strings-

Ross: No, no, poor guy.

Andrew: -no one's forcing him to do anything.

Rubi: Canach is incredibly salty about it and he's still holding his billet and how much fun was that to write?

Ross: It was so much fun. I think you had mentioned a little bit earlier but like Taimi and Canach are two of my favorite characters to write just because of that salty attitude and because of Taimi's like kind of-

Rubi: -this devil-may-care-

Ross: Yeah, exuberance, you know, and like sweetness but really kind of could twist a screw at the same time, you know. But and also like all our voice actors are amazing but you know John DiMaggio and Debi Derryberry are like, you know, just really fun just initially just right off the bat to listen to so-

Rubi: Yeah, they're so perfect for those characters.

Ross: -you can kind of hear those voices a little bit clearer in your head sometimes.

Rubi: All right, so we have Canach being cranky and off we go to Bloodstone Fen, and this is where the story progresses into the open world because you have to train up your counter magic trait. And you've given us a few things to do to to train this up.

Andrew: Yeah, so you get introduced to the both the Mastery and the fact that Taimi bugged you without you noticing while you were in Rata Novus-

Rubi: That was amazing.

Andrew: -which is good because it gives us the opportunity to have her sort of be that voice in your head telling you what's going on without her always having to be there. Especially since she doesn't have her golem right now, that would be slow that would be pretty slow-

Ross?: -and dangerous-

Andrew: -and dangerous-

Ross?: -very dangerous-

Rubi: I'm not moving past that loss of Scruffy anytime soon.

Andrew: Yeah.

Rubi: I'm sorry.

Ross?: Nor should you. R.I.P.

(inaudible)

Rubi: She's bugged your backpack.

Andrew: Yeah she's bugged your backpack and she tells you about this counter magic ability which is actually based on research that you see happening in Guild Wars 1. If you played the Guild Wars Beyond War in Kryta content, you see in Zinn's lab that the seer is being kind of dissected and worked on, and then later on in HoT you learn that Zinn is actually the one who ended up founding Rata Novus. So we were able to tie the last time the White Mantle were active in with this pretty well because of that connection. So with that ability, or while you're training that ability your first step is sort of you talk to Almorra who you caught a ride with, and you basically come to the conclusion like, hey something crazy is probably going on here I think a bloodstone just blew up I'm going to go check this out. So you do and it it kind of takes you on like a guided tour around the map just to introduce players to what all is going on, but at the same time your character is also sort of learning what happened here. Like for example there's the citadel that's sort of floating in the air, not to be confused with the other floating castle.

Rubi: We've got to- how many floating towers do we have you guys?

Andrew: You know what floating towers are cool, and and we like it here.

Rubi: New episode name-

Benjamin?: -yeah, good for you.-

Rubi: -Guild Chat: floating towers are cool.

Andrew: Yeah so uh there you see that a lot of these uh chosen spirits that were sacrificed on the Bloodstone and have continued to be sacrificed on the Bloodstone in between the events of Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. Uh, they were all released, or at least a lot of them were released when the Blood Stone blew up. So this is sort of the first sign like well something's not right with this Bloodstone of all these ghosts are here and then you actually go down to a piece of the Bloodstone and there you see like okay yeah this this thing's not in one piece anymore.

Rubi: -this could be a problem.-

Andrew: Yeah. Uh, and then you go down to the surface and you interact you, you actually first come across some white Manel who are are acting a bit off. But, you're kind of used to them shooting at you. So at first you're like -huh- they're acting a little weird and it's actually when you come across some Pact forces that are uh, crazed that you realize like. Oh, I think The Bloodstone sort of changed these people. Uh, and if you, you continue on you actually find a Pact camp. Where they uh, they were outside of the blast radius and you can; you can sort of find out what happened and talking to the medic there you find that they're like: no, they're, they're basically kind of soulless zombies at this point and the only real, mercy, is to kill them at this point unfortunately.

Rubi: This is not at all depressing.

Andrew: No, it's very cheerful-

Ross?: -yeah-

Andrew: cheerful, cheerful uh, episode.

Rubi: On a similar note, I do want to say. How much these, these ghosts and spirits that are running around that we were talking about. how much some of their voice dialogue just kills me so whoever did that good work on breaking my heart.

Andrew: -oh, the ghosts?

Rubi: yeah!

Andrew: Uh that, that was that was probably me. uh, -but uh- yeah. Especially during the Hablion fight um, when they first.

Rubi: -Oh Jeez! Right.

Andrew: So by the way, yeah. Hablion comes back, -uh- he was.

Rubi: -Spoilers!-

Andrew: -Uh- Yeah oops. he was uh,

Rubi: -This is why we waited until now to do this episode you had your chance.-

Andrew: You had your chance. Yeah, uh, so actually the last time you were at Bloodstone Fen in Guild Wars 1. Uh, you come across Hablion and he's sacrificing Chosen; and that's the moment in Guild Wars 1 that you realize like: "Hey! Despite the fancy white armor these guys might not be good guys", and you sort of turn on them because they're murdering innocents. Uh.

Ross: as you do.

Andrew: Yeah, usually anti-killing innocence.-

Ross: -The, yeah, the turning on you part as you do. Not killing innocent as you do.-

Andrew: -Right.-

Rubi: -I expect that though.- *laughing*

Ross&Andrew: -Yeah.

Andrew: Gotcha. *all four laughing*

Ross: Just wanted to be clear on, so.

Andrew: So, -uh- you fight Hablion. Uh, but I guess your Guild Wars 1 character is slightly shortsighted at the fact that he killed him on top of a bloodstone so.

Rubi: Why? Why, did we do that?

Andrew: Well I mean it didn't-

Ross: The mechanics of bloodstones back then a little weren't quite-

Andrew: -Yeah, they thought you had to be chosen really. Any Spirits there, they. Just the chosen ones are more effective or whatever.

Rubi: It's pretty clear on, please let's not do that anymore.

Andrew: Yeah, be careful around blood Stones. So anyway you killed him there and some of his forces there so we actually brought him and his soldiers back. Uh, there's a night meta down on the surface area. Uh, and after you call some of the regular Spirits. four white mantle spirits come out and those are sort of Hablions henchmen and then in addition to him he's up in the Citadel.

Rubi: it's like a band name.

Andrew: And, like it's pretty metal.

Rubi: Heavy metal.

Ross: Dark metal from Sweden.

Andrew: Dam, somebody's jotting that down. All right uh, so during the Hablion fight, especially, like as you're sort of beating these Spirits back into their senses and realizing that you're not their enemy. With your sword.

Ross: Also as you do.

Andrew: As you do. -uh- They, they start realizing like: "Oh, wait a minute yeah the last thing I remembered this guy was cutting my head off", and then they turn on him, and they help you defeat Hablion which is, is kind of a nice moment.

Rubi: It's a good fight mechanic. I really liked it.

Andrew: Yeah, that. That and the uh portals throwing you into the air thing.

Rubi: I liked that less.

Andrew: you like that less? but you get to shoot him on the way down.

Rubi: I was too busy trying to figure out what had happened. Because I found, I found this out the hard way that. Hey, the blue circles. You might want to avoid those. just suddenly I'm flying through the air and I have no idea what's going on.

Andrew: You should especially avoid them if you're low on health because they also tick damage on you, so there is a strong likelihood that if you get teleported, you might be in the down state. Guess what you can't do when you're down?

Ross?: *whispers* Glide.

Rubi: Glide.

Andrew: Yeah. This, this was all deliberate.

Rubi: So here's, here's a story. It's a good story. Um, this is how I found out is by getting in the blue circles. But what I did is come up to the top of that wall out there and I decided I'd glide down, and I landed in one. This is how I found out. So I was at least full health it wasn't that bad. But my entire trip down was me going okay there's something about this fight where we can't be on the ground. I don't understand. So thank you for that.

Andrew: -yeah.-

Rubi: -but not really.

Andrew: You're, you're perfectly welcome.

New gliding skills (22:51)[edit]

Rubi: *laughing* This is the most sarcastic thank you. All right speaking of gliding can we talk about the new gliding skills in Bloodstone because you made Bloodstone Dust kind of valuable again. Which is weird, but all right.

Andrew: So early on we knew this was going to be a very vertical map. Um, we didn't have a very large piece of the map left there was raids

Rubi: -raids are annoying- *laughing*

Andrew: -above us. Yeah well you know but they're pretty sweet so I'm not going to do that-

Rubi: -they are pretty sweet-

Andrew: -um there's raids above us and there's fleet, or sorry what is it verden-

Benjamin&Rubi: -Verdent Brink-

Andrew: -Verdent Brink below us. Uh so we only had this like small area so we determined early on like: "Well it's just going to have to be a vertical map, we're just going to have to build up", uh and I had worked on the Shatterer before and I gave gliding skills-

Rubi: -yeah-

Andrew: -in and it seemed to go pretty well. And I'm every single time I glide in any map, I really want to be able to shoot things while I'm in the air, I don't know, I'm greedy I guess? I just want more, uh-

Rubi: -Sounds so interesting-

Andrew: -I figured like if we're going to be having people gliding so much in this map, we should make combat in the air a thing. So all the creatures can attack you from, yes, large distances as people have noticed. I guess Bloodstone power really makes you have a good arm, you should be pitchers.

Rubi: Well it's all the- (inaudible)

Andrew: *laughing* -but uh, yeah, so we gave you skills so you can, uh, attack back. There's, uh first one you get, uh right when you get in the map, is just a sort of beam attack that does more damage the closer you get. Uh the second one is a, a magic volley, um and this one was specifically made to have a very very heavy uh CC on it. Uh and that's to make it so players feel like you're, you're going to do less DPS in the air most likely, so you're like well if you're going to do less damage and you can't use your utility skills or your Elite or your healing skill for that matter, we should give you something else. So we figure well they they will just be really good at contributing to break bars uh-

Rubi: -yeah-

Andrew: -in, in those fights. And it, it does take a huge seconds, it's like a six second CC, so that is not-

Rubi: -Yeah it takes a huge chunk out of the break bars.-

Andrew: -it's not a little bit, does take a big chunk yeah. Um, and then the third skill is actually a, a ground skill that you put on the ground to heal your allies, uh. It pulses heal, it gives regeneration and it, it cures conditions. Uh and the thought process with that is just that I played a month on Guild Wars 1, and I love it when you can heal your allies. It makes you feel like you're contributing-

Rubi: -just call skill three Andrew-

Andrew: -and. That's right.

Rubi: Andrew's Nostalgia: "Skill 3"

Andrew: That's right. Uh but, um, in addition to that, it's also nice if you're about to land. You can throw it on the ground and then you land into it, and then you can continue and you have all these you know bonuses while you fight on the ground-

Rubi: -nice-

Andrew: -and then uh, the fourth one is a Dodge and a heal that lets you break the aggro with the powerful throwing guys uh, and also heals you up a bit since you are taking damage in the air-

Rubi: -Keep from turning into a moa-

Andrew: -and then the fifth one is one of my favorites. It's uh, it's a surge skill it's basically afterburners. Uh it's really good for when you're going around collecting the Unbound Magic if there's one that's just out of reach you can sort of... *stretch out the hand* pull forward and get it.

Rubi: -do I note it?

Map design and lore (25:43)[edit]

Andrew: Yeah you really want that, and it's also, um it's something to, make leyline gliding more attractive. Uh, cuz leyline gliding and this is something that Ben actually helped us with leylines in general. We're really kind of a pain to set up, so we haven't used them as much as you'd like to. Ben has fixed that now so we can use them more. Um, but I wanted something else there to be like no really you want to get leylines um, so, yeah.

Rubi: Can we pause and talk about leyline setup because this is continuing to be my favorite story.

Benjamin: Sure so uh-

Rubi: -and thank you for making it work-

Benjamin: *laughing* -as we were um, starting to get the environment for Bloodstone Fen together, we realized we needed a lot of Mastery, so the you could navigate through the map easily. And so you know Frosty asked me to set up um, a bunch of leylines just so that we could get a feel for the map, and I started doing it and then I told him no. Because it, it was really a tedious process um, basically a leyline is composed of trip wires uh, or volumes that apply a force and you have to enter a force in manually with coordinates, which means you have to figure out where the next leyline is from where you are, do the vector math, normalize the vector-

Rubi: -So if you have a leyline that's going up and curving over and then swinging around this way and then going back up, and-

Andrew: -yeah, it's the pain in the ass-

Rubi: -as they do in Bloodstone Fen-

Andrew: -basically-

Rubi: -this is yes, this is the short version.

Andrew: Which is why I asked my uh, gameplay programmer over here if he would like to take that task-

Rubi: -and you said I would love that

Benjamin: Well so I mean, I I I I wrote a, a utility tool that we can use um, in our editing tools, and it pretty dramatically uh, sped up the process, so uh, we actually got that out in time for the last raids release which is uh, which helped them quite a bit too I think with the leylines-

Rubi: -oh yeah-

Benjamin: -in that encounter so.

Rubi: This is a really good example of what a content programmer does make, make it so things work-

Benjamin: -when things work-

Rubi: -everybody can do their jobs-

Benjamin: -that's how they work- *Ross laughing*

Rubi: that's easier. Thank you.

Benjamin: Yeah.

Rubi: You guys are gold. All right so, speaking of things fighting back and that, that dodge can we talk about some of the attack skills they have, like turning me into a moa.

Andrew: Oh yeah so that's-

Rubi: -I'm really taking that personally. I'm sorry-

Andrew: -that's actually the uh magical storms. Those are environment effects. Um, we just wanted something that a conveyed that magic was going crazy in the map uh, ma- uh, made it so there was an extra danger in the air, so you weren't just flying around invincible shooting stuff all day long, and see amus me endlessly uh-

Rubi: -you're going to turn me into a bird-

Andrew: -and turning people into flightless birds when they're flying is freaking hilarious, like every single time I see it, it brings me joy. Well you miss it, don't hit it. It's, they're pretty visible-

Rubi: -"get good", is what you're telling me-

Andrew: -a little bit.

Benjamin: I swear as God is my witness, I thought moas could fly-

Rubi: -thank you-

Benjamin: -WKRP prence.

Rubi: I watched it come sit by me, we'll be the old people together.

Benjamin: You bet it.

Rubi: All right we have a lot going on in this map can we talk about the journals for a little bit.

Andrew: Yeah so uh obviously there the White Mantle did not just spontaneously wake up from asleep, they've been doing stuff for a while. So we wanted to have something that kind of shows what they've been up to. Uh so we have these journals spread around the uh map that you can collect, and they, there's a collection tied to them and a reward. Uh but they sort of tell the story of like the White Mantle, kind of starting to poke at this Bloodstone. Um they're at this point unnamed leader uh is really prioritizing uh, weaponization. He wants to find ways to use Bloodstone magic as a weapon so he can claim Kryta, he or she I suppose, could claim Kryta. Um-

Ross -HE, um-hmm- *coughs*

Andrew: -he yeah, yeah-

Rubi: -Spoilers!-

Andrew: -Um so they start doing these experiments and they there's, there, there's three different the, the journals are from three different people's perspectives. There's sort of the the head researcher. Uh and then, there's the Justiciar who's like he doesn't, he's always complaining about these damn scholars and he doesn't understand the magic. He just knows that he wants some weapons and why are they taking so damn long-

Rubi: *laughing*

Andrew: -uh and then there's a third person who's like-

Rubi: -I'm sorry there's like 10 jokes there-

Andrew: -yeah it's sort of like the the intern nobody's listening to, even though they're totally right, and she is realizing as they're doing these things like man. And the more you guys poke at this thing, the worst things get around here. Maybe we should stop poking at this thing and then towards the end right before the events of the actual map when you're in it uh. She's pretty damn sure that you're, you're about to blow this thing up, you guys ruined it when it's done.

Rubi: This is not okay.

Andrew: So she reports this. Well okay I won't spoil the end. I'm not going to spoil the end, but that's, that's kind of the general theme of the journals you should collect them they're fun. But it also, it's also interesting because it goes back further than just like right now and it talks about like when Zhaitan died or when Mordremoth died, how the Bloodstone reacted to that. And it sort of reveals it this thing wasn't just like, oh back when the seers made it, it they stuck a bunch of magic in it. It's actually still sort of drawing magic, so when the dragons died, it reacted pretty significantly.

Benjamin: That was one of my favorite parts too because that, that puts this whole area in the entire timeline of Kryta, for the duration of Guild Wars 2, just made it feel a lot more like a cohesive world to me personally. Love that.

Rubi: Yeah I completely agree. Once you get all of these, once you fly around the map you find all of these pages there's an achievement uh, collection not collection of dances um,-

Rubi&Andrew: -Conspiracy of Dunces-

Rubi: -thank you I was like oh gosh what is it. Um and I do want to pause for just a second and give a thank you to the Guild Wars 2 Wiki Community, because I don't know if you guys have seen it, but they laid it out so if you just want to go and read all of this text. It's laid out in chronological order, and in like a grid here's who wrote this, here's who wrote this, who... And it's really well done and somebody put in a lot of time to get all of that text typed up, and arranged in a way that was easy to navigate so thank you guys as-

Andrew: -thank you Wiki people-

Rubi: -thank you Wiki people we love you. You want to talk about the diving goggles?

Andrew: Huh.

Rubi: There it is. *all four laughing* So I'm just like making you so happy today.

Andrew: We like to put diving goggles in maps, but this map does not have water, and we didn't really want to add water to it um. But it had this really- *Rubi laughing*

Andrew: -massive drop from like the, the top of the islands to the bottom of the crater. It just goes on forever and it's like, well it doesn't really make any sense for us to just stick like a puddle there or something. Like so what can we do and we realized like, oh well it's the magic going crazy map, so we can do pretty much whatever the hell we want. So we made it so you jump off and as you go down I, I kind of left you a trail of breadcrumbs so it's just be with the Unbound magic nodes to let you know if you're getting off track. And then right before you're about to splat on the ground, a portal opens and then throws you right back up to the top and drops you on the island. So it's kind of a... it, it was originally-

Rubi: -there it is. I was like please tell the rest of it-

Andrew: -it was originally going to be an actual endless loop where you would fall through the portal come back to the top falling right back through the portal, and then just keep doing that. But there was a bug where the second time when you loop back up around your lighting just didn't work and the-

Rubi: -there we go-

Andrew: -diving goggles just went away. And so with that came your, I'm not going to take fall damage protection. So it basically not really be so much an endless loop as a single Loop to your death.

Rubi: It's a good time. You also didn't want a server programmer to come to your house-

Andrew: -yeah that's the other one I was like thinking like I swear somebody said something about endless loops being questionable, so I decided it's probably not the best idea.

Rubi: Something that just occurred to me. What you could have done was just made a giant pile of Bloodstone Dust on the map floor, like a pile of leaves that you jump into.

Andrew: But who would leave a pile of Bloodstone Dust lying around, that stuff's so valuable.

Ross: *laughing* Certainly not the white mantle-

Rubi: -I'm just say-

Ross: -they need it-

Rubi: -oh my gosh.

Ross: They ne—ed it. *all four laughing*

Rubi: What are you trying, what are you trying to say Ross?

Ross: I'm just saying. It's good for decorating is what I'm saying-

Rubi: -It's good for decorating-

Ross: -they just, they just yeah.

Benjamin: It's good substitution for paprika

Ross: Yeah they have little Zen Gardens you know, where they put Bloodstone Dust and like put rocks in there, and be like "Oh now I'm going to do spirals around them".

Rubi: With the Bloodstone Dust because they're so, because they're so calm.

Ross: Mhm.

Andrew: Yeah you can't you tell they're really calm.

Rubi: Anytime they wanna-

Ross: -They're, they're centered you know like that's what I like about them.

Rubi: Hey let's talk about the Guild Wars 1 callbacks because those were super fun. Who's that, who's was that like a collective idea, or was that just you saying "Hey you know what we should do".

Andrew: Well I mean I think, I think it was sort of an inevitability when we started talking about uh White Mantle and, uh all that stuff just because it's like we're going back to the original, original Prophecies uh it's kind of you kind of have to at that point.

Rubi: Yeah.

Andrew: Luckily like both me and Lindsay worked on uh Guild Wars beyond the war and credit stuff. So like basically the last time we talked about the White Mantle was when we were working on it, and then we're like "We're going to pick this back up it's like well how convenient".

Rubi: By the way.

Andrew: So we happen to know a lot of that stuff already um, but yeah we we love going back to the original game as much as we can um. I think it, I think it really helps drive uh immersion and let you realize like this is a world, this has been a world even between the gap where you weren't able to see it because there's, there isn't a game between the two. But like it's sort of lets you know that you know everything has still been evolving.

Rubi: So I did something, I noticed while we were talking, we were talking a lot about Alari Doubleblade running around and realizing I don't, I'm, I'm still self-conscious about spoiling you guys, but realizing that maybe she didn't survive this thing. And there's there was a nice balance struck there between giving Guild Wars 1 players something to recognize and players who just came in at the Guild Wars 2 point saying "Okay I understand what's happening, and this isn't just a weird in joke that isn't making any sense to me".-

Andrew: -Right-

Rubi: -So it's really well done.

Andrew: Yeah, uh that was actually uh Connie helped us with that. Uh, she's the one that brought that one in and I really like how it kind of it was a perfect kind of finale for the uh, the night meta um because you have a lot of just like kill kill kill kill kill, and then at the end you're like hey this person is like still like "Hey help me kill these people". But you're at the end of it, you get to sort of give her some closure uh. And originally uh at the end, she sort of asked you um "Hey tell me, I didn't survive that ambush, did I?" Uh and we didn't, we didn't actually have the player respond in the VO-

Rubi: -It's not nice-

Andrew: -so I guess that's a little, it's a little mean it seems like you're kind of leaving her hanging there. Uh so I thought like well, what if we actually made it so the player can respond to that question by doing a /yes emote, and if you do that you get the what is it grief, grief counselor-

Rubi: -Grief Counseling I think-

Andrew: Yeah Grief Counseling achievement um and you help her sort of move on with her life, or move on her not live her afterlife,-

Rubi: -Oh gosh-

Andrew: -her afterlife, that's the one.

Rubi: Wow I didn't even catch that until you flinched like that's not nice. All right, so thank you for this huge map with all of the gameplay, and I'm saying thank, thank you as a general, not thank you for doing this all by yourself.

Andrew: Right.

Rubi: Living, living here for months.

Andrew: Many, Many people worked on this.

A Shadow's Deeds (37:32)[edit]

Rubi: Yeah thank you all. So we have all of this stuff to do, we get Counter Magic, and then we move on to A Shadow's Deeds.

Ross: Ben that's Caithe's cave in case you were wondering-

Benjamin: -Right, right, right, right yes

Rubi: Not nice.

[Laughter]

Benjamin: So yeah, there's this huge explosion all got sucked back in, what happened? The storyline guides you down to to the center of the cave where you're trying to figure out what the hell happened here? What could have caused this? And you find these remnants of the explosion where there's magical scorch marks along the ground. And they all lead up into this ritual room where one of the empowered bloodstones crashes into the ground, and you see like a echo of something that had happened. I always thought of it as like when you turn the key on a car and the engine doesn't roll over.

Rubi: Oh no.

Benjamin: So the player has the brilliant idea of, well let's smash some more bloodstone up here, nothing bad could possibly happen from this.

Andrew: Take a little from Taimi.

Ross: A little Taimi influence there.

Benjamin: And Caithe also drops in on you at this point. And there was a lot of ambivalence and unresolved conflict between the player and Caithe at this point. So this was a really great opportunity for them to clear the air and figure out where to go from there. And it's still kind of, Ross did all the writing on that I think it's really masterfully written out the way you-

Ross: Too kind sir.

Rubi: Especially after he picked on you about Caithe.

[Laughter]

Ross: I almost feel bad about it now.

Benjamin: It was a little around the edge of the writing I thought but-

Ross: There it is.

[Laughter]

Rubi: I have to point out how much I love Caithe's timing on, "okay we're under attack, hey listen can we talk? I need to have a serious heart-to-heart with you".

Benjamin: Yeah, that was a serendipitous bug. So I made a mistake in one of our playtests early on and-

Rubi: It's a feature.

Benjamin: -and one of the fights would continue on longer than it was supposed to and the conversation would start. And everyone kind of lashed onto that and said, "oh when she says bad timing here", that makes perfect sense here. So all right now we're going to make it work that way always. So yeah that was kind of tricky because we don't do dialogue during combat very much.

Rubi: We made up for it now.

Benjamin: Yeah. And yeah, it worked out really really well. It was a pleasant surprise, yeah.

Rubi: Every once in a while those things will get a little tricky and then work out beautifully. So I like the concept of my player character calling Caithe out on her consistently terrible timing. So bad.

Ross: Yeah, why would she start now?

Rubi: Yeah.

Ross: She's been that way in the past.

Rubi: Yeah, it's not new. And I am going to have to agree with Ben, I like that it wasn't just "hey sorry things were just kind of hard for me totally okay forgotten". There's still that ambivalence and it's not a thing that you can just get over with.

Ross: Yeah, I mean we definitely wanted to breathe you know, truth into the moment. And you know when people kind of don't act in a great way you don't instantly just go "sure buddy now let's get these things together". You know-

Rubi: Yeah.

Ross: You kind of Harbor some, you know-

Rubi: You've got some resentment.

Ross: Yeah.

Rubi: All right, thank you guys. We're going to take a short break after you guys answer a couple of questions. I'll let you guys pick the ones you want.

Andrew: So Xera was a high Inquisitor, Caudecus is the actual Confessor. Confessor is the highest rank of the White Mantle.

Rubi: The question is: was Xera the leader or was Caudecus the leader?

Andrew: Caudecus.

Rubi: Xera is just tall.

Andrew: Caudecus is the leader, Xera was kind of probably directly under Caudecus. But they definitely sort of had differing views. Xera was all about-

Ross: The mursaat.

Andrew: The mursaat for real. Caudecus you sort of learn at the end of everything that he's actually just more about "I want to take credit for myself".

Rubi: He's not the nicest dude.

Andrew: There's definitely a sort of rift in the White Mantle between the truly devote and the opportunistic, I suppose.

Rubi: Why not both?

Benjamin: I saw a question earlier, that is one of the ones that's been pressing on me more than anything else-

Ross: What happened to Plant? *laughs*

Benjamin: Yes! That's the one!

Rubi: Yeah! Why why, Ross why?

Ross: Plant was trampled! There's nothing... I mean... the journal says-

Rubi: Again I say: why?

Ross: Yeah. I do though uh... there's part of me that thi- we'll never see this but, you- when, uh... if Taimi ever rebuilds uh... you know Scruffy into a new thing like in the control panel, there'll be like- you know how like fighter pilots would have a picture of their significant other in it? There'll be like a little... sepia toned picture of Plant... *all four laughing* And she's like: "This is for you, Plant!" *braaaa mouth sound* Like driving... So you can sleep on that, like- and know that like Plant's memory will be honored and...

Andrew: Plant will be avenged.

Ross: -yeah-

Rubi: Show of hands. Who wants that to happen now?

Ross: -yeah- *laughs*

Rubi: It needs- make it happen Ross.

Ross: -yeah-

Rubi: You- you've just commited yourself-

Ross: The community could probably do some fan art of that- that would, happen a lot quicker... *laughs*

Rubi: That'd be amazing.

Note: The text below was auto-transcribed and not reviewed. It could be that text appears for the wrong speaker. Use the link to get to the exact moment transcription was paused https://youtu.be/0SsmnPsEt34?t=2596

all right do you want to talk about the shadow effect yeah sure oh yeah cuz that was they actually asked about it um and I forgot about it thank you for covering me uh I don't know if anybody did any like like research like that is just something that I I had remembered from school like when they go over that that like has so much you know weight and gravity to it that you're like hang on let's ask the question first did you research the original nuclear Shadow effect for this and this was that Atomic Atomic shadow that we what prompted it right Ben like well I mean yeah we we've just seen this massive explosion tremendous uh energy obviously emanating out of it um and in this ritual room it just seemed like a really natural thing to uh really highlight the devastation and power of this explosion I mean this was obviously nuclear scale scale at least I mean didn't we say that the explosion was going to hit Lion's Arch yeah that was actually another question I saw earlier um that uh we didn't see the full impact of what that explosion would have been because it got pulled back in but yeah it it it would have been really bad and I mean really bad to to draw like oh yes it would been this like I don't think anybody knows I think Al Mor says that line like it's speculation of like oh it could have taken out blankety blank you know um it's actually I think you threw that line in yeah um which I really like that it because it calls back to like they just rebuilt the place like can we please stop exploding lines yeah that would have been amazing if we did that again oh and by amazing you it please stop just every time something happens we put the broken back in the game hey everybody guess what um so you researched you researched this well yeah especially the art team did and and they did a really great job of of putting this mental image that you know we brainstormed of of of how to uh convey this which like are we gonna pull that off but yeah it was amazing the effects team just uh blew everything out of the water in that instance in particular everything from the um empowered shards exploding to the whole scene that you see with some being drawing in the magic it was just uh it all came together so well it was it was amazing it really did uh I'm going to ask you guys to address one of these questions because Dragon 2,200 is asking the important questions up there at the top I'm not going to tell you who the white manle spy is come on now is oxone the white manle spy in the prior would be tell know I wasn't going to let you guys skip over that one it's important to know all right so what else we got uh a question about Confessor Estelle uh the thought process was kotus was her successor um she was a Confessor in a personal story and he assumed the role afterwards so the question was can you explained why during kot's time as Confessor we had another Confessor called Estelle in the human story line about dead parents was she kot's Psy this is like a screen full of conspiracy theories I mean you don't know the relationship between the two of them uh maybe you'll learn more about it um but she was the Confessor before him basically okay is all we're going to say right not foreshadowing yeah all right we're going to take a very short break and we will be back in just just a minute with someone from [Music] aex one of these days we seriously need to do like a Gil chat behind the scenes terrible things that happen when we're off C things overheard at a read net all right so HR I will only remind you so Ben left and I can't blame him and Franco has come back on I'd like you to do what we did earlier and just talk about a little bit about what your role is and what you did for this release so um Franco GLA I'm F artist uh working uh with the designers and and Ross and the team um doing effects for uh this episode Franco's really really like high strung so we're working to keep him calm one at a time folks one at a time one at a time okay so we've gone through we talked with Ben a little bit about Kate's cave which I am just calling it forever now yeah I am ruined we've got through here and I want to talk a little bit about countermagic because that's the thing you know we trained that up and it allowed us to proceed but now I want to talk about what do you do with it and what it is well I guess uh the we all look at Frank you're the new guy you're getting picked on well a lot of the counter magic do uh it did use a lot of like the the Bloodstone right so um you know there's a lot of like uh um bir directional beams that were created uh for you to actually kind of absorb it but then give it back um so just uh basically kind of having look development done for uh previous Bloodstone uh um skills and and effects um especially with uh some of the rage stuff it was more of like a a refined State um as far as like U the the crystals but this is where this is the the epicenter of of the explosion so a lot of the Bloodstone it's at more of a raw state so it's just a little bit more uh unstable um per se so uh the the effects had to kind of Encompass uh that that a little bit more of that kind of um powerful kind of uh just crazed kind of uh feeling it's more intense because you're right there yeah you're right there and there's there's a lot more that that's it's pulling in energy from you don't know exactly what it's from but there's there's something happening it's a lot more you know that's a that's actually a good way to get into something else that I wanted to talk to you about because we're at the epicenter like you said we're right here where this broken Bloodstone is there's a lot going on and I know most of the player bases had chance to look around and see you know what's going on here but the more subtle things like this like this beam that we were talking about what were some things that you did to as far from an let me try that again because apparently I don't have my words all loaded yet yeah take two just Del that later it's cool it's fine I don't understand that concept obviously what were some of the things that you did in the area or that the effects team did to give it that look that we had this epicenter and everything's more intense and the bloodstones making everything insane well um the the map artists uh really did a phenomenal job filling in the space uh and also the prop artists um Dana and Kevin uh um they did an amazing job this filling the space um and this basically those subtle nuances you know um like we created the uh The Scorch marks I created The Scorch marks that are actually leading you up to case cave um and um just the some of the environment uh um that um that was built out too for it it's just basically the ambient kind of uh kind of effects that are happening in the environment zones um and then uh Kate's cave you know just basically just as it was a really true collaborative kind of efforts where we all talk through it and just um once it was actually pitched as far as the the idea and just coming up with how we're going to tackle you know um remnants of an actual blast right and just give it that Eerie feeling it worked um I once we got down in there because you know I was I spent a lot of the map I was too busy being turned into a MOA like an idiot to really it it I am aware that I brought it on myself I am fully aware it's my own fault it doesn't stop it from happening as often as I would love like but the more I go the more I go around the map the more I look around the more I see all of these little effects that add to the overall feel and you were talking about Kate's cave and once I get down in there and start looking around there is a slightly different look it still it still fits with the rest of them out but there's this look that you're down there and you're at the core of something really bad that happened yeah well I mean the whole essence of it is basically just kind of um trying to uh figure out what happened here right right so and that's where you know the echo comes in where essentially you know it's it's almost like a um something that is just happening like a moment in time and you're just kind of it's it's like an echo in time so it's almost like you're you're going back and seeing that that short snapshot um and uh it was really great because uh we brought in another effect artist Christina and she uh did a really great job on you know building that out and we kind of we collaborated and we built it out and it's it's what it isz it was a really team effort so um but uh yeah it was really great to to work on and you guys did good work we have we have another really one I'm sorry the crazed effect is another really good oh yeah the uh yeah I was uh working with Andrew with the Bloodstone craze effect and um we just wanted to kind of give it that extra kind of U volume of like well they've really been corrupted and they're kind of tweaking uh you know somebody had to say it I had to stop sorry we we you know it came up in conversation I had to to put it out there um but um yeah we should have it it just should be like a dare logo somewhere or something um but say no to Bloodstone B and Bloodstone candy frco yes look it defies gravity look at that see magic magic or just really old candy I supect it's maybe a little bit of both but did you bring it up for everybody CU um no I pulled the Spicoli I just have enough for for me that's a really old reference extra points extra points for that yeah actually that was uh courtesy of uh Bobby fun Bobby um or the The Narrative another old reference yes he was kind enough another guy they make a cake for raids and he brought this in and I've I hold on it to it dearly I I suspect I don't want to be like the well actually person but I think that was his wife yeah I thank you Carol I didn't want to throw her out there that's okay it's she bakes us things and they're delicious she's very awesome what a kind soul I am definitely not hitting her up for some of those cookies there's cookies well not yet but I'm hoping if I play my cards right get some Bloodstone cookies yes I love you Carol okay I've I've made my bid for snacks for all of us now all right can we talk about the Confessor stronghold because this is like the grand finale of all of this going on and we're going to go in there and we're going to get cotus and we're going to solve this thing yeah but first you got to kick open some doors oh my God that was the best thing ever like number one feature of the release door kicking yeah we should have made that a Mastery that was like something that Anthony just like kind of casually threw in and I was like why have I never seen this before I never want to open a door like a peasant ever again kicking master I know I would train the door kicking Mastery so fast oh yeah everybody would cuz it's best I'll work on that make it happen I mean the Daredevil has there's a lot of punching and kicking happening so I feel like the president is there and now we've got actual door kicking and everybody should be able to do it everywhere yes I want to go to kiss's actual house out of spite kick can you kick it and nothing happens but then it opens afterwards so it's just that would be amazing that's before that's when you don't have it fully trained up that's like the first level yeah and then you train it and whenn your kicks are just suggestions I would like for this to happen you know if you feel like it you totally okay so all the door by the way and then cotus and then we're done yeah that's it that's the only other thing sh there was no other person unless I'm more questions so Franco God there was something after CS I can't remember I guess that was it you know not B relevant to the season story liners oh yeah that meret guy that's the worst yeah that was a little surprise at the end for yeah that was I think we'd been hinting at it a little bit before mhm but we get to the end we've we've got our Showdown with cotus dudes invul able while talking can we talk about this because I kind of wanted to just like start stabbing him and make him shut up and I tried I tried hard and how' you even get to him yeah how'd you get up there well I was I was kind of ineffectively like 40t back just angrily Ching at the air oh so you're stabbing at the air in his general direction that actually happens in real life too you yeah you know that doesn't it's not how you stab people by you you live a different life than I do I'm I'm noticing H you know yeah we have knife fights at lch yeah really I've got to you tie your wrist you tie your each wrist together and then yeah it's basically the Beat It video um every lunch yeah I I don't know what has happened but I really like it and I'm going to need somebody to recreate that video on the next lunch hour can we get kotus and Lazarus to like end that we have like a sharks versus Jet like a kind of dance off oh man okay so oh spoiler God you told them about our Dance Off out yeah mark delete that later yeah yeah take that out post episode two You Got Served is now spoiled job we've actually already done the you got sered thing so it's not a spoiler it's ancient all right so you guys knew coming in we have kotus and then we're going to have Lazarus come busting out of nowhere and call cotus bad names Fork tongue snake I think was in there there were there were some good insults in there mhm yeah all right so how did you how did you even start deciding how do we want to convey this how do we want Lazarus to come in how do we want this to go down um I mean it was uh we rely a lot on our cinematics team um who are awesome uh you know we kind of come in with basically what you just said the dance battle thing yes we say dance battle and they gave us this which is weird because there's no dance at all no um you know we come in with this like oh and Lazarus comes back and this is kind of the the moment and they just go okay and they make something way better fabulous yeah then when we first described it uh and then we all look at that and go oh that's awesome and just hope that you know everything supports it up until that moment yeah that's my that's my experience with a lot of art requests uh like I want it to be all like sparkly and cool looking and stuff and then someone like Franco comes in and actually translate that into something that's actually really amazing did they just all like smile at you and wait for you to leave and then and then look at FR just say we just say I think he's trying to say something trying to speak to us what the hell do you want magic and Sparks and stuff ladies and gentlemen game development this is how this is how it gets done all right so we've got Lazarus he takes off and then we're done except timy has oh one more thing to say just a minor little thing yeah just a a minor what what does she say a partially marginally possibly cataclysmic um yeah primoris looks like it's time sweet so what's going to happen next oh well let me tell you uh yeah Prim mortise has been in the Wizard's castle in the Wizard's show this whole yeah that's it are you going to tell us uh are are you going to give us let me think about it probably not okay you want to take a question instead um probably not but uh the the question is you can make something up you can lie yeah oh good um because they are best buds growing up no um why did Lazarus let kotus get away in the end instead of frying him good question uh not really going to directly answer it but you guys I'm trying here but you can know that um Lazarus is a man that uh you know back probably not going to sit on a beach and just be like ah it's good this is all right Lazarus is missing out so you know we'll see I expect we'll see more from both of them at some point all right I want to ask all three of you as we wrap up what was your favorite part of this release and you can answer that from a development or a player perspective that's tough that is tough I mean aside from door kicking and note throwing yeah you can door kicking and note throwing is a perfectly valid answer if you want to go bigger though it's cool I'd say for me it's it's kind of a tossup between the uh hon fight being able to bring that piece of both the lore and being able to put a lot of cool mechanics into that fight and the Jade construct fights there's a lot of hidden Guild Wars one references in the Jade construct fights like they use Splinter barrage if oh yeah yeah if you played Guild Wars 1 you used to uh mitigate half of my content with things like Splinter barrage so I'm getting you back now so I'm I'm trying to look sorry yeah you're not no no I'm sorry I can't yeah do you does that make you feel better though now rage okay uh for me honestly I think Frosty touched on this a little bit about us you know looking at something over and over and over and like wondering uh do we did we get it did we does this feel good you know and so my favorite part has been after it's all done seeing the response has just been amazing um and just like such a relief and weight because you just think about it constantly like is this right is this part right do we do this enough are people going to understand this part you know and like well you've been staring at it for so long yeah but just to see people like pick up on like little things you know that you know you throw in there with the thought at the time and like oh yeah this if people don't get it that like it's fine and they man people pick up on all of it so it's like the ritl trombone thing yes likeone ran away with that yeah or someone was even like oh like 's you know researcher dialogue sounds great because she's talking about the sensitivity of her instruments and like stuff like that I saw that yeah that you just are like oh it's even like a word choice like right there you know makes a difference to someone and that's amazing amazing so well you guys deserve it you did good work it's been the best Franco how about you um well for me uh just working with such a passionate team I think everybody really uh put a lot of care into it and just basically it came together really nicely and from the effect standpoint I mean you have some really great lore from uh G1 and then also just some really great writing and uh being able to actually pull in from Real World reference to see how it would actually apply in a in um you know a world where it's it's more uh ethereal right um so uh but yeah it it was a really great I mean there's so much variety too to to be able to apply uh different things in this in this map particularly because so many things are happening so uh it was really kind of a a fun thing and being cognizant of know effect soup right so effect soup yeah so can we put that on like the wall outside your pod um yeah we'll do like the old warhall picture of the Campbell sups you know back soup right this is awesome reference day well that's because it's lunchtime so it is lunch time tomato soup we have some tomato suit with some crackers that sounds good or Bloodstone CRA we have Goldfish crackers Bloodstone crackers blood but then there will never be enough yeah they'll just be gone well we could always make them right you know we could go Breaking Bad on it oh gosh on that terrible this really has been like the best reference show ever we've had like 10 really good ones well one reference was the the battle strike Galactic reference I didn't get to foot but that's F from the at the atomic Shadows there you go look like you can do it now if you to all right thank you guys for watching and thank all of you and Ben thank you Ben for coming in and spending some time to talk about the release uh you guys thank you for watching make sure you follow our Channel push that little purple button down there at the bottom of our Channel and stick around keep watching for about 15 more minutes we have the third and final part of our series of videos from when Dan Howell visited uh we blew his mind quite a while back by giving him spoilers for this episode so and then we had him sign his life away so he wouldn't tell anybody minimal spoilers cuz he didn't want a lot he didn't want which is a good thing we he a lot but it was great his reactions were great like everything you told him just completely blew him away it was super fun so stick around we're going to shove that next and I will see you guys on the next guill chat so I want to talk a little bit about one of the things that I noticed and your fans are super fun they really love you but every time you talk about gaming they're like what why why ging you play video games what is this so can you talk a little bit about what got you started gaming and what you love about it well I'm a huge nerd is that a surprise wow uh yep I have literally no life I don't go outside um and Guild Wars 2 is my favorite game so um I spend a lot of time gaming I have a gaming channel on YouTube called danil games which I you know I was like I spend all of my life just playing games procrastinating why am I not just filming it and it looks like I'm doing something with my life relatable um so yeah and then I've been playing The Guild Wars franchise since I was 12 which is really disturbing but that game's old now isn't it Guild Wars one so old I'm sorry holy C I know all these people are going what have I done with my life don't worry you've done F things you're beautiful you have a plan you're totally allowed to have hobbies working out it's totally okay but yeah so then I was one of those people that you know saw that PC Gamer article with the two on it was to and I was like I years later the woman on the Titanic here I was he comes crawling out of his basement like what is this what is life and I think I got about 2,000 hours or something incredibly incredibly lame on Guild Wars 2 which is excellent what Drew you to the Guild Wars franchise um I just in the first place I saw article that just explains this kind of like fantasy combat game and it explained all the classes and my like 12-year-old self was just like wow that sounds cool I want to get that so I bought it and I just really loved it and this was the time when a lot of my friends got addicted to World of Warcraft and kind of ruined their entire lives just grinding for gear instead of studying but I just really loved the inst nature of it I know and I couldn't afford that that was that was it for me you know it's like the the business model of Guild Wars I was like the reason I had something to play when I was a kid kid which was uh something that I really loved nice and yeah then I just stuck with it and I fell in love with the universe of Guild Wars now I'm Ino deep now I can never stop playing Guild Wars I it's like Game of Thrones you're committed now I'm with it to the end either the game dies or I die are you watching Game of Thrones I am are you caught up I am yeah I'm on tour at the moment by the way which is why I'm in Seattle doing a stage show which is why I sound like Mariah Carey as well I'm very husky at the moment it works do you think it's good it's like my sensual voice Maybe slightly but I've been watching Game of Thrones on a MacBook on a bed so it's not the Epic experience I was watching the hold the door episode and I was like I feel like this should be more emotional right now but it's an 11 in screen so there we go oh and making Guild Wars playing that as hard while I'm on the road thanks for releasing The Raid wi while I'm living on a tour bus whose job was that all my friends are home playing it right now and I'm like uh well you know so we actually waited for you to leave the country and then relased it for me we like okay he's gone go great that and daily League participator I'm bad at PVP NOA I cannot get the daily while I'm on tour sorry that's just I am that guy dragging the team down that's me that would God forbid we ever get on a team together cuz the whole team's just going to be on the telling of it it would not be okay all right so what is your favorite profession in Guild Wars 2 my main is a mesma nice it was my high five oh yeah it was in Guild Wars one it's hard jump puzzles I know seriously right have you have you ever portal someone in I have yeah and I do not charge people in lfg oh one gold to know you're what's wrong with the world no yeah I I spend like four hours desperately getting to the top of not so secret and then just go to map chat anything I can do to make people feel like thank you for also not charging and thank you on behalf of those of us that cannot Mesmer to save Liv or jump like most of my friends who play the game I took them about 4 hours they did not have a good evening and not so secret yeah he's here you can thank him in person in a little bit please don't hurt him okay we also need no I love him I like the jumping and the suffering from tribulation mode okay so aside from jumping and suffering M my two favorite things my favorite things right guys relatable what is your favorite Guild Wars 2 content my favorite Guild Wars 2 content I mean like after jumping and suffering after I am going to go ahead and say that it is raiding really and that is really funny because I am a lurker I don't know about you guys but um the whole time I played Guild Wars one for six years I never had a guild I played with some school friends and they all slowly stopped and I was just always somebody that was in the map chat like oh God I have to roll a monk so I can get to join a group of people that want to play with me yeah I have a guild mate like that I know and in Guild Wars I for two years I was just floating between guilds and I didn't really have any in-game friends but then when raiding came out and heart of thorns I was like I really want to experience this content so I might actually have to put myself out there and I imagine like a lot of people watching this that was terrifying cuz I'd never put on a headset despite you know obviously you know my job is being an Entertainer nobody knows who I am in the GU probably tired of talking after a while you just want like kick back and so it was really scary for me I was like I want to do these World bosses I want to do the raids but I don't have any friends um and then I was like you know what I'm just going to I'm going to bite the bullet I'm going to buy a headset of Amazon and then I sat down and I pugged Spirit Veil for a week and it was the the worst of times it was the best of times but then through the pugging I made a group of friends of people that I added as my contacts and now for the first time ever in 10 years of playing The Guild Wars Universe I actually have a group of friends that I talk to regular which is amazing know it's really good I mean to anyone out there because I know there's a lot of people that are like I want to get into raids but I'm scared I don't think I'm good enough if you suck then that might be a challenge cuz I have some friends that are really bad and it's like okay you can try but if your your issue is not being not say that about me if your issue is not being social I say go for it cuz I did it and it was good yeah that's awesome it's funny because none of the people actually know who I am they just refer to me as Gabriel in game so if any of them watch this they're probably like what the hell what didn't you say this storry I'm really antisocial how how do you even like bring that up like by the way you might not know who I am but I there's no good way to do that I know yeah so if you've ever uh had somebody with a really obnoxious British Voice Commander chck garant kill in the Guild Wars I Community team speak that was me seriously that was yeah actually oh man cuz you know when it was really hard when it first came out with heart thought it was so hard I really wanted to do it and it was one of those things where I couldn't find a group so I had to make the group so I was like hey I don't have a raiding group I am going to start the lfg nobody's doing this world boss the main group of people that are doing it I am going to put up that Commander tag I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm going to do it find out and honestly getting the first chat garant kill when it was really hard with a group of 150 randoms on teams speake was one of the most fun things I have ever done in the whole of gaming so you guys should definitely get into it you're actually making me want to Commander tag up more you should that' be funny I'm always so tired when I get home I'm like all right I'm going to log in and somebody do it for me yeah that is that is my role right now I'm going to Auto attack and just stand in the blue donut when everybody dies I have like a little duning bird way if I die I'm resting so far away it's interesting blue dut we always refer to it as the purple jacuzzi the purple jacuzzi what it's a blue donut okay clearly maybe that's just us weird Europeans no I know it's just Mesmer man Mesmer yeah that's widows okay all right so what are you most looking forward to that's coming up in Guild Wars I you can't say can that because we already said it 87 times that no I'm really looking forward to the next season of Living World um and just the raid that I haven't gotten to play yet because you're posting all these pictures of the boss on Facebook and I'm like awesome spoilers spoilers it's super awesome you should totally try it I will sorry plug depl plug for the new content oh yeah yeah that is my answer definitely Frosty has very high level spoilers because this is why you signed the n i they own my life now we do um did you read page three because there's some there's some good stuff in there uh oh okay I have no idea what's about to happen I don't know if we have I don't know actually something what's what's this going to be just your orans if you die wor donating my organs to Mo if anything happens yeah yeah we need him all right so I brought Andrew in so he could tell you a little bit about what's coming up with the next living story okay and this won't air until this won't go live until after it's live okay okay okay MH so you've played Heart Of Thorns I take it I've played heart of thorns a little bit just making sure I have prioritized Heart Of Thorns over my so without spoiling too much because you requested a lack of spoil uh you will be paying some respects to air um okay yeah that's good I was like why is okay I know got an El well it was sort of deliberate to end hot on like a very like Blockbuster finish you know it's kind of it's kind of like a Empire Strikes Back sort of ending where it's just like there's more coming you know um so you are definitely going to go pay respects to her and I'm going to stop by crying so so I'm just going to throw this out there for when you play through the content you know those people that are really stoic but then when they see somebody else cry they start crying pay visit to Brit loock oh wow okay I'm like over here with my lip trembling that is I'm not prepared to experience right now butock needs to be tough for everybody else who isn't tough if's not tough then what happens let's find out okay so you're going to you're going to pay respects to her um and then you're going to touch back ba and base with timey to sort of see what's been happening in the world since the uh which is like one of the biggest mysteries is what the heck is happening in ratan nois okay right and have you uh have you been playing any of the well probably not cuz you're on tour right now but we've been releasing content tring to I haven't been able I'm like lagging along and then somebody scooped up one of the things and I'm like no but yeah so sort of a general theme for for actually the season in general not even just our episode is that like magic is sort of going crazy uh it's uh very chaotic um and actually we're going to be adding a new open world map I won't tell you where it is because that's kind of a spoiler but let's just say it is it is very magical is it the gap between ratum and Tangle depths no oh okay it is not do you want to know where it is yes it's the Blood Stone I don't mind me internally freaking out right now okay but it's not exactly intact anymore oh okay cuz as you approach it it explodes which is kind of dramatic cinematic it's going to be a pretty epic it's really cool looking so uh when you're in this map uh first of all we gave you glider skills in this map you can shoot things while you're gliding which is something that I just always wanted to be able to do because why the hell not dog fighting yeah it's super fun um in addition to that we have a uh sort of seasonwide currency instead of doing map currencies so every individual map has its own thing we have one that's just going to be all the all the content in the season is going to be giving you you're collecting this Unbound magic which is like I said magic is kind of loose and crazy it's just sort of floating through the air so you're going to get the ability to sort of harvest it and so there's little like part of that is like there's little floaty orbs in the sky that you can fly around and collect so like aerial Gathering instead of just like resource aial Gathering aial gather is that a term you've thought about I love that actually I just came up with that right you haven't said that before make it sound like you planned that that was good man why wasn't that one of my seven second questions damn come up with a really cool cool name for picking stuff off while gliding yeah so uh but it's not all fun games up there there's also some magical storms uh that if you fly through them they do chaotic things cuz it's just raw magic of All Sorts one of my favorite things that I do to you when you fly through these personally I personally I come out of like only Dan yes it uh it turns you into a MOA while while you're flying and I don't know if you knew this about moas but they are flightless flightless birs right yeah doesn't that doesn't work out something seemed just poetic about you're a bad person always it's like so many people I just go transform mower now it's my turn to die and go this is unfair we actually watched to see how many times you did that and that's how many times it will happen to you really okay that's good I've got some really powerful metrics it's amazing you have no idea the stuff they collect joking apparently we spent time on that so did you uh did you play The Guild Beyond content I did back in the day wow yeah so you know uh Zen mhm and you know that he is the founder of ratan nois the of ratov Y so he's actually going to I mean he's long dead but uh confirmed yes super long Dead uh some of his magic is actually going to come into play and we'll be adding a new Mastery line uh and then the first skill of that is going to be Bas on that it's going to be very similar to uh spectral infusion from Guild Wars one oh okay I'll let you just sort of think about what that might mean without without spoiling anything infusion runs for days yeah so uh let's see what else can I tell you without spoiling I'm like nervously rotating the lid on this Sharpie like got don't ruin your gift oh look at this it's down I give you things you throw on ground that was ARA Shar that was the best Sharpie in the building I'm so disrespectful so you youve been playing a raid so you know that we've been sort of touching on the white Manel stuff like that so I I can tell you that that is definitely going to come into play good good uh in living world you just gasped what nothing okay I'll see you didn't know that no I just oh my gosh he's really going to like oh gosh okay never mind I could tell him that much you can yeah okay no it wasn't like oh gosh that's a bad thing it's oh yeah the thing that you were telling me earlier where you were I need something to hyperventilate nothing I can say yeah unless you want to know I am a no spoiler Zone seriously this is this is it for me any more than this I'd start crying blood so that's good yeah I am thoroughly teased okay and so when people see this they'll actually been able to play it the content will have been live what a time to be alive don't you love life life is great it's June and you know and now you have to wait okay but it's okay cuz you're going to be super busy on tour yes and then I get back and I get to go teach me the raids and all my friends go oh god seriously I'm that guy that temporal curtains the slings into the group during sloos or so they're trying to eat and I'm like control the mobs whoops okay yeah or we could do this instead all right so here's my question how many of the raid bosses have you killed who have you killed all of them obviously I am Eternal I'm a really cool guy wait you've got Eternal yes take me rating get on my level Ruby I can't I can't do it you physically can't get on the level well I'm very short and you're not so it's a problem I I'm in a different like Cloud Zone at my height it's true it's true yeah that's good all right thank you very much well thank you for having me I'm sorry that you're so jealous um but I've had a great time thank you have a lovely day [Music] [Music]

External links[edit]

Guild Chat episode 41, Out of the Shadows story on ArenaNet's official channel on YouTube

Guild Chat - Episode 41

Contents

Summary[edit]

Transcription[edit]

Introduction (0:25)[edit]

Eir's Memorial (2:36)[edit]

Research in Rata Novus (6:49)[edit]

Blood and Stone (14:04)[edit]

New gliding skills (22:51)[edit]

Map design and lore (25:43)[edit]

A Shadow's Deeds (37:32)[edit]

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