devtrackers.gg
Thanks for sharing! This was quite informative, almost like an unofficial ANet Guild Chat with the multitude of behind the scenes topics being covered regarding Janthir Wilds and the team's approach to various game design issues in general.
For anyone curious, the people being interviewed are:
-Indigo Linde (narrative lead and got her fingers on many story chapters of JaWi),
-Erin Amschlinger (senior narrative designer and one of the main writers of JaWi; she wrote e.g. chapter 3 where we receive the homestead, designed the kodan council members and many of the open world stories of Lowland Shore, the mature characterization of Pokey and Stoic Alder etc),
-Chloe Mills (story design lead, wrote the story for the somewhat controversial Gyala patches of What Lies Beneath and What Lies Within; she had "fingers in most of the pies in the different JaWi chapters"),
-Nick Hernandez (senior game designer, responsible for e.g. the salmon run adventure)
The team's decision to tackle Janthir out of all the Tyrian regions was certainly intriguing as Janthir itself was referenced very briefly in original GW1 Prophecies but gained a "cult following" among players similar to the Wizard's Tower. Another similarly vague reference is Dzalana in Nightfall but to my understanding Dzalana didn't get as much hype among players as Janthir, likely because it isn't really referenced in the main plot unlike Janthir. Tying titans into the region was a natural choice given the events of Titan Quest missions in GW1, and I liked the idea that the devs wanted to go from the "massive enemy army" (Kryptis) to "few but large entities requiring groups to tackle" (titans and their spawn).
I'm happy that they decided to expand on Rox's rather random line in Season 3 about Caudecus somehow visiting Janthir. How did Canach learn about the destination when he supposedly pursued Caudy, though, and will we learn if Canach himself ever entered Janthir as Caudy spent quite a bit of time there before being recalled to Lake Doric? Would be cool to read Canach's journals scattered around in the future although it might be difficult to justify unless they build up on Caudy briefly disappearing from his expedition group and that Caudy and Canach alone witness something amazing in the forbidden regions.
I also wonder if they're just going to simplify the idea that the mursaat were the "people of Janthir" all along when GW1 seemed to imply that the two groups were different as even White Mantle always referred to the Unseen and the people of Janthir as separate entities. Maybe it could be justified if the mursaat originally lived in Janthir prior to their betrayal and returned there later, so by that time the origin of the "people of Janthir" would be forgotten, and the White Mantle would erroneously think these were separate peoples instead of just different generations of the same dudes and dudettes in a sense. It should be interesting to hopefully shed some light to this mystery once we explore Bava Nisos and beyond.
I'm glad Moopliss asked about the placement of zones and the justification for having such a big gap between Lowland Shore and Janthir Syntri when most zones in GW2 expansions tend to be adjacent. This approach does open up new possibilities to explore the world map without being forced to clump zones together, so it should be interesting to see what approaches future expacs will have regarding this. I suppose the talk about the regions implies that we might not see core regions necessarily being updated with new zones as opposed to in Season 3, and that the expacs will always be focused around a single new-ish region at a time. It would be a shame if so as that'd mean we'd never fill the ugly zone-sized gap between Tangled Depths and Metrica Province, or potentially never fill the gap between Fields of Ruin and Desert Highlands. But I hold out hope that they'll consider these additions in the future if it serves the story they're telling.
It's a bit of a shame to learn that new races seem to be off the table for now although it's understandable given the budget and schedule and team size constraints in current GW2 while many of the devs are working on the UE5 project (and possibly other projects based on LinkedIn entries?). Given that we got Dagda, Peitha, and Lowland Kodan combat tonics, though, there's a chance we'll see more of these tonics in the future. Now if only the devs can figure out how to allow players under the effect of the tonics to mount and dismount, it'd add a lot of playability to these. I'd love to have use a harpy combat tonic while riding my springer around in a future Dzalana expac, for example. :)
The discussion on how music track titles are chosen and where to use the tracks in game was rather fascinating for a music lover like myself as well as what decisions the team makes regarding the game launcher art. I was somewhat surprised that they went for a generic Lowland Kodan for the launcher instead of giving us Pokey given his importance in the story and fitting that male kodan look. Maybe they had not finalized Pokey's look when the launcher was finalized, or they felt his rather rebellious teen haircut would have looked too radical vs. a more traditional kodan look? I wouldn't have minded having Stoic Alder in the launcher either given his lovely model but it seems the writers may have some plans in mind for our favorite daddy.
I also liked learning which general GW2 characters are these devs' favorites, and what considerations they had for the main heroes accompanying us for this expac. Involving Caithe and her personal quest for the Pale Tree as her motivation was certainly interesting and makes sense after what happened with Aurene and how Caithe tries to come to grips with having distanced herself somewhat from her sylvari siblings and possibly still feeling guilt over the Faolain stuff, theft of the egg, and not doing more with the idea of sylvari origins that nearly led to Mommy being killed. I'm not sure if I fully agree with the idea of Caithe siding with the rogue Waiting Sorrow instead of trusting in the well-meaning if flawed Isgarren to find a cure, but hopefully the story goes somewhere interesting with this idea regardless. I wish the interview had explored a bit more of Malice's involvement in the story; while it's awesome to see more of her on the field, I do question why an imperator needs to tackle this issue instead of sending the world traveler Rytlock with us instead, or even some of her available Ash tribunes. It also helps that Caithe and Malice are voiced by the same VA, so that reduces VA costs for ANet somewhat. Malice is the sole OG imperator still in power, so she should be spending more time rebuilding her legion after the devastating civil war when stability is needed. Of course it could be that Malice's mission is much more selfish than it appears, and she may end up using the opportunity presented by the return of the "false gods" to contribute to slaying them for good this time to increase her standing among charr for the eventual Trial of Embers despite her seemingly not being interested in the Khan-Ur position.
All in all it was an informative interview with lots of cool details given the time constraints. Moopliss managed to cover quite the number of topics, even asking some spicy questions we all knew we wouldn't get detailed answers for due to NDA, but his attempt was commendable. He manages to keep the conversation going and giving every dev their time in the limelight, balancing things out with serious and silly commentary to make the devs feel at ease and keep the interview rather relaxed rather than too formal. My sole complaint has to deal with those rapid cuts as it makes it seem as if entire sentences were cut out when that isn't the case, so hopefully the future interviews can be uploaded unedited. Also, thanks for the "chapters" dividing the topics so it's easy to reference the different sections of the interview!
Keep up the good work! :)