Yeah my first thought was shit, we’re getting story of unprecedented quality just going up the last couple years (minus the end of ibs but that’s an exception for real life circumstances too), and now a lead behind much of it is leaving. But I remind myself that this is a company, hundreds of people working on making the game go round and one departure doesn’t spell doom
Hey Reddit! Not sure if my account still has the dev tag. I wanted to pop in and say thanks for all the kind words. I've been following your reactions and watching streams nonstop. Humbled by the reception!
I'm super proud of my work at ArenaNet, and there's a lot of specific moments I try to call out both for myself and other talented devs on the project.
With that said, the narrative on GW2 has a bright future. When I first came on at the end of 2019, it was a rather dour time for the franchise and at that time it felt like a lot of super talented folks were leaving the studio. Yet in the midst of those darker times, our little Visions of the Past team made something really special.
Fast forward to today, and the narrative team at ArenaNet is far more robust and healthy than it was when I came on. Bobby is a really amazing narrative director, and one of his many talents is finding wonderful people.
It's a hard line for us devs to walk to celebrate our accomplishments but not overshadow the many disciplines that go into making content. For example, the editing and locs teams worked tirelessly to get the massive amount of text and VO into the game in multiple languages.
A theme of End of Dragons is about the responsibility of leaders. I'm really proud of my work as a narrative lead on End of Dragons, but my strength as a lead came from my ability to work with others--principles I learned from the many great narrative leaders at Anet.
Anyhow, the TLDR is that great Guild Wars stories don't end with my departure, nor can I take full credit for what makes EOD such a fun story. I hope I was able to contribute to some memorable characters and scenes in this wonderful story, if even for a little bit.
Steel Warband are the best written characters of the game, period.
Snargle, eh, I'd rather he didn't exist, but that's just me, I guess.
I love the Steel Warband! Chloe Mills was the designer I worked with on them, and it was a real back-and-forth collaboration to really flesh out their personalities through not only the dialogue but their events, fighting style, etc.
Regarding Snargle, that's fair. He's not for everyone. :) We tried to keep his presence from being too intrusive for folks who aren't into him. I will miss expanding the Snargle extended universe with characters like Kippo and Bonnie.
Q_Q you made me fall in love with the Steel Warband then have me kill most of them in the next episode. How...could you?
Just to clarify, on IBS the only piece of content I directly worked on was Visions of the Past (where we created the Steel Warband.) I was sad to see them go as well :(
After Steel and Fire I moved on to be the lead of End of Dragons.
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