It’s been two short years since our first game, Guild Wars Prophecies,
launched. In that time we’ve released two standalone campaigns that have
expanded lore, increased the number of playable professions, widened skill sets,
and have given players more control over their party members. Our current
project, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, is our first true expansion, and one that
we truly feel is a fitting coda that will guide players through the end of one
epic story into the next evolution of the series, Guild Wars 2. We want Guild
Wars to go out with a bang and leave a lasting impression on players, so we’ve
decided to delve deep into RPG history in an attempt to recreate the thrill of
the classic dungeon crawl.
Dungeons are a staple of the RPG genre. Ask any longtime roleplayer and he’ll
get misty-eyed and recall tense adventures in underground civilizations,
navigating shadowy passageways and unearthing untold fortune. We knew it was the
next logical addition, but we had to be sure it was implemented in such a way
that was new and relevant to Guild Wars fans. So, what makes a GW: EN dungeon
more exciting than your average hole in the ground? Lots of things, actually.
The labyrinthine underground known as the Depths is comprised of a vast network
of passageways that touch continents near and far. GW: EN dungeons are not your
typical dingy caves, mind you. They are rich with plant life, decorated with
ornate carvings and majestic statues, and home to fantastic creatures. One of
the biggest challenges our art department faced was to make each dungeon feel
unique, while at the same time capturing the sense of an enclosed, sometimes
claustrophobic, environment. Unlike the wide-open plains of Elona, groups will
have less room to maneuver around obstacles. Enemies travel in high
concentrations, so there will be little time to think or relax while pressing
onward to the next objective. That stated, some dungeons are simply huge. Your
party might trek through twisting pathways one moment, only to be spilled out
into a huge open cavern the next.
The very concept of dungeons carries a lot
of baggage. We had to distill all the things that make dungeons cool while
removing the parts that wouldn’t work for our purposes. New design, art, and
programming challenges love to rear their hideous, hydra-like heads every step
of the way in game development, and dungeons have been no exception. We got our
bearings and started everything in parallel, quickly prototyping and
implementing dungeon mechanics such as traps, while level designers roughed out
the general layouts for the rooms that would be pieced together to form the
unique layouts. Designers wrote up quests and stories to ground these places in
the world with their own characters and worked hand-in-hand with the writers to
polish the dialogue and make the NPCs live and breathe. The entire process was
started simultaneously. The result was a sharing of ideas between different
areas of development that will hopefully make this feature greater than the sum
of its parts.
Each dungeon instance is connected by ancient magical technology
called an Asura gate. These portals were developed by a race new to the Guild
Wars universe—the Asura. Since players will have to the opportunity to adventure
as Asura in Guild Wars 2, we had to think ahead about their design. How large
would they be? As subterranean creatures, what should they look like? How do
they talk? What societal rules should they follow? What gameplay experiences
will they offer that people will want to play as them? After months of
discussion, planning, sketching, and writing, the Asura slowly materialized into
the stout, intelligent, cocky little buggers you see today. Some might come off
as self-important—condescending, even—but as a race the Asura can back it up.
They are crafty, resourceful, and adept at magic. And they are an integral
component of Eye of the North.
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