Building the World of Path of Exile 2

Okay. Hello. Everyone I'm Eric. Olufsen, and I'm a founder, and creative. Director of, at, grinding. Gear games I hope. You, enjoyed. All the announcements so far. Exile, conjure beats our own expectations. This. Talk is called the, world of path of Exile - and. PUA. - is something that has. Been a very large part of my work for the last two, years or so so. That's because in parallel, of normal, leagues and. Expansions. Many, people at EDG have been working on this in the background so. It's really great to be able to finally show it and talk about it. So. First. I will talk a little bit about the atmosphere, in path, of Exile to the, talk starts out a bit more philosophical. About. The PUA atmosphere, but then quickly becomes more practical, with some example, areas of the first act I will, then talk about some of the updated, characters. And last, but not least about, the items. In. The very first day of development. In Kris garage. There. Was a model to. Get a player to actual, gameplay within, five minutes of signing up the. First few minutes of the game are very important. For setting the correct tone. Everything. There has to be chosen carefully and, should be memorable and. Understandable. At the basic level without, any long segments, of reading, or listening. Many. Of you might be remembering, the original, ship scene. I've. Seen that some people, still are longing to get back, to something like that and I, agree there was something special about it. About. How depressing, it was and that's like, depressing, in a good way because it sets the tone of the game perfectly. With. TV - I hope that we have found our way back to something. Similarly. Impactful. So. This, is how pew it who starts out. Your. Sentence. Is to be hanged from the neck until dead. Let, your souls be, the first ones and. Your body's fever. Systems. Do. Right to fear the. Secrets, of this world. Dark, and gritty has been a catchphrase for PUA, since the early days and. With PUA 2 we have taken, things further dark. Is much more than just visual darkness, and, everyone. Loves dungeons. Statues. And blood but, the. World, actually also has to be very uncaring. And surviving. Should be a struggle. So the. Protagonist, is a side character in a bigger story and you. Start out the game as a nobody and nobody. Cares about you or your death until you prove yourself. So. Action, RPGs they, are always, about power, fantasy, in the sense that you blow down hordes, of enemies. But. To feel rewarding, it has to come from the player making the right choices and it's. Not it's not as satisfying, if, it happens on Rails with, Yui 2 we are building a world that, the. Player has to conquer through cleverness, or through sheer persistence, things. Aren't going to go your way automatically. The. Player has to actually figure things out and, get good, to. Succeed. The. Story is also one of imperfect. Information where. Information. Is given given, out in snippets, to build the atmosphere you. Get the keyhole glimpse into the story and the world. And. A lot of it is left up to the imagination of, the player if. Everything, was spelled out too much I think something, would get lost, from. A developer, perspective this, also helps. Creating. A world that can evolve constantly, by. The very nature of Yui, things, stay flexible, and things. Get added and removed as, time goes by the. World or a closed is a cyclical, one where there's always another mysterious, threat ready to destroy the world. So. I will now go through a few select, areas. Of the first act, this. Is the riverbank area where. The player get washed up after, escaping. The gallows one. Of the more memorable things, with PE one, was waking, up on a each and desperately, whacking crabs with the driftwood Club in order to survive. The, same is true here and, even. Though the time and location is different we. Want to capture that same feeling qe2, the. Rain that oppressively, rains down on you is new. The. Cold and wet mud uses, more modern physically, correct, rendering and, the. Gnarly, trees use 3d, scan techniques, I'll go into. More later about. In. The first area will of course encounter, zombies like before and an. Interesting. Thing with a game like TV is that. Since. It's been in development so, long. Zombies. Have had animation. And polish, and skill. Moves added, over time to create a very, large set for, use. In all kinds, of situations so. This means that it's it's no small task to. Redo even a simple monster like that, but.

The, New models rigs and animations. That's. Something. We have to do because. With. The sort of better under the hood. Technology. We will be able to in the long run create more and much much better animations. Faster. Ok. So this is a, screenshot. Of the clear felling campement, so. Part. Of that must fear in PE is, the. Man's towns to be quite scruffy, looking and look. Like they are under siege so. And. In. This screenshot you can also see a updated. Town portal, in the bottom left corner. So. We, have updated. Pretty. Much all core, visual, effects. So. That's like level, up spell sardius like, things like Quicksilver flask. Yeah. And also for the first time you will be able to exit, town in. Different. Directions, so if, you look closely at the screenshot you can see the exit in the top left so area transitions. Are also new thing. That, are looking, much better now compared, to the white block. Anyway. They that. Exit, to the top left could be closed and either the top, right or bottom right one would, be open instead. So. This, is this. Is part of a new world map system, that it's generated, per character, and, summary. Would be that we put another, layer of randomization. On top of the normal. Level. Randomization. So, there, will be a talk. About that later by rib Abraham's. If you're if, you want to learn more about that and here's. Just a couple of quick examples showing, that the layout of the entire act can, change. So. When. We set out to do development, for the. Original. Peewee -, one. Of the goals, was to get. The. The early games. The. Early, part of the game up to modern quality because as it is in peewee, we, like. We added act on, top of them after each other and we're, like a larger company and they have more advanced graphics the further we go and. The. Oldest area in the current pool is actually. The forest since it was the first actually. Made since, we wanted to first, make the second act and then go back and make the first act because, we, could then use some of what we learned to make the first one better and. Since. The forest in Pugh is so old it, well. It was extra satisfying, to make the first act of peewee - a forest. Because. Of that, so. Here's. The screenshot of the the old forest area so, this. Is the new forest, is just the area is called the old forest. And. This. Disre, make also, gave us a second, chance to reimagine what a. Forest. Should be in a dark and gritty game. So. This time the focus was much more on occult witches, and variables, than instead. Of bandits. Okay. So we. Have many. Several. Have. Several different werewolves, in the act but this. One happens to be especially, creepy and this. One was so awesome so we decided to make, the. Werewolf. Transformation. Skill using, this as a base model. So. Well. I hope you will enjoy playing the demo later and getting roughed by groups, of these guys. So. Here's. A screenshot of the graveyard area and. You. Can't have a dark and gritty game without the proper gothic graveyard, and. We. Did have some assets, before in fell from ruins but but, we never really did it properly. So. It's, quite strange to have a game, that tries to be dark and gritty and not, a proper, graveyard, so. We spent a lot of effort to get this area right. One. Of the techniques used a. Lot, here is 3d, scans so, 3d. Scanning or photogrammetry, as it's called lets, you create a, model. From a lot of photos, around the same object, so, this method is especially good, for getting, really. Realistic, and gritty textures. So. For an artistic it can be really hard to know the patterns, that rain and art would create on the Statue but and. Exactly. Where the most would grow and so. On but, with the 3d scan nature, just solves all of that and all. We needed to do was to find some ancient, graveyards, in real life and go to work, so. You. Seen on this great and everything but it's, quite lacking when it comes to really. All the buildings and gothic medieval, ruins and that kind of thing so we. Found a company, in Poland, that were able to go travel around to locations, in Europe to create models from us. And. Here. You can see one of the 3d scans in the game next. To the cornered witch there's. Quite, a lot of work to make to. Make game ready assets, from scans we used yet, another company, to make sure the polygon, count the slow and to, fix all the small problems, that the automatic process, doesn't. Solve in a good way so. Here's, a screenshot, of the hunting grounds this, is an example of an area using, several new cool, techniques, so. We have a lot of the 3d, scan use in the overgrown, stone wall in the background on the pebble road and on the trees and you.

Can Also see a, modular. Bramble, creation, tool, being. Used where, it's a little bit like painting, brambles, on top of walls and trees and. This. Area also uses, a new precalc. Pre-calculated. Ray tracing. Grass. Technique, and, if you're interested in the more technical, side then I recommend. You listen to. Alexandr Sannikov, stock rendering, taking path of exile letter. Okay. So this is a, screenshot. Of the iron manor which. Is the final area of the Act so. This area is a good example of how it now way make, walls, that face the lower end of the screen. They. Are much shorter than the ones that face, the upper end of the screen so. This. Makes, it so that you you. Can see your character, when you run, close to a wall but it still lets us have. Top. Facing, walls that are tall and impressive, and, normal. We try to go for a dark and, claustrophobic. Areas. But this means we can make much more epic looking, things. When. It's appropriate. Okay. So the, manor, was. Also one of the first areas when we almost, completely created. All. The assets by assets, sheets with big amount of detail. That we outsourced. To another company, that does most. Of the consuming. The, time-consuming, modeling, work. After. We get the building blocks back our environment, artists that gdg. Try, to. Put them together in as many and as interesting. Ways as possible. So. This, is just showing the sheer volume of assets that goes into one place. Okay. So in, this manner and. In the areas around it, we have several, monsters that take advantage of subsurface. Scattering and, a parallax, effect so. Basically we can fake both depth. And. Transparency. To get these types of disgusting-looking, blood, monsters, and blood. Bags. Okay. And now on to the characters, so. This. Is one of the very earliest, pieces, of concept, art made, for the Marauder which and, Ranger and this. Was even before they got their proper, class, names so, they were simply. Referred, to as the strength dicks and inked, characters, if. I remember correctly these drawings were made as very first thing when I arrived and arrived. In Auckland before, I had even gotten a, permanent. Place to sleep so. This is almost, 14, years ago now and, I. Have to say I miss those days because. I had. The time to actually sit and draw things but. Yeah. Those days were a lot simpler but the, things we can do now are of course so, much bigger and better so, there's no comparison, and, nowadays. We have a. Team. Of concept, artists are much better. And. We started out with Yui 2 we knew that the player characters, was on top of the list of what we had to remake, both. From a looks point of view but also to get them much better and easier to work with under, the hood the. Rigs or, skeletons. Needed, to be, much. More detailed, and consistent. One. Horrible. Example, of our old rigs was the Templar. So. Apart, from the neck issue he was also made left-handed. Which, caused, all types of problems like holding his items, upside down and like getting skill, effects playing backwards and. It. Was it's. Just a horrible mess. We. Depict quick, pace you get thrown into game-like PUA - it is, important. That you get the type of character the, type of gameplay to expect, just from a, quick. Glance of the characters so we wanted to keep the general gist of each character, close very similar, to before. And, to. Keep the colors. Or, attribute. Wheel filled so with that I mean there. Will always be a specific, attribute, in, the, skill, tree which means that the. Character at archetypes. Will still it stay very similar, so you, will always have a pure strength character, for example and there. Will always be in text character, and so on. Okay. So the. Marauder was one, of the first. That. Fell into place, so, we, already had a wide variety. Of kirua culture. Groundwork made in 2.0, the awakening, so this. Was all the areas and monsters related, to cow. Which. Made it easy like, it even made it into the back plate of, the logo at that time so. With, the work of Jason, Hong we quickly got a concept, of. The character that felt right, so. Here's, the final design, which is quite similar to what you will be able to play in the demo today and. Here's. The final model. When. When. We did modeling we had a lot of time to go back and forth on the exact details, like the the.

Colors And the, tattoos so for example we use more. Red, instead. Of green to match the strength color instead, of the green jade that the concept had. Okay. So the, reindeer was also. Quite easy to make mostly, because it was almost a straight remake. Of the old character, and. Here. We have the final concept art by ching-he Lee, and. Here's. The final model. With. The updated, rigs I hope we will be able to make, her move and jump around much more quickly to make her properly. Represent. Dexterity. Okay. So. The. Witch character, was something that was. Quite. Hard to do or it it, had the longest process, with, a wide. Concept. Stage, so. We tried a lot of iteration, but everything, we tried didn't quite seem to do it. And. There seems to be something very special about the original witch so we, we, often used her in promotion, material, and. There's. Something about her looking very vulnerable in, comparison, to the horrible world of break lost and, there. Must also be a reason why she's so popular in fan art competitions. Okay. So here's, the the finished, which as, you. Can see we ended up quite close to her original one, except. The design is much more refined and detailed. Okay. Here's a. Here's. A close-up showing. The new type of detail, that our modern textures, go into so. You can see how their eyes and lips are more wet looking in the, light reflection. Like. It's very small and sharp compared. To the skin in our face for example and. The. Hair uses, a flow map that determines. The direction of, the hair so that it gets, just. The right amount of shine. The. Hair also uses a texture, offset rest rastering. Technique to make sure that the edges appear a little bit fast just like hair does, and. Here. We have, a comparison. Of the old and new characters. So. We tried our, best to keep the soul, of each class intact, even. Though there are different people at, a different, time in theory, - compared to PUA one. And. Everything. Has an increased consistent. The, consistency. And. It means we can, quite easily do, things like skin, color and gender. Swaps, so, all, the, attack times between the characters will be the same which means that. We. We, can do things like for example a. We. Take the the scion, regen, animations, and apply it to a Templar so we're, not quite sure how we will do this but maybe it will be microtransactions. Or maybe some, other way. We're. Not quite ready how to show that yet. And. Here's. A bonus comparison. Yeah. So, it's. It's, been a very long time goal, for me to kill all the temper memes and. Weed. Pv2 I hope they will be gone. We. Were, quite not we're not quite ready to show that yet. So. Items. Have always been, a focus if not the focal, point of the game. With. The sequel we are updating, every single armor and weapon a good, benchmark is that we want items, to really look like ancient, things, with a rich history, so. Basically. We want items to be something that looks like me you can find them in a museum.

So. And, we also want items to feel like physical, things that you have ownership of so. We. Really dislike the sort, of simplified. Ones. Lotta items and if, anything, we. Would want to take, things. In the direct in the other direction so. For. Example. Like if you imagine a system where you drag your items, around with it it's sort of dangles, and clangs and you when, you throw it in the inventory it sort of bounces around so. That might, not happen in PUA two but maybe in Yui, 3. So. All items, they will have a full progression. From, low to high level, and you'd, be be, able to enjoy. The full, range going from the trashiest, looking chest plate to. Something. Really like, being. Is like shining and cool, like in a home game glorious, plate so. We already have multiple. Dedicated. People working on non MTX items, right now so their. Final is light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to getting all the uniques. With. Their own models, as well. Okay. So. Here. Work-in-progress glorious, plate, so this is where Jonathan or technical, director, came in and things looked like. So. We. Went back and added. A lot of separation between various, plates in the armor, so, for, example the chest area of the armor is now cut up in three, different rigid, pieces that slide, against, each other so. Before, the metal did just bend and stretch, in an unrealistic, manner. To. Just to follow the animations, of the characters, and. We. Also have a more complicated player, skeleton, now that allows, us, to get like a proper, bouncing, shoulder, pads and, elbow, and, knee pads will move much more not naturally, so, this, also means that artists. They have to. When. Making armors, we have to actually, think like medieval. Armor. Smith's. Okay. So here we have a updated, or tilted Westmont so. We now attach many more pieces that are affected, by physics, so. If you look very closely there's, a symbol on our chest that bounces, as you round and we. Can have. Larger. Sleeves that dangle, and moves physically. Correct. The, design of this armor is also a good example where you get nice-looking, results, by mixing several. Types of materials, for. Example all the soft cloth and heart, and shiny metal pieces. Okay. So here you see the new Shane Munroe base type so this is a good example of many, small. Details. Like the bouncing. Teeth on our shoulder. On. Our back we also have a cloth, mesh that is influenced. By both physics, and by the character, animations, and this. It's. It's, something that is technically. Tricky, to do but basically, it means that we can do cloaks, that sit much more realistically. And correctly, on the shoulders of characters. Okay. So another. Feature. Is. To have masked, areas where, the. Color of armors, can change so, this. Means we can do dice which, lets players customize, and matched, look of the characters and at. One, point maybe, six years ago in the office we someone, made a joke poster.

Called. That. Uses. The logo path of textile, and. That's. Strangely. Prophetic. We'll. We'll be getting there. So. Currently, we have a main and a secondary, color but we, will. Also try to add like various, shaders, like making, the metal making. The armor like metal looking or wet looking in yeah. Exactly how this will work is still not decided though and. To. Wrap the item, section up we, have a quick comparison between the old and new marauder in a glorious plate. Okay. So I'm. Adding a short bonus. Section on sound, because, I think, it needs to be mentioned, that. Well. It plays such a big part, of the atmosphere, of the game so. It's. I can't go so much into it here because you actually need to like, you need really, need to play to to. Get a proper feel of it but as. An example we added a system where you have different footstep, sounds, depending on which surface, you're running on and, we. Also have different. Sounds depending on which features. You run. Near. So for example if you have a thick forest edge they are like different bird, sounds, and things there and also. We have a, huge. Amount of custom, dialogue, recorded, for monsters where. The focus is much more on the atmosphere. Than, the sort, of just. Normal fighting. Sounds no and. Yeah. I urge. You to listen to the sound specifically. When you get. To play the demo later if you haven't already. Okay. So now it's time for the Q&A and. I. Should also mention that we are hiring, so. If. You or if, you know anyone that's especially talented, in, one. Of the artistic fields then please, contact us. Okay. And that's how you submit, questions. All. Right look. Mike, there, we go hey, you guys doing I'll, be moderating, for you guys today so if you want to submit your questions at the link I'll ask them to Eric as they come through well, you guys start, getting all that ready I'll. Start with a little bit of my own stuff so. With. Path, of exile - we're traveling 20 years into the future, and. Naturally, those first three kind. Of signs river, beard clay fell in the filling are, gonna be major. Kind of components, of how we communicate, that can, you kind of talk about how, we planned, out those zones in relation to trying to tell people that they're in a new place new. Time ah. There. There's. Not so much about the, new time yet in, that. Sense, it's. It's. It's much more something that you will find, out along, the along, the storyline and. We. We. Will of course, have a lot of sort, of throwbacks, and the in the storyline where you get to find out or what happened, and, what. The player like. The effects, are what the players did in, pe1. How it sort of turned. Out later. Yeah. I mean in the early, zones, we see kind of immediately, it's, a kind of a logging encampment, something that I don't think we've ever really seen in path of Exile it was that kind of affected into the way we decided how. We wanted to use that zone and though some resorts around again well. It's, so. We the. First thing must be we. Needed to have a forest, to act because. Because. We wanted to roommate, like. Make. Something new out of the oldest acted we had before but. It, felt a little bit wrong to sort of throw the player right into the forests right.

Away So that's why we. Had a washed. Up on the riverbank, and, the, declare fell is a little bit more open, so. Then we can have. It's. To give a little bit of time and more, impact, when you actually, get into the proper forest area. And to make it seem more scarier, it's like more build up towards, it, awesome. That's really cool too yeah let's. Stop to look at some of the questions that you guys have been asking so, top. Of the line right now is do, you ever fear that much of the hard work that you're doing for this world design is gonna, go unnoticed under, like a lot of the, flashy auras and skill effects that we often have in the world. Not. So much so well. It. Would be maybe during. The like. Xx. Playthrough, but everyone. Has to, start. From the beginning and everyone, is a new player at some point and then you would be a lot slower and you would be able to soak everything in and with. The atmosphere, in the lower as well it's. It's. More something that's there if you if, you really want to sort of delve deeper, and find out more about those kind of things but it's. It's. Not something you will, force the player to do so you can definitely do just, straight, for go for combat and complete quests quickly if you want but. Yeah. That that actually, brings. Up another point because with, quest design we nowadays, we trout try, to make them. Quite. Obvious, so you can kind, of understand, them or sort of get the gist of what you're doing even without listening to the to, the dialog like you get it just from the greeting. Messages of the NPC's or. Sort. Of the surroundings. To get the context, so it's it's a tricky one but. Yeah. I. I'm. Kind of fine with people not. Listening. And like going. Through everything super. Closely, too so, yeah, yeah. There's always gonna be those people who are really interested that kind of stuff and so they're also gonna appreciate that work a lot you mentioned like that, you're not so worried about the people going through and kind of a 20th playthrough. Seeing. Everything and noticing all the little details are there any specific, details that you kind of fit in to the, world that are specifically for those people playing over and over beyond. Just kind of the procedural generation we already do oh, did. It's. More like we try, to make things harder for them with the increased. Randomization. So. Yeah. But. That would be more for Reese's talk later I think yeah. For sure and I'll be there too so if you have any questions at that time feel free to ask Greece those I, have. One here. I, got. A blood-borne, or Grim Dawn vibe from the snippets that we've seen so far what, kind of influences, are we taking for the atmosphere in environments, and path of Exile two. Influences. From other places or, oh yeah I think from, games and also from other experiences okay yeah there's, some obvious ones like diable, - like, it. In. Many ways it feels like we, try to sort of carry on that. Exact, atmosphere, and there's, also games. Like Dark Souls which. Is. The. Sort of creative direction, the not rs.3 there is amazing, and, there's. Certain. Like. Berserk. And attack on Titan it's like -. -. Manga, that I really, like in the way that it. Has quite a sort, of large and cruel world, and people. Run around and they don't quite understand. Everything about it but. It creates a very nice feel. Yeah. You, mentioned Dark, Souls which I believe from what I've heard is a game that you're very very fond of and it's also a game that's very famous for its world design is there anything. Any, concepts specifically, that you've pulled from Dark Souls you're, particularly pleased with how they've played out in path of Exile.

I'm. Pretty. Sure they have a tree, with hanging bodies, in it somewhere but, when. I say it's it's. Actually a little bit uncanny because you. It's. You. Will end up doing quite a lot of sort of, concept. Duplicate, key duplication. Almost, like in the way that they do. They handle graveyards, and statues, and even monsters it's kind of hard to not. Do the same, but. We will. We try to, stay. Away from it but there's certain very, memorable, monsters, that, is. Like these veal skeletons. In. You. Yeah you know which one I'm talking very familiar, yeah unfortunately, yeah, they're. Very iconic, that was I'm. Not sure it was deliberately. Taken, from there but maybe, it's, impossible, to play Dark Souls and not get, the thing sort of stuck in your brain to, come back later yeah. For sure actually. A question that someone asked me last night at the VIP, dinner was do. We make a lot of concerted, effort to avoid copying, other games or do we kind, of just allow for the fact that sometimes we're gonna have overlap and that's, fine we're gonna do it our own way or. Sometimes. It's, impossible to, to, avoid, everything. Because. Especially. When you have a very large. Company. That is. Like 60, artists, now or, something like that and I. They. Will do things that, like. It exists, in some game somewhere, and you can't really know but obviously we try to avoid super. Obvious things. But. Yeah. Yeah. Official that's always really interesting, another. Question here we have plays, a very attached to the shattered sound in path of Exile have. You done much of the sound, design and working around getting. Good feelings for them and how do we sort of approach designing, a sound sort. Of what was the first part book plays. Very attached to the shadow sound you may have noticed. Or something oh yeah. That one is. It's. Very hard to deal with that kind of thing because. Something. That's been. Like. That. You have heard for several years it becomes, I. Get. It like it's almost its own thing rather than the Justice sound so, it, it, can sometimes be very hard to sort of know what. What. Will be sort of near, and dear to players, but. We. Definitely do a lot of trying to keep. Things, but. Like. We update, them and make, things, higher-quality but try to capture the same feel. Yeah. That's I mean definitely. A very popular sound and. Kind. Of the other sounds like what's your sort of involvement with the the sound design in general I know. We have a full audio team that is obviously, helping out with a lot of that but how does how, you fit into that team and work with them oh. So. 44.0. It was actually, Jonathan. That took the sort of lead. On the. The sound experience, I have to say but. Yeah. I. Think. We're up to yeah four people in the sound Department or, five in including, Camille, that. Does for the, the. Composing, and, well. Especially with Camille I guess I work closely to get sort, of right. Feeling. And atmosphere, of the areas and. Yeah. Well, when, you play the demo, later, today, you will definitely, hear, the influences. Where it originally, came from yeah. For sure I mean as a programmer I often have to mute the sounds for a variety of reasons but playing.

For Oh for the first time with the sound on was an entirely, different experience for me yeah. I really, really hope that people will. Turn. The music and all the sounds back on and give it like a full playthrough. Surely. For at least the first playthrough I guess. With. Part of Exile growing so fast and having so much crossover content, and maps how. Are we looking to avoid sort of the visual clutter that's slowly growing in the game. Well. We, already, make maps a little bit different. And more simplified. Well. It depends, like. When. It comes to environments, it means like a lot less like, stones. And, things, that can sort of break your flow but. Well. It, depends if. Is the question referring, to affect more, or. I. Think, it's probably mostly. Referring, to the effects and stuff like that yeah. Yeah well like I once said there's like we have to sort, of find a line between having, a. Satisfying. Impact. Feel, and the esta vel and at, the same time once you get a tax being and all the. Like. The sort of multiplicative, skills, system, like, it's. A tough line but, yeah we're definitely. Working on getting into work in both those situations. Yeah. And I mean in my work with a lot of the effects artists it's definitely something that they're constantly pushing for is making, sure their effects can be seen through everything but don't overwhelm players and stuff like that so yeah and it's like all the explosions have to be super, quick just so that they disappear, quickly so you can see the monsters underneath that kind. Of thing yeah. A question, here. Is will we get player-character, voice lines back in POA 2.0, and their reactions, to quest lines and world events I think we've actually done some work on this, yes. We will. Yeah. We will have a lot of that of, course, it I. See. It more as a atmosphere. Building them well, it is the player the, players reacting. To things but it's not not, as much it's.

More Kind of having, like. Really cool and Atmospheric, one-liners, almost. So. We, wouldn't, really have the player character, sort of have a proper. Dialogue with NPCs, but, it's more like trying. To enhance the, feeling of things just at the start of areas and, yeah. That's right on points. Yeah. Sure. Previously. We, were exiled because RAF didn't punish people by killing them this. Question believes, but. Now we start, out, by being hung is, there a change to the background Society of RAF or is this a perhaps different society entirely, well. This is a different, time and place so, it's, a, Esso, meit's society. And it's a small. Island to, the to the right hand of the map but. Well. I can't, go into too much about the story itself but, if. It. Has quite. A few parallels but also quite a lot of new things to, it, as. Always. Good to hear I tried to get spoilers. What, else have we got here. What's the your favorite aspect of the new, world for path of exile 2 and what was one of the toughest aspects for creating it. The. Like. When it comes to specific assets, mmm. I. Would. Say the well the. Player characters, is probably the sort. Of biggest, deal and, what, what. They spent the most time on so. Yeah. I would I would have to say that and it's also. Because they have been. Like. It's been such a long time coming where. We. Have, kind of been held. Back almost with the animation. And like, we we. Sort of choose not to create new animation, because we know that the new sort, of rigs and characters are coming almost or, well. Maybe, not we choose not to it's just that it takes so much more time but now with the new characters, we will just be able to. Like. We have a new a new skill, that like. Like. A backflip, shooting, arrows like that type of thing is, much. More easier to do now on all of the characters, while. Before it. Was just so. So. Time-consuming. And, like complicated, we just couldn't. Do that much of it. Yeah. Definitely and I believe like we have even gone so far as to have like. The run walk, jog. Animations, inside of the bill based on your movement speed oh yeah. That, was quite a big thing actually. Because. One. Of the criticism, of the game was. Especially. The run animations, were quite like we had this. Quite. A slow jog as you start out the game and but you click quickly, get really fast. But it's the same animation, just sped, up which looks quite wrong so now, I have, three. Different speeds, that sort of march. Blend. Between each other and things, should just look so, much better and more, natural and. Especially. With physics, and sort of bouncing, shoulder pads then. Like. Everything, would just look correct and sort of. Knives. Instead, of yeah. Yeah. It'll be good I mean, definitely the first time I hit a Quicksilver, in 400 and suddenly started full-on sprinting it was. Extremely. Satisfying yeah it's. Fascinating actually when. When. We first got those in like it was, just. Running, around doing. Nothing was, kind of fun because it's like, it was very satisfying and, cool about, it, yeah. Definitely. Is. There, any concept, art that we've done that his influence. Or inspired actual, physical. Gameplay and design. I. Have. To think about that well a lot of the bosses work, like that where. We. Make something large, and really cool and then. That. Sort of determines. How. Like. What what. Boss skills will be like an example would be the. Lachlan. In the demo, you just saw which had this dragging, arm like that it made it very obvious for, game designers, and animators to, create these like from, epic Slams, and. Yeah. The, same actually with that the, bell crow. Where. Just. Had this gigantic, bell in it and then we. Sort of decided to make it a big part of the quest where he at some point goes, and grips the the bell down and starts, to slam. It at the player so, I. Think. It's, you. You probably get the best result, if you sort of go both. From, concept, to game design, and from game design to, concept. To make. Sure everything fits, really well with each other yeah. Definitely I mean collaboration, is a huge, part of game design all the time and it, aims all work together so much it's a, really, cool part of how we deliver the game now. I remember specifically, with Lachlan I heard, that when Jonathan was first practicing, he often would dodge behind and get slammed by the back hit on. On, his head sin wasn't, very pleased oh yeah he was so, close to dying against, the CRO Bell as well. How. Is a good time to do those live demos. With. Part, of Excel - we're, putting, out a lot more 3 ARMA, models and revamping. A lot of them are, we gonna see the same thing happening for a lot of the uniques oh yes. Yeah I touched on that briefly and. Since. We have. Quite. A big throughput, now we will first do all the base types but, then.

We Will keep. The pace up and, go through all of the uniques as well and. Well. That, that's some. It's a like several year dream that will come, through well. One status, in there. I. Have. A question here that the camera angle looks slightly different in 400, compared to the previous versions of the game is there something we've actually done or is it just yes. Right yeah this is actually quite a big deal because it lets us. Like. It it's, quite a bit zoomed out and it's. Less. It's. Not as much fisheye, lens as I would call it so basically we have the the camera look. Like. If I'm the camera and like. It goes down like this, it's, like smaller, like that before. It was quite wide, like, that so, this like it lets us have a more sumed. Out feel, at the, at. The same time as. Performance. Wise it's not it's. Not actually verse and. Person. I also loved the sort of, slightly. More old-school feel that it gives like, yeah. Seeing it in the graveyard especially. Like yeah. It's just, look. It looks nicer, and. Better. For gameplay I would say to just because of the zoom out its. Aspect. The. You next question I have is are we planning to make use of any cutscenes, for the storytelling, with passive exile -. We. Currently. Don't, have plans for that but. We. With. The new character rigs, and models. It's, actually, easier, to do things like the like the intro. Sequence when, all the characters, escape. And jump into the water with. The old characters, that would be. Incredibly. Time-consuming and. It, would look so much worse so. Depends. On what happens with the story I guess it, it's, it's more possible now but, it, wouldn't. Probably. Not cinematics. Or at least we don't have plans for that at. This moment. Some. Of the old microtransaction. Outfits gonna be updated with the new physics and stuff that we're developing for 2.0. Oh how exciting yes. We will have all. All. MTX. Will be forward, compatible, and will of, course look quite a lot better and it's. It depends, on what it looks like but if, if. The, shoulder pads lends itself, for, having the proper, bounce ad then we will add it and this. Is of course a huge. Market. Has this is like, it's. Thousands, of hours for people to make this work but. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll, be very fascinating, actually to see what the old all, them, text will look like on the new characters, yeah. Definitely is gonna give them a lot of new life looking. Forward to Latia, awesome. And kind of like on the same vein can you talk us through sort of how. These how. The changes, we're making into whenever Chris talked about how we're going to be revamping a lot of the original campaign, on. The outside and finding, improvements, and introducing new texts to it can you talk about how, that's going to kind of affect that campaign.

Well. It's a. It's. A. Purely. Visual upgrade. In the sense that it. Mostly, brings textures, back up to. Those, sort of modern standards, and. The. Most notable things, will be correct. Metals. And, like. Wet areas, will, actually, look wet. Yeah. There's there's some good stuff coming to, the. Belly of the beast area, there, like. The flesh actually, looks kind of wet and it we can, like. Use shaders, that sort of makes it animate, and poles and yeah, there's, it. Will actually be quite big, update, in that sense yeah, and, it's gonna becoming kind of all the ones who are we gonna be slowly rolling, this out it by act just, because it's, there's. So, many asset so more. Slowly, I would, say we try to focus on the sort, of biggest. And the easiest things to do first so for example the or. The Twilight. Strand. And, the. Encampment, the first encampment, remaking, that was. To. Get a. Really, good thing Ireland game but then. Using. The belly of the beast example. It can be a sec. S changing, just for. Textures, to be more modern can like. Change. The feel of an entire tile set quite a lot. Yeah. Definitely and I think we're releasing, the, new lion eyes watch with some of that improved take with three, nine hour you, guys will get to see it not, too far in the future. Kind. Of following along with the the world updates are we gonna see those same updates into hideouts. And maybe sooner or later. The, some, of them would happen automatically, depending on when we update the tile set, so. Yeah. It hideouts. Will basically be updated, at the same time as their. Counterpart. In the game I would say, yeah. And one, last question before we wrap up can you ever see a path of Exile ever, incorporating. Any fourth wall breaking content, such as the cow level from Diablo 2. We. We. Did discuss, like. A cyberpunk. Version, of a, path. Of exile so, we decided not to do it but. We'll. See it, was, yeah. If I remember correctly that discussion, it was scarily. Close to, getting. A go-ahead I. Take. It based on that statement you weren't super excited, by the concept, well. It's. Yeah. I would probably, best. To avoid it. Yeah. It's. It's tough to sort of know exactly, what like. Would happen to the field when. Once, you have done something like that, it's. Hard to step backwards I guess is what I'm saying. Awesome. Alyssa about, all the time we have for this sorry, guys. Hang out and in the next five or so minutes Chris will be showing up for his three nine Oh demo but otherwise you, guys have a great conference, alright. Thank you. You.

2020-01-03 03:03

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