Clayton Kisko.5207

> @"hugo.4705" said:

> Yeah that map feels very lively, apart the long dwarven corridor within catacombs leading to mastery point, was it intended? They are no real challenge compared to the tombs at the north. I'm very happy about mob density on that map, I can finally stop somewhere and admire the beautiful landscape that's cool. :p Ambient dialogues are awesome I love that skritt shouting through the entire map "Light of Del-drimoar!!!!!!"

Yea that corridor was intended for those who like to explore on their mounts. :)

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> This might be of interest to some (I didn't check to see if it was in those other links)

>

>

>

> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/65980/all-or-nothing-spoiler-kas-and-jory-dialogue#latest

Yep! Kas and Marjory have dialog with Taimi. They are essentially the evacuation crew going to areas that Kralk is attack from the mists. Now that the tracker is on Kralk, they can get a head a bit and help people out.

> @"Arden.7480" said:

> Hi!

>

> You again gave Debbi a hard time... Again she bursted into tears... Taimi knows what is death, because she has struggled with it for many years - saying to herself "not today", and now when she experienced such two big loss... I wonder if her illness is getting worse, because of such traumatic experiences she has suffered from since Daybreak. Tell Debbi, please that my post about that she is the best voice actor in this game is still actual (wrote it after Daybreak). None of the voice actors has been that emotional EVER.

>

> I also loved Kari Wahlgren's job on this episode, especially because her writing improved, so she again reminds me of this Personal Story Caithe, but now she understands what her Wyld Hunt was about. For those lines "Speak through me" she should have gotten a big, sweetest candy, did she? ;)

>

> I couldn't ever connect with Human Female PC's voice, it was kind of good, but sounded so bounded, like waiting for release. Then I played A Star to Guide Us with the Human Female and before that I thought: Do I really want that? What if I will be disappointed (I'm this kind of person that keep an attention to even little details, small sounds that for some won't matter, but for me they do)? So I took a risk and then...

>

> And then her voice was just blooming!! those different emotions, even sobbing, this "Blish say something" coming from her... I finally FELT April Stewart's voice, I got chills listening to her, like when I listen to this emotional Debbi's voice! And I also played All or Nothing with the Human Female, and from all of the commanders, she sounded the most phenomenal!! "Caithe, your flowers" coming from her... my god,...

>

>

> Also Canach's whistling!! John DiMaggio also deserves a candy, some people seem upset because of Canach, but don't listen to them Canach, stay true to who you are. :)

>

> And Jocelyn Blue and her voiceover for Glint! Clap Clap Clap! So good, deep and so fitting!

>

> This whole VA Team is soooo wholesome and amazing, and with You Eve as the chieftain/master/chef/leader/poobah or however they call You, it's just DA BEST!

>

>

>

>

>

>

They are amazing at their jobs! I had the honor to go down to a couple days of VO recording and it was so much fun to see them do their thing. Some actors need different direction, some use props, some add lines before their recorded lines to get more in the mood and tone of the scene. It was so much fun to see their work live. They deserve the praise :).

> @"PsDh.2471" said:

> > 1. Why didn't you name her by her real name in stead of "ghostly messenger", will we be seeing her again <3 ?

> More importantly, IF this was indeed Gwen, why not have her meet Logan? I mean he was standing a rock throw from where she gave her message to the Commander! The interaction between Logan and Gwen, meeting an old hero of Tyria and his blood relative, would have been amazing content!

>

> > 2. When is Cantha coming out ?

> Cantha came with Guild Wars Factions, released back in 2006. You should try playing it ;)

> On a more serious note, I would like our path to Cantha to be similar to what we saw during this episode. Just Ogden telling us we're going to Cantha with no context whatsoever =)

>

> > 3. My personal favor ... Since you balls..ed us up with the finale, and I have no plan of ever fighting Kralk again since **to me** the fight was excruciatingly painful and tedious , could you please in Season 5 episode 1 just have some random unknown hero kill him while we're tending some chickens ;) so that we can quickly finish his boring story and go on to new things.

> Here's an idea:

> Forge a pointy Dragonsblood hat, shaped like the tip of a spear. Make Zojja wear it and launch her at Kralk by combining Dredge Sonic Amplifying tech and Asuran tech. Dead Kralk, Zojja gets her introduction to Dragon's Watch, and a new wearable Dragonsblood headpiece. It's a win-win-win!

This was Gwen :) but we didn't want to name her in fear that those not in the know would feel left out. Instead this was a nice Easter egg for anyone who caught it. Her meeting Logan would have been a nice touch but one that we didn't have enough bandwidth for. It's also an extra story beat that we would have to give time to and the episode was already packed with story beats. :)

> @"PsDh.2471" said:

> He was the very first Elder Dragon we would ever come to see in GW1 and his presence has been described in a book and is seen in-game. His size and appearance is terrifying. His powers seems endless.

>

> Path of Fire (before LWS4) showed us the weakness of this great beast: the Dragonsblood Spear. We destroyed this, however research from Yasna of Kralkatite ore during LWS4 Episode 1 at the Astralarium hinted that confluence of astral energy (aka intense focused light) could purify the Kralkatite. Fast forward even further to LWS4 Episode 4 and we learn that the Djinns' have magic protection capable of resisting the Brand, something Ziya grants the Commander from arcane experiments on corrupted sand.

>

> So we went from one sole weakness to Kralk and his Dragonbrand, to potentially three ways we can defeat him? Granted, the magic the djinn's wield is protection based, but I'm sure Taimi could find a way to turn that into a weapon. Especially if you combine it djinn's protective magic with the other two - intense focused light and dragonsblood weapons.

>

> My question is, where does the destinction lie between the Brand and Kralk himself? The Brand is his corruption, but is it also a part of him? For instance, is the Brand also part of his thick hide, his internal structure, or does it extend beyond that and is far more vital for his survival?

We talked about this quite a bit when creating this episode. The weakness we've described in the past was that Kralk's "blood" is his own weakness but that also could mean his kin. The Brand are effectively extensions of himself and therefor their materials and him are one in the same. At least, the share the same frequency as described in Ep 5. This is what allows us to create weapons that Kralk is weak to.

> @"Arden.7480" said:

> Map is insanely well designed! Those hidden corridors, amazing snowy mountains, and it's made with every mount in mind! It's so much fun climbing up with the Springer, and flying down from the highest peaks with Griffon, and the metas are actually epic and I enjoy them very much.

>

> Fractal is just phenomenal, the climate is so great! Also the view in the final stage of the fractal is just breathtaking, this sun, ocean, skies... And those new mechanics! I loooved this fractal so much!

>

> The Music, there are no words... I leave it at that.

>

> The voiceacting and sounds - just mindblowing, I will repeat it thousands of times: Debbi, my god... You are amazing!!

>

> The legendary - I love it!! Cosmic energy? Created by an unknown entity? Leaving broken rifts? All the stuff I've dreamed of!!!! Thank you for looking into my hidden dreams! :D

>

> The story... I just... Thank you for leaving me into a state of feeling nothingness. All I felt after seeing Aurene impaled was just creeping nothingness... Never experienced such fear from this game... I trembled in fear for hours...

>

>

>

> I love you, my dearest Guild Wars 2 Family! I love this Game so much, it's just part of me. Thank you for your hard work!

>

>

>

>

Thank you so much for those kind words, Arden. The whole team worked so hard on it and the out pour of love from you all makes it all worth while. I couldn't be more pleased with how things turned out. I'm just humbled and so glad to be apart of this amazing community. You all are the best fans!

> @"perilisk.1874" said:

> Does that mean Branded can be awakened? And if so, how would you tell an Awakened Branded human apart from a Branded Awakened human? And could an Awakened Branded human be Branded?

To my knowledge the Awakened process is more of a ritual for a select few. IMO, I don't think the awakened would want to "Awaken" a dead Branded creature.

> @"zealex.9410" said:

> Verticallity was def a selling point of this update and im certain theres somewhere an article mentioning how griffon friendly this map is.

>

> You can imagine my surprise and dissapointment when i learned theres no griffon adcenture on the map. The combo seems so perfect, it feel like u didnt put one in on purpose.

I'm glad you asked that! We felt that tonely it didn't make much sense to have things like races or griffon adventures. The map was really focused on the supply lines and the war between Kralk and the Pact. By removing races off our plates, we were able to make more content that better fit the theme of the map. For example, Sergei's adventure.

We did try to put other fun things for mounts to do in the map like the Underworld's Angels achievement and the various explorable areas that a Griffon can get to.

> @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> So more than half of this AFC is over, 57 topics have been created at the time of creating this topic and only 5 of them have dev (If you included Gaile Gray) replays. That is even worse than previous AFCs.

> This does not really feel useful at all, why even have an AFC if you are not commited to it?

I'm so sorry you feel that way :( I think most of the team spent last week tracking down bugs and trying to put our "fires". I believe most of us are finished with that so we're starting to go through these now! Thank you for your patience!

> @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> There is a collection for all exotic dragon blood weapons that gives the title "Journeyman of the Forge"

> doing one of the small achievements you unlock after that give "Master of the Forge"

> but there doesn't seem to be any collection for collecting all the ascended dragon blood weapons. I hope this is an oversight. The title should be called "Grandmaster of the Forge"

I love that you would be willing to chase that down! As others have mentioned however, we decided against this due to the fact that we thought gating a title and achievement behind something so large would be painful to players. :)

> @"Phaede Knight.4705" said:

> I'm stunned, shocked, sadden, a lil angry that all of this led to this...for the last ten minutes I just stood in the forge blankly staring at my screen, debating if it was all some twisted dream created by kralk and not real or if i'd just wasted the last year raising a child only to see her die...

It’s really heavy! We’re here for you!

/hug :)

> @"Blur.3465" said:

> When I finished the story I just stood in one spot, blankly staring into nothing and just contemplating...

>

> But seriously, fantastic job Arena Net, you've outdone yourselves with the story and music and...everything!

>

> Thank you, it's the first time I got such surge of emotions in me while doing the story! <3

Thank you so much for the kind words. It fills my heart to know you had such a memorable experience!

> @"Urban Grimmblitz.4291" said:

> >! Honestly, this is the first time the plot of the GW2 story gave me so many mixed feelings. At the end, I felt surprised, happy, sad, disappointed and expectant, all at the same time. I don't know if that means I like the plot or not, I guess I still need time to digest it. But a "thanks a lot" to all the developers who worked on this, they did a good job.

Thank you! It’s been our pleasure to share this experience with you all!

> @"LinseyMurdock.4165" said:

> Working closely with the narrative team on the story for this season has truly been a highlight of my career. I am so incredibly proud of the teams that brought it to life. It was such a tight multi-discipline collaboration and we absolutely could not have pulled this off without that. I'll never forget the experience of today and seeing our players reactions. The whole Living World team were hopping from stream to stream watching as our partners played through the end. Hearing our whole room break out into laughter, cheers, and clapping while we collectively experienced that real-time feedback was genuinely magical. My heart soars. I couldn't be happier.

I can’t echo this enough. This was truly a highlight of my career!

We’re here for you if you need a hug!

/hug :)

Oh man one of my favorite meetings was with QA, Design, Narrative, and Audio where we sat in a room and designed out how the forge works from a mechanical, narrative, and auditorily acurrate stand point.

It got so complicated but it was just amazing to see the various disciplines use their talents to solve such a complex problem. But also any meeting with narrative is a hoot. Those folks are so witty!

From our rewards designer: She notes the choice to use laurels was to be consistent with episode 3’s Plague Doctor’s set.

In response to the second half - Our pleasure! We wanted our weapon set to have some functionality in addition to looking slick :)

It can be difficult sometimes when designing a set for everyone. Most of the time it won’t please everyone’s taste but with a functional piece associated with it, I think it adds some extra interest among players.

We’re glad you enjoyed it!

We were very cognizant about what emotions the ending would elicit. I think the impact is a result from the talented narrative team we have and their ability to build weight to that moment. It’s heavy and people may need a breather afterwards but after a bit I’m positive folks will be itching to explore the new map and fractal. There is a lot of great gameplay and stories told in there.

And just one last thing. The whole team really just knocked it out of the park. From effects, to cinematic, to props, design, environment art, programming, etc. Everyone was working in harmony to make that moment special. So I just want to say hats off to the team and a thank you to you and the community for sharing it with us.

Music also plays an important part in the episode and as such our composer and game director got a choir in the recording studio so that they can get a genuine sound and feel when walking around the map. It makes a world of difference.

I can’t wait for you to experience this!!! Thank you so much for playing.

Creating this episode was amazing! There are so many things that went into it as this was so ambitious.

When we started the episode we decided to all jump into guild wars 1 and play through the original Thunderhead Keep campaign. That was a great exercise to freshen up on the area and provided plenty of details for us to think about when determining what homages and Easter eggs we wanted to create.

> @"crashburntoo.7431" said:

> I think the chained instances worked very well for the narrative. If I were to look at what I've completed and consider little change to this segment of the story, I think the third instance could have been preceded with some open world content and still flowed. The difficulty would have been in encouraging players to not delve too far into the map before continuing the story arc to allow for continuity. Ultimately, that decision is up to the player and is a factor on almost any other map anyway!

>

> While I liked the flow from the chained instances, playing all three in a row was more than I was prepared to do. As a father of four kids that are ten and under, I'm a fan of smaller segments that I can enjoy one at a time. I've read similar posts from others as well as some people that just want to get to the open world and explore. It's their primary mode of play and enjoyment.

>

> Thanks again @"Clayton Kisko II.1934" and others who posted... I like this Forum Chat.

You and me both my friend! I have a 2 year old and the life as a father gamer is much different these days. As always, it is about balance and each episode is different and requires different things! :)

> @"DiogoSilva.7089" said:

> > @"Clayton Kisko II.1934" said:

> > We made a note of the length that players were exposed to in our episode and we tend to agree that **it may have been a bit too long**.

>

> No, no it wasn't.

>

> I can understand that not everyone will like it, but the 3-chained instances were wonderful and greatly contributed to world and story immersion to me. It felt like playing a story-driven, single-player game to me (in the good sense of the word). Really, exploring the new map felt a lot more satisfying after going through not only the action setpieces, but also through instanced and relaxed exploration of the new charr's tribe, without worrying about nearby events, hunts, player chat and other distraction. By the time I gained access to the map, I was very fulfilled by the narrative.

>

> I loved the (new) action setpiece storytelling > calm instanced storytelling > map exploration structure.

Excellent! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

> @"sweetrules.8359" said:

> The biomes thing sounds like it would have been pretty cool. And having a hug emote would be awesome. lol. Though, I'm not sure I'd be willing to hug Braham. He has a lot of attitude to make up for, and I really don't want to let him off so easily. He seems to be starting to realize he owes us a serious apology.

Yea I'm not hugging that Grumpy Guardian either!