We’ve been teasing Neverwinter for the over-the-top hellishness of its Infernal Descent campaign, and we’re pleased to say that will not end with this recap of the Vallenhas map as chronicled in the latest dev blog. Vallenhas is an adventure zone that was literally a slice of the landscape that was sunk into the underworld. Now, it’s on fire.
“The largest challenge for this Adventure Zone would be the conversion of such a large space into a suspended landmass being pulled by two separate forces,” PWE writes. “How would we convert and create playable spaces that sold this motif and gave the feeling of instability and worry?” Floating landmasses and varied terrain tools, basically, so the new hellish map doesn’t look like the old one.“The increase in population didn’t come cheap though. The combination of extremely long sight lines with high asset density created a large obstacle for the overall performance of the zone. Heavy use of our LOD system, placed occlusion meshes, object culling, and time spent addressing errors brought forth from its former state allowed us to achieve a decent balance between visual fidelity and overall performance.”
Check out the pics below. Infernal Descent launches next week on January 21st for PC players, with console to follow.
