Now that the Drakkar encounter in Guild Wars 2 has been fluttering about for a while, perhaps you’re curious about just how the team at ArenaNet put the fight together? You’re in luck, as a recent dev blog has taken a pretty deep dive into how it all came together. And when I say “deep dive,” I really do mean it, as the post outlines a number of factors that were taken in to account, from a lore standpoint reaching back all the way to Eye of the North, to the way his animation was done, to even his visual effects and mechanics design, which also made the team design some new things for the fight.
“Our first step when tackling Drakkar was to determine our technical restrictions and any design restrictions that were established by what was shown of him in the original Guild Wars,” ArenaNet writes. “The most you saw of him in game was a hazy view of his head through the ice, so we decided to change up most of his body in order to best fit our rig, gameplay, and story purposes.”
For armchair developers, it’s a pretty engaging read and certainly worth a look, and then you can dip into the latest Guild Chat episode, which also focuses on the dragon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaJXsMWsxDc
