In what is hopefully not a one-off blog post, ArenaNet has a deep-dive into Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons development up to cap off the week. Story Design Lead Connor Fallon drops 2700 words on how the team brought back the Aetherblade faction and inserted the Aetherblades organically into the plotline to drive it forward from zone to zone.
You’ll want to have made it through much of the expansion before peeking in (or reading further), as Fallon explains in spoiler-laden detail that the Aetherblades were initially appealing largely to provide a “kickass option for an opening sequence” as you’re leaping between airships trying to rescue a friend, though they presented more opportunities as the narrative marches on. As the players travel through the storyline, they’ll notice that as they’ve changed over time, so have the Aetherblades, who’ve updated their gear and even their “aether” thanks to their time in the Mists.
The evolution of Ankka is also a fun side-story; apparently, she emerged as a challenge to make a genuinely creepy, rather than goofy, Asura antagonist (though it might have been fun to use the, ahem, prototype Chadd). Apparently, the team rewrote the Mai Trin storyline and dialogue quite a bit as well to make sure the characters weren’t letting a former terrorist off the hook too easily. And yes, the writers like Ivan as much as you probably did. It shows.
“With the Aetherblades, time allowed the ideas around them to mature and ripen, informed by the other stories that surrounded them,” Fallon concludes. “Looping them into Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons, in turn, brought all that history into play in our expansion in a way that made the whole thing better.”
