If you’ve been around in the MMORPG genre a few years, you’re surely aware that New World did not always look the way it looks now. Amazon originally revealed the game as more of a survival-centric gankbox MMO but then after closed testing rather infamously pulled it back for a do-over into a slightly more traditional MMORPG with faction-based PvP. That’s something the studio brings up in this week’s Forged in Aeternum, as the devs reflect on how the game’s questing and storytelling was developed out of the existing base of lore rather late in its development.
“We did that transition where we were a survival game, [then] we did some self-reflection and decided we were going to pivot more towards an MMO,” Lead Seasons Designer Patrick Smedley says. “And at that point in time […] we did not have quests. So we started building a quest team […] and slowly started introducing a more coherent narrative throughout the game and adding quests that ask players to go and do fairly basic things. […] Our narrative wasn’t too well defined, but since then, we’ve come a really long way, right?”
Storytelling Producer Johannes Rasinkangas agrees, adding that the game’s narrative now covers 500 fully voiced characters and a cast over 200 (most of them in the UK, incidentally, to better represent all the European accents in the game).
The whole video is below.
