New World’s latest Forged in Aeternum video is laser-focused on – you guessed it – Season of the Guardian, specifically one of the major features of the update: the completion of the revamp of the main story questline, a process that has been ongoing since the first year of the game.
AGS Senior Narrative Designer Lula Lucent explains that Season of the Guardian puts the final touches on the MSQ revamp by focusing on tidying up and expanding the Ebonscale and Shattered Mountain narrative. And of course, rewriting the quests means rewriting the plot and shifting around NPCs – some of whom are new or have different roles now thanks to other content compared to their launch personae. The Angry Earth, for example, didn’t make sense anymore as allies against Isabella, so reworks were required.
“[M]y design philosophy is strongly wrapped up in what is needed to revise something like the MSQ ending,” Lucent says. “We knew where our penultimate story arc was happening, Ebonscale Reach. We knew where the absolute ending would be, Shattered Mountain. I worked backwards from our current assets and locations, and sought to give them life and meaning alongside cool new things to do there! Once that narrative skeleton was approved by our supporting teams, I fleshed it out one piece at a time by asking myself, which NPCs were involved in each quest, what resources did I need to request from others, and how could I turn all the chaotic madness in my head into the artful guise of order?”
Season of the Guardian drops March 12th, which means three more weeks of anticipation and videos.
