Guild Wars 2 MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Destruction in Guild Wars 2 isn't just expressed in shades of gray, as this concept of the sunken city of Orr shows.

Ten Ton Hammer: Guild Wars 2 takes place hundreds of years after the original Guild Wars. Players have a conception of what things will be like in the future of the world. Has it been challenging dealing with these preconceptions? ? You’ve done plenty of both, so do you find it invigorating to work from that basis that players already have, or is it easier to work from scratch where you’re designing the world for the first time?

Daniel: Sure. Indeed, on one hand, we need to keep or account for the players’ expectations as far as their having preconceived ideas on how this world might have evolve. That’s something that we want to take seriously because we wouldn’t want to disappoint or underdeliver or alienate our fans by straying away too radically from the world that they know.

But, on the other hand, it is indeed invigorating and a fresh experience for us to be able to depart a little bit from the visuals and the clichés of high fantasy we’ve established. We’re the first ones, so of course, it’s a little bit of a time travel experience, and it opens opportunities for pushing the world, pushing creatively in a direction which is both compatible with the legacy of the IP, but also, surprising and unique and fresh for the player.

Ten Ton Hammer: I know that you talked earlier about the core principles that go into the design of Guild Wars 2 art and Guild Wars art in general. Guild Wars certainly has its own style, but I like how you said that it’s getting away from the high fantasy clichés. Could you describe in your own words what the Guild Wars style is?

Daniel: Sure—the one sentence description is that it is a highly stylized world with emphasis on handcrafted, painterly, or illustrated quality. That would be kind of the short elevator pitch, but I’d like to elaborate a little and kind of justify our stylistic position. Of course, one of the first things you do when you start pre-production is to figure out where you want to situate yourself stylistically, and there’s numerous criteria to consider. Some of them are of a technical nature, some of them are marketing considerations—or course, there is the pure artistic vision we want to put our mark on the game. There is a little bit of a negotiating act and trying to find a sweet spot between the different directions that all these considerations are pulling.

Of course, it is our conviction that style ages better than realism. What that means is that with the rapid advancement of technology, it is frequently the case that what last year’s looked—a very, very impressive feat of photorealistic graphic achievement may a year later look obsolete and completely outdated. While, style, in our opinion, if it truly elevates itself to the level of true quality art has the ability to withstand the test of time a lot better. So, MMORPGs, traditionally being products with a long life expectancy, it is important that our game can survive stylistically for five or six years without looking too dated.

That being said, you don’t want to push style towards a level of abstraction that is too high because that in fact negatively impacts the broadness of your audience. The higher the level of abstraction that we impose upon the style, the more likely you are to narrow your audience significantly. It’s again a process of negotiating and finding the sweet spot that meets all the requirements and grants us the best positioning in the market. Realism is also a very crowded space as far as developers consistently insisting on trying to accomplish utmost closeness to the world that we see, and in terms of taking advantage of the latest and greatest on the technology front. It’s just a crowded space to be in. We’d rather move in a different direction and allow ourselves a bit more creative elbow room, if you will, to maneuver around and experiment.

The Guild Wars 2 art team continues to find new ways to present familiar objects, such as ships, in new ways.

Ten Ton Hammer: I can see how players would, not going too abstract, players can still relate to what they are seeing. Leather is still leather, plate is still plate, but introducing a new and different sense of style graphics to the game. That sounds particularly challenging.

Daniel: We really believe that it is important for the world to be familiar, to allow the player to bring their baggage of life experience to the game, for them to be able to anticipate or expect how to interact with this world. If everything in the world is magical or fantastical or alien and nothing really follows the laws of physics or validates their life experience, then you’re not getting anywhere.

I think the elements of fantasy need to be sprinkled throughout the game, but really interspersed with breathers where the world looks more familiar and more real and more in line with the player’s life experience. That really allows those memorable moments when you encounter something that is out of the ordinary to become memorable and epic and just have the impact that we’re looking for.

Our sincerest thanks to Daniel Dociu and the NCsoft North America team for their time!
For more info, be sure to check out the Guild Wars 2 concept art gallery
and our recent Guild Wars 2 lore interview with Jeff Grubb.