Crit Path Mission - On Blighted Wings

Mission Overview

On Blighted Wings is the consequence of a pivotal choice players must make after recruiting Davrin. Save Minrathous or save Treviso (an impossible decision); as rescuing one means potentially sacrificing the other. This choice locks the player out of certain content while unlocking others, and followers will remember this decision, ultimately making this short mission narratively significant.

With a tight turnaround, one of the PODs focuses was ensuring that the weight of Minrathous being razed was felt in gameplay, not just cutscenes. We aimed to achieve this by having the player experience the dragons destruction firsthand. Close flybys, plumes of dragon fire, chaos and destruction; all while fighting through Venatori who are using this attack to try and seize the city.

These moments landed so well that they influenced the direction of the sibling mission where the players choose to save Treviso instead.

My Contributions

  • Direct IC from Concept to Shippable

  • Mission Scripting

  • Encounter Design and Scripting

  • Cinematic, Conversation and Banter Scripting

  • POD Runner

  • Polish and bug fixing

Experiencing not Witnessing

To fully sell the experience of the dragon narrowly flying by while raining hellfire, I placed these moments at choke points where the player was most likely to be facing the intended direction. I then prototyped the flybys using timeline animations and fire VFX assets to effectively demonstrate the intent to the World Animation team.

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BlightedWings_DragonDefeated.png
BlightedWings_DragonPerch.png
BlightedWings_Flyby2.png

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