Author Archives: Cam Shea

Continue reading →

Lier looks quite powerful, but what kinds of decks would it be run in? “Lier is most likely to see play in a deck that has a mixture of card drawing and removal,” says Mike Turian, Product Architect. “At five mana, you will need to keep the board clear of threats and your life total up. You can do both with instants and sorceries. This will give you plenty of fodder for when you reuse Lier and take control of the game.

“Lier could also be powerful in a combo deck that generates lots of additional mana by casting mana-boosting cards a second time. Getting to cast instants and sorceries—ones that were only intended to be cast once—a second time is quite powerful. We have seen older cards, such as Yawgmoth’s Will and Snapcaster Mage, give the ability to cast cards from the graveyard so Lier could offer that same potential in a deck.

“Finally, Lier is a Legendary creature so that means he can be used to lead your Commander deck. Put Lier in a mono-blue deck filled with card drawing, bounce, and removal and you will be the bane of all of your friends as you have at least twice as good of a time playing as they do!”

The two pieces of art are also incredibly intense, so who is this character? “Lier is a powerful high priest of a cult that worships an ancient god of sea and storms,” Meris Mullaley – Narrative Design Manager, Worldbuilding Team tells me. “He preaches that because the surface is covered with horrors and monsters it is a sign humans shouldn’t live there. One day his sea god will return, overtake the surface, and welcome all to a paradise below the waves.

“Lier’s beliefs are one way in which humans have found ways to cope with the danger and horrors of living on Innistrad.”

“The look for Lier was really fun to play with,” Senior Art Director Taylor Ingvarsson enthuses in response to my question about Lier’s visual design(s). “Originating down in the coastal province of Naphalia, the denizens of this provence are usually covered in heavy water-resistant clothing to protect themselves from the elements. We wanted to push the idea of Lier’s zealotry to his ‘god of sea and storms’ by removing this protective clothing and allowing him to look confident and powerful in the midst of this dangerous coastal storm.

“For the visual motifs on Lier, we really pushed for a meld between Naphalia’s design language and that of the Stromkirk vampires of which their progenitor, Runo Stromkirk worships the same god of the sea and storms. You can note Naphalia’s inspiration by the fishing hooks, heavy leather gloves, and thick layers of clothing. While the Stromkirk vampires inspiration utilizes twisting heavy knots of nautical rope, the hooked shapes on his tabard akin to crashing waves, and strips of cloth that when whipping in the wind are akin to tentacles of great sea monsters. Lier’s zealotry is further exemplified by incorporating sea creatures into his staff and there is a massive crab over the shoulders giving him a creepy, yet elevated silhouette.

“I also have to say that I could not have been happier than to work with Ekaterina Burmak on this character. She really knocked this image out of the park and realized an awesome character for us.”

We’re Going on a Midnight Hunt

Innistrad is a rich world for Wizards to tap back into. Given it’s been five years since the last full card set based in Innistrad, I asked Meris Mullaley to set the scene for me. “Werewolves, zombies, vampires, and ghosts rule the night,” Mullaley says of the Gothic horror fantasy setting, “and the delicious (but resilient) humans do their best to survive. On Innistrad you might find yourself in the misty woods, a forbidding manor, or a haunted cemetery. It is a place that gives you a chill and crawling sensation under your skin and you are constantly watching the shadows.”

Midnight Hunt takes place on the eve of the Harvesttide Festival; a time when things have been thrown out of balance. “As we come back to Innistrad,” explains Product Architect Mike Turian, “the night is growing longer while daytime is shrinking. From a card design standpoint, this is captured with the creation of the Daybound/Nightbound mechanic on werewolves. Typically the Nightbound side of the card is more powerful, and with this new mechanic, once it is nighttime Werewolves will enter the battlefield on their back Nightbound side. So instead of having to transform them each individually, they now sync up with the current status of Day or Night.

“For Innistrad: Midnight Hunt,“ Turian continues, “the setting was decided on before we created the gameplay concepts. Innistrad always wants to tap into the gothic horror feel and that leads to loads of top down cards designed from thinking about how to capture that gothic horror setting. We create both the cards and the mechanics by asking ourselves what it is like to be a human that returns to the world as a spirit, or as a werewolf that desires nightfall.”

The return of flashback very much fits into this design approach. “Innistrad… has always looked to the graveyard as one of the ways to capture that feel from a gameplay perspective,” says Mike Turian. “Often that is with creatures that rise from the graveyard, however flashback allows spells to come back for a second time. Everyone loves casting their favorite spells twice and we saw how popular that was with cards like Snapcaster Mage from the original Innistrad set. In addition to connecting back to earlier sets, flashback adds a lot of fun to gameplay. Often as the game goes on, it’s nice to have a reserve of spells that you can tap into again. So flashback helps connect both to the flavor of Innistrad and the great gameplay that Magic: The Gathering offers.”

Given the emphasis on setting and story informing the gameplay, does Midnight Hunt tie into players’ last visit to this plane? “The last time we were on Innistrad,” explains Mullaley, “the Eldrazi were creating nightmares out of the standard Innistrad horrors. At the end of that story, Emrakul was trapped in the moon. The Travails – what residents call the situation with the Eldrazi – left an impact on the plane that you can see snippets of in the cardset and the web fiction. The situation with the day/night imbalance very likely has to do with its Eldrazi prisoner. However, in this return to Innistrad we wanted to focus on the original Gothic horror themes of the setting. So the mechanics, the story, and the cardset focus on werewolves, witches, and vampires.”

Gothic Delights

The art direction really delivers on those Gothic horror themes. I asked how the approach to card art differed for this set versus others. “In practice, none of our cardsets are singular in their emotional tone,” says Meris Mullaley. “They do each have their unique traits and Innistrad is primarily dark horror: Really foreboding, ominous and creepy. Knowing that we were going to be on Innistrad for two sets, we wanted to make sure that the hope and whimsy themes that have always been a small part of Innistrad had a larger footprint.

“Also, when your plane is experiencing environmental changes—for example, the day/night imbalance and the frost covering everything—the art team does extra work to keep those elements consistently represented across the whole cardset as best as we can.”

“Innistrad is always a fun challenge,” adds Senior Art Director, Taylor Ingvarsson. “It is really easy to crank the horror up to high and make humans feel too scared or only like prey on the plane. What I love about this plane so much is that even though Humans are on the back foot from monsters we always push for ensuring that every character has a sense of agency and the ability to always look cool. It doesn’t matter if you are a simple farmer getting in a hard day’s work or if you’re the most battle-hardened Cathar. You will always get an opportunity in Innistrad to look awesome fighting off nasty beasties.”

And lastly, what inspired the incredible showcase art? “Innistrad has been built around gothic horror themes from the beginning,” Mullaley explains, “and our showcase cards provide a way for us to express the worldbuilding themes in new ways. For Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, we regularly talked about the influence of gothic horror monster movies, and we took that inspiration a step farther to feature many legendary creatures with alternate art that alluded to the classic black & white monster movies.”

The introduction of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt will see a new Standard meta for Magic: The Gathering, with a number of old sets dropping out of the format. And Innistrad itself will certainly make its presence felt one way or another this year, with the vampire-themed Crimson Vow set coming two months after Midnight Hunt.

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt will be out on MTG Arena on September 17 and for tabletop on September 24. Physical cards will be available in Draft Boosters, Set Boosters and Collector Boosters, as well as in Commander Deck bundles. You can find out more about on the official Midnight Hunt site.

Cam Shea has worked at IGN since the before times, and has played more Breath of the Wild than just about any other game. He’s barely on Twitter.

Continue reading →

So, what’s the mode all about? Well, as the name suggests it’s built around recruiting and building squads of mercenaries to do battle. The mode will have 50 unique mercenaries out of the gate, including iconic Blizzard characters like Sylvanas Windrunner, Ragnaros the Firelord and Diablo – yes, the Lord of Terror is coming to Hearthstone! – with more to come. Combat itself sees players choose mercenaries from their team to take part, then face off against a number of opponents on the other side of the board. Each turn they pick an action for each of their mercenaries; choosing an ability to use and an enemy to attack, while their opponent does the same. Once both sides have locked their actions in, combat for the turn plays out.

Anticipation is key, as mercenaries come in three different roles – designated by three different colours. They are: Fighter (green), Caster (blue) and Protector (red). Each role has different strengths and weaknesses, and at a basic level fit into a rock, paper, scissors system. While on offence, Fighters deal double damage to Casters; Casters deal double damage to Protectors; and Protectors deal double damage to Fighters.

As mentioned, each mercenary has upgradeable abilities to choose between for each turn. These can attack, cast spells, buff, heal and so on. Samuro, for instance, is all about attacking and doing damage, whereas Xyrella’s abilities are more focused around healing and debuffs. (You can see all the abilities for both these Mercenaries in the slideshow below.) Mercenaries can even expand their abilities as a run progresses. After each battle, one of your mercenaries gets the chance to choose a treasure to further modify their capabilities.

Choosing which abilities to use each turn isn’t just about what those abilities do, it’s about how they fit into your team’s strategy and how they match up against the opponent’s. It’s also about how quickly they activate. Each ability has a speed rating and once all the abilities have been locked in, this is what dictates attack order. (If two mercenaries are using an ability with the same speed rating the one that goes first is randomised.)

Toss in tribal mechanics, spell school synergies, factoring in positional play, cooldowns on abilities, abilities that disrupt your opponent and a whole lot more, and it’s looking like Mercenaries’ gameplay will offer up a dense web of potential synergies and strategies for each squad you put together.

Mercenaries mode has both PVE and PVP gameplay. PVE is all about chasing bounties, with players fighting through a series of procedurally-generated encounters leading up to the bounty boss. This roguelike structure is then paired with the meta game of leveling up your mercenaries, who gain experience by defeating enemies, and grow in power up to level 30. PVP, meanwhile, has achievements and rewards to earn, and players can fight for a place on its leaderboard.

Players can collect mercenaries either by opening special Mercenaries packs, or by spending Mercenary Coins (which are earned through bounties and other tasks) to craft them. It’s worth underlining here that Mercenary Coins aren’t a general currency, they’re specific to a particular mercenary. So you can redeem Mercenary Coins to “craft” that mercenary if you don’t own it, but if you do, coins can then be used to upgrade their abilities or equipment. (Each mercenary can have one piece of equipment – which augments one or more abilities – equipped at a time.)

Much like traditional Hearthstone cards, mercenaries also come in different rarities – Rare, Epic and Legendary, which presumably factors into how likely you are to get them in packs. Speaking of packs, they can be earned or purchased, and each contains five mercenary items. This can include new Mercenary cards, Mercenary Coins or Mercenary portraits. (Each pack has a guaranteed Mercenary card or Mercenary portrait.) Portraits, incidentally, are cosmetic variants of mercenaries.

Everyone who completes the introductory missions after Mercenaries launches will be rewarded with eight “well-rounded” mercenaries – enough to put together a party. Completing the Prologue and starting on a bounty will also reward players with a new mount for World of Warcraft – Sarge, from Hearthstone’s tavern.

Mercenaries isn’t just a new button in Hearthstone’s UI, either. It actually has its own central hub within the wider game – the Village. Here, you can manage your collection of mercenaries, collect rewards, head to the shop and take on bounties.

For those that are keen to hit the ground running, there will be three Mercenaries pre-purchase bundles available. The Diablo bundle includes a Diamond Legendary Diablo Mercenary Card and 50 Mercenaries packs. The Lich King bundle includes a Diamond Legendary Lich King Mercenary Card and 50 Mercenaries packs. The Sylvanas bundle includes a Golden Legendary Sylvanas Mercenary Card and 30 Mercenaries packs.

While we really need to go hands-on with this mode to get a proper feel for it, Mercenaries looks like a lot of fun, and we’re looking forward to diving into it along with the rest of the Hearthstone player base on October 12.

Cam Shea has worked at IGN since the before times, and has played more Breath of the Wild than just about any other game. He’s barely on Twitter.

Continue reading →

Icarus uses raycasting off player bodies to determine the level of shelter, which means the three of us crammed into a rock the size of a washing machine is fine, if a little claustrophobic. In fact, according to my guides it means even huddling in a circle would provide adequate shelter for the person standing in the centre of it.

This is the sort of thing Icarus does spectacularly. It follows ideas all the way through to their logical conclusion. Bodies should be able to huddle together for warmth. Fire should propagate from lightning strikes. When you skin and clean a deer you just killed, it should leave nothing but a bloodied, meaty skeleton behind.

And players who flail about wildly should do damage to their teammates. Friendly fire is absolutely a factor in Icarus, but it’s firmly — for now — a Player vs Environment (PvE) game.

“I think we’ve seen a natural evolution from those days, a long time ago, where you had something like DayZ, which had its core in this mod, and that flowed through into other mods, and then it flowed through into PUBG, which then flowed through into Fortnite,” Hall says when asked about Icarus’ PvE focus. “And then you see a lot of different games doing Battle Royale modes and stuff like that.

“So I think we saw a real evolution of PvP, which is why you started to see a lot of other PvP-focused multiplayer games bringing out Battle Royale modes. [Battle Royale] gave PvP really good context, it gave really good pacing around the player versus player experience that people could understand. But we didn’t feel like the same thing had occurred on the player versus environment front.

“So on the PvE front… I think if you’re going to do something in the video game industry, I feel like you should try and do something new, at least a little part of it. And so we felt like PvE was really ready for some sort of push. And I think we’ve been validated in the market with that. Valheim I think brought some really, really awesome stuff to the survival lexicon, and sort of proved that, hey, there’s this huge appetite for PvE.

“And as a genre, we’ve required a lot of previous survival titles to do this mixture of PvE versus PvP, and we’ve not necessarily done it well. And so [for Icarus] we wanted to be very clear and say, right, we’re going out, and at least for the start, we’re approaching it [as a PvE game].”

It’s clear from our conversations and time with the game that Rocketwerkz has learned a lot from DayZ. One issue Hall’s mod and Bohemia’s game constantly ran into was the absence of a satisfying endgame. Icarus, on the other hand, has been built from the ground up to avoid this problem.

“So when people say, ‘hey, what’s the endgame?’ What they’re really talking about is what is the goal? What am I working towards?” Hall explains. “If you look at a game like World of Warcraft or New World, if you ask what the endgame is it’s less of a problem, because it’s like, ‘well, I’m working towards this or that.’ And that is what session-based survival does.

“And I think the anatomy of the PvP survival genre, the real evolution — and you’ve got some excellent outcomes from it with both Fortnite and Tarkov and stuff like that — what they really did is took those feelings from games like DayZ, and they just put a really nice structure around them. That’s the same thing that we want to do with PvE.

“We don’t have to turn around and say it’s a PvE game. We could introduce a session that’s PvP, there’s nothing stopping us from doing that. And I think that’s the advantage that we really need to sell to people. We can provide you with an endgame for now, but we can always provide another endgame later. Whereas if you take something like Ark or Vaheim, if you want to add endgame content you have to add it to that person’s current session, which becomes a problem because you suffer from technical inflation, you know, the new stuff you’re adding can break the older stuff later on.”

The idea that Icarus could easily transition to PvP really lays out the breadth of what sessions make possible for Icarus. It hints at the sort of “metaverse” style of development that is en vogue right now.

From a gameplay perspective it speaks to the sorts of social interactions DayZ was famous for. With stakes like permadeath and high quality exotic materials on the line, I wonder how long it will take before players are standing at the drop ship as the session counter winds down, negotiating a tense truce between one another over who gets to bring the lion’s share of a prospect haul into orbit? Will Icarus one day have muggings?

Icarus was originally slated for full release this week, but Rocketwerkz has instead implemented three-ish months of beta weekends, pushing the actual launch back to November.

“Broadly speaking, a game needs to be at a certain point before the feedback you get back is worthwhile, right?” Hall says of the delay to November. “There’s no point in getting feedback on something if the game is broken. There was a really obvious bar we needed to reach in terms of playability before we’d be able to get good feedback. So the delay really came from that. We were very clear [internally] on where the game needed to be at before people could play it and give us good feedback. So we had to delay it.

“The other side of that is that if we wait too long for feedback we pass the point where we could really make any meaningful changes. So what we’re hoping is that this represents the Goldilocks Zone between waiting too long to get feedback versus getting feedback too early before players can really get a grasp on what the experience is.

“Spreading it out over these beta weekends is really about focusing in and getting feedback on specific areas while avoiding what I call ‘beta fatigue’. Too often games come out in beta and everything’s there, but you’re experiencing everything at a time when the game is not necessarily balanced or working as intended. If you’ve got a game and it’s good and it’s fun, but you’re progressing way too fast, you’re missing out on entire areas of the game, I call that beta fatigue because I think you don’t always come back to it.”

Still, it means the game will be playable this weekend. It’s the build I played, with a tutorial and multiplayer and all the survival game goodness you might want. Or you can wait until November, to play the game in its release form — although as Rocketwerkz has made clear, it will be far from its final form.

Joab Gilroy is an Australian freelancer that specialises in competitive online games. You can tweet at him here.

Continue reading →