News From the Six Realms #88 - State of the Game

Hey everyone,

It's a new year, and as always the work continues. We are already busy getting the March release ready, and there'll be more about that further down, but first I'd like to talk about the game's current state. 

Obviously, I would have liked to have Act I finished by now, but I will be the first to admit there was far too much scope creep, and writing issues have slowed things down, unfortunately. That being said, we are now approaching the end, and I'm hoping to be done by the end of the year or early next year at the latest. After a discussion with the writing staff, here is a good indication of the content left on the slate before we can move on to Act II:

Main:
Astarte - New War Council: Currently at 40%/100%
Updated Pre-Battle: Currently at 20%/100%
Updated Battle: 0%/100%
Updated postBattle: 0%/100%

Epilogue - One very large multi-state event similar to Astarte

Side:
Goblin arc - Che-Lin - 4 + 1 (4 Route events and a short debrief event)
Zii-Zii - 1 (short debrief event)
Tue-San - 1 (short debrief event)
Wedding - 3
Post-Wedding short events: 3 

Fae - 2 Heartsong Events
1 Whitescar event
1 Aryzl event
Arzyl Finale/Whitescar Finale (scenes would be released simultaneously but be separate)

NPC:
Andras NTR - 2
Jez NTR - 1
Jez - 2
Hel - 2
X'zaratl - 3

Map:
Ygrisse Chaos Incursion - 3-5
Portal Events - 5 (Short events for unlocking the portal for the first time)
Shrine events - 3 (Three written events about finding shrines to Solansian gods in Rosaria)

Other:
Rastedel edits
Continuing Helayna events rework (5 events) and folding mindless events into a repeatable menu (six short events)


As you can see, there is still quite a bit of work to be done, but we are finally getting to the top of the mountain. The larger tasks are still Astarte and the epilogue, Che-Lin, the Fae, and the Helayna rework, but we will be aiming to hit these with every release to get them finished and eventually free up staff to help in other areas. The good news is we are very close to being finished on both NPC arcs and map stuff, meaning we can put them to bed and focus elsewhere.

Not going to talk about this today, but moving into Act II, we will be looking at ways to reduce workload while still giving you plenty of options, and make it feel like your choices matter. We have learned a few lessons in making this game, and we know that three acts totalling 3 million words plus over eight years each isn't really feasible. We will discuss this more as we start to reveal stuff about Act II in the not-so-distant future, though. 

So that is all for today. I hope the above list has given you some idea of what is left before the act is finished, and I'll be updating it as we knock stuff off (probably not every release, but every other release) until it is completely done. It has been a long haul and I want to thank you all for sticking by it and supporting us while we tried to bring this project that was far, far too large to life. I and the rest of the team are really looking forward to getting into Act 2, though. There's going to be new characters, locations, plot lines, and, of course, plenty of sex, and we hope you are excited about it too. In the meantime though, the next release will be out on the final Sunday of March, which this year falls on the 31st.