Wayfinder Echoes

Published on Steam!

Genre: Action RPG with 3 Player Co-Op

Engine: Unreal 4

Studio: Airship Syndicate

Role: Designer - Narrative Team

As a designer of the narrative team, my main tasks were designing content to engage players with the game world and fill out the stories and lives of its characters. I created new quests to encourage exploration into new areas of the world, blocked out spaces that encouraged flow and exploration, scripted custom encounters and interactions to delight and surprise players, and updated all existing content from the MMO version to fit the new single player experience of Wayfinder Echoes.

Responsibilities and Duties

Blocked out spaces for gameplay and to encourage exploration in overland and dungeon areas.
Created interesting gameplay moments through Unreal blueprint scripting by designing and implementing custom combat encounters at pivotal narrative moments.
Scripted immersive game-world interactions to augment the world and story through causing change in the game world players would see upon returning to an area.
Designed 8 new quests to help guide players through new areas for the Echoes release, including a major boss and a main NPC’s story arc.
Updated all owned side quests with new proprietary tools and to fit the new single-player experience.
Utilized new branching dialogue tools to enhance the narrative flow of multiple main story quests and side quests.
Converted live event quests originally meant for seasonal content into the main story.
Partnered with engineers to rework server replicated quest content to support peer-to-peer co-op replication.
Collaborated with art and VFX departments to create quest specific assets to better enhance the player experience.

A hidden quest I designed for the new Frostmarch where players receive a “burden” of each season after completing the four side quests themed around spirits. They are placed at his alter and players receive a special weapon for placing all four.

Scripting Immersive Game World Interactions

For Echoes, a new area called the Crucible was introduced. The narrative team was encouraged to think of new ways to tell stories through quests with limited dialogue and through the environment and gameplay. I created four quests for this new area that focused on:

Scripting interesting interactions within the world that players could experience and return to.
Using the environment to guide players and help them to understand the narrative rather than using dialogue.
Find a fun “twist” to keep the story engaging and surprising to players.

The “Raiders of the Lost Platoon” questline and “Our Eternal Land” quest fulfilled these goals through interesting interactions that kept players on their toes and short, snappy dialogue that keeps the player moving and in the action.

Following the trail of the Lost Platoon from the “Raiders of the Lost Platoon” questline. The player follows a vfx trail to find vignettes to give clues of what happened.

Blowing up artifacts for "Raiders of the Lost Platoon" - example and scripting

Blowing up ancient artifacts to get relics for the “Raiders of the Lost Platoon” questline.

The blueprint scripting I created to track the VFX and quest objective for players on the "Raiders of the Lost Platoon" side quest. The quest system was unable to properly track player progress, so I created a dictionary and a series of checks to listen for when each player interacted with each bomb and for when all bombs were set. Once all bombs were set, I used functions to play the proper effects, toggle visibility for the correct assets, progress their quest objective, and to spawn a combat encounter.

Scripting for the "Raiders of the Lost Platoon" side quest. I created an array of bombs for players to interact with to arm. Once all bombs were armed, an explosion would happen. This function checks if all the bombs have been interacted with and then to start the explosions effects if true.

The blueprint scripting I created to track the VFX and quest objective for players on the "Raiders of the Lost Platoon" side quest. This function checks to see if the bomb was interacted with in the dictionary, adds it to the dictionary if not, and sets it to "true" so that the code knows this bomb has been interacted with.

The scripting I did to make the bombs bombs explode for each player on the Raiders of the Lost Platoon side quest in the Crucible. This function checks if all charges has been set. If true, feed it out so that effects can be played.

Interactions in "Our Eternal Land" - example and scripting

A pot used in the “Our Eternal Land” quest to make a counteragent to help plants grow. The player has 3 kinds of dirt to put into the pot, with each combination creating a different effect as seen here.

Part of the scripting for "Our Eternal Land". Once the player has put a dirt combo in, it is checked and assigned an integer. This scripting checks which integer is present and then plays the correct effects.

Part of the Scripting for "Our Eternal Land". This function checks to see which dirt the player gave to the item requester to be fed into and checked in other functions.

Part of the scripting for "Our Eternal Land". This function checks for the dirt combo given to the item requester and then assigns each combo a different integer that is checked in another function. This also returns the dirt to the player's inventory so they can try again if they did not pick the right combo.

Part of the blueprint scripting I created for "Our Eternal Land". This function looks for the integer assigned in an earlier function which tells which two dirt the player gave the item requester. Based on that combo, different effects play.

Part of the scripting for "Our Eternal Land". For the dialogue and effects to properly replicate for all players, I worked with an engineer to properly call both the server and client machines at the correct times.

Part of the scripting I did for "Our Eternal Land". If the correct combo is given, the pot explodes. This checks to see if the player is close enough to the pot to be knocked back. If the player is too far away, no knock back occurs.

As part of the “Our Eternal Land” quest, players pour counteragent on flowers to cause them to grow again. At certain times, they are attacked by wurms who also like the counteragent (foreshadowed when making the counteragent). All flowers players interacted with and extra ones will be shown in their end state (green and grown) even after leaving the map.

The scripting I did for the flower interactions in the quest "Our Eternal Land". When a flower is interacted with, it checks to see if the player is on the objective for the 3rd or 5th flower. If they are, it starts either an easy or hard encounter. If the player is on the 4th flower, it plays a specific dialogue line that serves as foreshadowing to the 5th hard encounter.

Updating Quests for Echoes

An example of an older quest being updated with the new dialogue tools. Now players can choose to learn more details around the story if they desire.

Changing Wayfinder from an MMO to a Action RPG with 3-player co-op meant that the around 50 quests I had designed needed to be updated to better fit the flow of a premium game experience. After reviewing all my quests, I updated them to use the new branching dialogue tools created for Echoes as well as character animations for take over dialogue to create a more interesting narrative experience. With the new updated quest objective system, I added in objective areas to many of my quests, encouraging more player exploration of the area rather than a marker pointing exactly where to go. Finally, quest steps were combined and simplified where it made sense to help with the ease of completing the quests and removing unnecessary backtracking.

An example of the vignette system added with *Echoes* that allowed for more varied storytelling methods outside of takeover dialogue.

Many quests were updated to use the new objective area technology which encouraged exploration. The narrative team worked with VFX in order to create a new outline for quest objects to help draw the player’s eye to them.

Spotlight: Enhancing Seeker Avala’s Questline in Frostmarch

One of the biggest changes for Echoes was the ability to make changes in the world that would persist even after the player reloaded. One quest in particular I updated to fit this new mode was a quest centering around Seeker Avala. In the questline, she is meant to feel pain and collapse. In the MMO version, this is conveyed completely through dialogue. For the Echoes release, I worked with animators to animate Avala collapsing in the world and flickering in and out of existence. I worked around the new system of barks to make it so players would see her collapsed in the game world and could not interact with her until reaching a certain point in the side quest and interrupted dialogue to show her standing back up in world. This helped to better sell the emotional weight the quest had and provided a better narrative experience overall.

Seeker Avala collapsing in the game world and then standing back up at certain points in the quest.

Scripting for interactions with Seeker Avala. This checks if the player is on the specific quest and prevents a bark from playing when you get near her.

Scripting for interactions with Seeker Avala. It checks if the player is on the correct step of the quest and plays the correct animation and follow-up dialogue once the animation is finished.

New Quests for Echoes

In the Early Access release of Wayfinder Echoes, the previously released area of Frostmarch was greatly expanded. Along with updating my quests that took place in the old area, I created 5 new quests for the area centered around the idea of spirits that were unable to rest.

Along with the level design team, I led players to new parts of the map and events created within them to help tell the story of a place haunted by its past. I used the new vignette system and scripted custom encounters triggered by player actions to guide and challenge players in the newly expanded area.

The Spirit of the Crossroads using a VFX trail to help guide players on what they need to do next.

Avala’s Crochet Fox

For Echoes, I didn’t have a chance to hide any new foxes into the game. However, players who had experienced the winter holiday live event I created were delighted with the crochet fox they received as a housing item at the end of the questline. During Echoes development, a fan crocheted a near perfect reproduction of the fox and sent it to the studio for me to have. This is what I love about game development - creating things that resonate with people and bring them joy