hey find below an abbreviated transcript.
On the way through the woods to Aaryn’s private estate, there was time for some idle banter.
Ollie: Is there friendly fire?
Aaryn: There’s not, no.
Ollie: Thats probably a good idea.
Aaryn: Yeah, keep the confusion to a minimum.
Okay, so you’re making good time.
And I think oh, theres a boar there.
Lets leave that guy.
Edders: I found some horrible guys wearing horn masks?
They seem manageable though.
Kiera: That’s some nice Tudor thatch going on there.
Aaryn: Yeah, we built that with our player-facing systems.
So that’s all the tilesets you could earn over the course of the first part of launch.
We looked like a bunch of concussed theatre-goers.
Everything else is, you know, unique IPs, unique mechanics.
So I think that’s really cool, and hopefully players gravitate towards the one that they like.
If you like a Victorian gaslamp fantasy setting, you’re going to pick Nightingale.
If you like, you know, capturing and automating Pokemon, you’re gonna go toPalworld.
That’s a cool thing about the genre right now.
So we focused very much on world building as our thing, creating a hopefully compelling universe.
We arrived in the desert Realm.
Edders immediately picked a fight with some kind of robot.
Aaryn: OK, so leave it to Rock Paper Shotgun to get right into things.
We are going to that tower over there, which is actually super-close today.
We can go to the tower super quick.
That automaton is no joke.
Edwin: I just got shoved back through the portal by the robot exploding.
So good job whoever picked a fight with the giant robot, good job.
A practised tour guide, he kept up a gentle bombardment of smaller insights about Nightingale.
Unwanted equipment, meanwhile, can be reduced to essences that can be traded with shopkeepers.
Tower dungeons arent the same each time.
So we have more Bound enemies here, so this is another fight.
Aaryn: Yeah, you’ve got the option to get a headshot.
Every creature or the vast majority them has a weak spot you’re able to hit.
Aaryn: I’m glad you like Puck - Marc Warren who voices him is a Brit.
Its probably something that youve got to get used to.
And I think we took that for granted, being also in the Commonwealth here in Canada.
Aaryn showed us the basics of playing Realm cards in Fae towers to alter the setting.
A Bloodmoon card, for example, lowers your health but increases the odds of rare item drops.
A Tempest card makes it rain, which will water your crops.
I asked where the idea for the umbrellas came from.
Kiera: I dont know what happened there.
Edwin: You just face-planted right in front of me.
Kiera: I was just jumping up and down.
Edwin: Its really lovely that the umbrellas came out of a joke.
To be honest, I had not made the Mary Poppins connection, even though it’s screamingly obvious.
I don’t know.
I know when I see Canadians in movies every now and then it’s usually hit or miss.
They tend to exaggerate things right?
Aaryn: So he has a name.
Strog -
Ollie: Not any more, he doesnt.
Kiera: That was brutal.
Aaryn: Behold the mighty Strog, champion of these realms since time immemorial dead.
Well done Rock Paper Shotgun.
What stories he had, we will never know.
Along the way, Kiera and I asked Aaryn about the games biomes.
Which did Inflexion come up with first?
Aaryn: The forest was the first one.
Its sort of, I guess, the canonical one that most survival games take a stab at embrace.
Maybe that’s the way for other teams.
But that’s what we tried it was like, yeah, this works well.
Kiera: Do you plan to add many more biomes after release?
Aaryn: Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, I think biomes are sort of the bread and butter of these games.
They’re so foundational to the kind of experience that players want.
Kiera: It would be great to have a winter state or something, as well.
Aaryn: Oh yeah.
Aaryn: Yeah, it’s funny.
The original oh, there’s the portal open.
So now if we jump through here, we’ll go to the swamp.
So the original inspiration for the portals was The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.
The original idea we liked was finding something like that, and its a portal.
I like the idea of [adding] more portals in the future.
The game indicates the path to some objectives with a trail of glowing wisps.
Aaryn was alarmed by this, but Im pretty sure we all found it charming.
Aaryn: Swamp giants?
Okay, we could take them out or we could avoid them.
I mean, with this gear they would go down pretty quick but up to you.
They tunnel through the ground - oh, somebody shot one.
Ollie: That wasnt me.
Jeremy: That was me, sorry.
While Ollie and Jeremy were away being mean to giants, I asked Flynn about the gamesArachnophobia mode.
How does one go about making giant spiders in games safe for arachnophobes?
And so what they did in Grounded was they just removed the legs.
And that seemingly was incredibly effective at reducing the sensation of you know, fear and disgust.
OK, wheres the Humbaba.
Is she over here?
There’s some other creatures here, a Bandersnatch…
Edwin: Ooh, do you have a Jabberwocky?
Aaryn: Funny you bring that up.
I would say there’s a very good chance the Jabberwocky comes in a future update.
Jeremy: Will there be a vorpal sword?
Aaryn: So I can confess to you that I’m a huge fan of Arthurian legends and stuff.
Within moments, the noble Humbaba had followed the mighty Strog into oblivion.
Kiera: For these types of monsters, do you need a team with you?
Or is it possible to do it alone?
Aaryn: It’s really like aDark Soulsgame.
This didn’t go so well.
Aaryn: Okay, what did I just do here?
Okay, so I just spawned two of them.
I clicked too fast.
Edders: Oh my god.
Edwin: Im going to stand on this rock over here.
You take care of it.
Again the ice ammo prevailed over the forces of supernature.
During the firefight, Jeremy and Ollie pressed Aaryn on the subject of equipment level caps.
We have tier three gear right now, and there’s a tier four above this.
After wed defeated the second and third Humbabas, Aaryn tried to take us to another Realm.
But then he accidentally spawned a fourth Humbaba.
Aaryn: OK, let me crank this thing up.
Ollie: Are all creatures in a single realm the same level that you set the realm at?
Aaryn: Yeah, exactly.
Jeremy: I like the effects that you have in the sky.
The problem was that we couldnt find the right tree.
Aaryn: Here we go.
Okay, so who wants to who wants to take a stab at start the Eoten fight?
I think it’s this big oak tree in the middle here.
My guess, just give it a swing here.
See if that’s it.
Oh, I don’t think that’s him.
Is it this guy?
Which one is he?
I think hes here.
I hope hes here.
Let me just cast this spell again.
Maybe its the wrong spell.
Kiera: What if we cut down all the trees.
We cut down all the nearby trees.
Aaryn: They usually have a, whats the word, an offering thing.
I don’t see the offering thing here.
I think its got [an objective area] around it, and we’re still out of range.
Okay, that explains that.
So we chopped those poor trees down for nothing.
We proceeded deeper into the woods in search of the Eoten.
Aaryn: Oh, theres a little village over here!
Someone built this little oh theres a giant bear.
Is that a fabled bear?
Oh I thought the bears name was Norman, but no, its just a trader.
Kiera: Norman is a fabulous name for a bear.
We killed the bear.
Its actual name was Philisto The Wronged, or something to that effect.
Philisto certainly did get Wronged.
Kiera: Aww, that might have been my Joe.
Aaryn: Did he at least resurrect you afterwards?
Edwin: I did get resurrected, yes.
He was considerate like that.
But Ive lost track of everybody else now.
Oh, its that blue icon on the radar.
Aaryn: It’s so tough, right?
Because obviously, that’s a bug we don’t want.
Kiera rose to the challenge.
Kiera: I gave it some Humbaba meat.
Aaryn: Oh, very good guess!
The Elder Eotens love meat, so he should have given you Elder Eoten wood back.
Ollie: Great job Kiera.
Kiera: Oh Imsorry.
Im a keeper of the trees.
Im all about that peace.
Aaryn: So there you go.
Kiera: I want everyone to know that I tried to resolve this peacefully.
Aaryn: Yeah, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
And I think we’ve only scratched the surface of that.
you might read my slightly more collected thoughts on Inflexion’s latest over in ourNightingale early access preview.
