We talked to ArenaNet about Heart of Thorns and the demo build coming to PAX East this weekend.

With the demo starting off in the story before putting you into the open world, it really felt like the story was a great introduction to the area. We asked if they planned on ever forcing this story introduction by making players experience a step in the story before an area of a map opens up for them to explore. Peters said that this is something that they are still looking at and are not completely sure of just yet. He commented that the main focus is that they want this cohesion to feel good and the version that feels good is where they will end up.

Once out it the open world, the players are placed within range of an outpost, a dynamic event hub within HoT. There is only the one outpost in the demo, so we were curious what is going to be like in HoT when there are multiple outposts on a map. Would there be a dead zone between the sphere of influence of each outpost, or would they have some amount of overlapping? Peters replied that there would be some overlap; as you get to the edge of one hub you would be reaching the edge of the next where you will see what the next hub is all about and it will draw players more into it. Outposts are like the next iteration of the meta-events that current GW2 players have experienced, Peters explained. He used the example of the Battle of Old Ascalon that had ghostly catapults attacking the city, but all the meta event could do to represent this was a single text string that said ‘The catapults are destroying the city!’ That doesn’t really have the feel and outposts will do a better job at drawing in players in a more organic way.

Alongside the single outpost is an adventure that has players picking up flamethrowers and torching Mordrem vine sprouts. When asked if this was representative of the rest of the game with there only being one adventure tied to a single outpost, Peters confirmed that it is not a one-to-one mapping. He said that as outposts are leveled up, different things will unlock and adventures are just a piece of that.

With the cohesion of the story steps and the open world story, outposts are the driving force to building up the status of the map. The first outpost, the one shown in this demo, is the story around this first crashed ship that players come across. The map as a whole has this story and an outpost is just a part of that greater flow.

On the other hand, adventures are there to break up that flow by giving a change of pace with the content that you are playing. The adventure in the demo for example, has players picking up flamethrowers and using new skills to overcome the challenge. We asked if all combat based adventures would be using bundles and new skills like this, and Peters replied that there definitely will be one that use the players’ normal skills. He mentioned the mini-dungeon Font of Rhand in Diessa Plateau as an example of something that could be an adventure, where you are going into this area that has a change of pace in content that you then get rewarded for completing.

We asked if content in Old Tyria, such as mini-dungeons and jumping puzzles, would be updated to function as adventures. The answer is that they are focusing on all of the HoT stuff before they start looking at Old Tyria. Peters brought up the new defiance bar as another example of this. They could turn the defiance bar on for all the old bosses, but there wouldn’t be an easy way to customize them to each boss as there is just so much content there. He said that it is possible that at some point these could find their way back through old content, but for now these will just be a thing in the new jungle maps.

The last open world question we had for Peters revolved around the wyvern, which functions as the end of demo boss for players to overcome. Within the demo the wyvern is set apart from the rest of the map, as if it exists in an instance of its own. Peters said that the wyvern will be an open world boss, but did comment that it is cool how well it clearly plays in an instance as well. He mentioned that the wyvern will be an open world boss, but not the same as the really large, open world, set piece world bosses currently in the game. The wyverns are made to be much more dynamic and can be used in multiple ways, something that is apparently already set up for the Verdant Brink map that they demo shows only a small portion of. The wyvern we see in the demo uses fire to limit the area that players can use to fight it. Peters said that there are some platforms that you will fight wyverns on that are much smaller than the one in the demo, so this area control becomes much more difficult in those fights on smaller platforms.

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