Hello everybody ! As we said in our last update, this devlog will talk about changes we worked on but not released yet. You may know us by now, we like to make massive changes on the game that will report the public release by a lot. If we keep this up, maybe we’ll release Endless Wander after Star Citizen. #EndlessWander2030

LORE

Since our last devlog, we wrote the whole story of the game, and the world’s lore (It was about time!). Since it’s our first game, we made the mistake of going head first in the game and not plan out everything. Now, we have something we are satisfied with and with good foundations. We’re excited to share it with you !

Because of it, we rewrote the chapter 1 story, and some changes will be made to quests and dialogues. Characters will also be more different than what you remember.

Talking about the dialogues, we are currently rewriting all of the dialogues that are in the game. The characters changed a bit, and we worked on making them feel more alive and likable (or unlikable for some).

PROLOGUE

Since the game’s story changed, we wanted to make the tutorial more enjoyable and more in tone with the whole story, and so the prologue is born ! Brand new map, a bit of content in it, and a lot of backstory on the origin of Grimvale and the villages.

This will probably not be released before our migration on UE5 since we want to focus on gameplay for now.

Making the prologue’s map made us experiment on level design techniques and quest planning. The map will be a taste of what is to come for Grimvale’s map.

MAP

So yeah, one of the massive changes that will be made to the game is the complete rework of Grimvale. As the game was becoming an empty open world or a walking simulator, we’re going back to what we wanted to do in the first place (don’t ask us why we didn’t do it) : a semi-open world (think Fable or the Witcher 2).

With a closed environment, we’ll be able to control the atmosphere of each area, and by controlling where the player goes, he’ll always have something to do (enemies to beat, side quests that appear on the side of the road, …). It’ll also allow us to make more detailed environments.

As we said before, we tried using different level design techniques since making a closed map is completely different as making an open world. We now use blockout, a technique where we first make the map in simple shapes, so we’re able to quickly try and change the map’s structure before it is complete, and plan where will the quests be and how it should be made. With blockout, the whole team is now more involved in the level making process.

When we’ll start to work on Grimvale’s map, only the prologue will be playable so that we’ll release one area at a time in Grimvale.

We’re so excited to work with those new goals in mind. It feels like we’re leaving the prototype phase, and we’re now working on the final game. Thank you for reading our devlog, and see you next time for more news about Endless Wander !

Stay tuned,

Ederia Interactive.