2-01.png)
Quest Support
Creating Points of Interest for Various Quests
The Context
While working on Hogwarts Legacy, I was part of the Overlands team, fleshing out the optional open world content. As part of this, I was tasked with blocking out various bandit camps, combat-focused points of interest. At first, these were very simple arenas, but I wanted to give the player opportunities to use their magic in more interesting ways, as well as use stealth if they so preferred.
For all of these bandit camps, I created the blockouts, set up the enemy compositions, and set up combatant behaviors, such as patrols or animations. I also designed any puzzles associated with them.
In the Shadow of the Mountain
In the Shadow of the Mountain is one of the main story quests for the Sebastian Sallow companion questline. As part of this quest, I redesigned the town of Feldcroft. Originally it was on a flat plane, but we had new story details about this town needing to be more fortified against encroaching goblins, so I put the whole town on this plateau and added stakes around the edges as well as tall lookout towers.
I also designed the town to have only a few main approach points with high walls and towers to reinforce the beseiged town idea.
I also had to work very closely with the cinematics team during this whole redesign. In the story, this town is very central to the character Isadora's obsession with ancient magic. The town was hit by a massive drought, and a group of wizards saved the town. So I also worked through a lot of iteration on certain angles and details, as well as really emphasizing this central well.
In the Shadow of the Estate
For this quest, we needed to show that Isadora's home was being raided and excavated by goblins, which was causing the town's issues with the goblins as well. I wanted it to feel like this was once a beautiful, well-kept estate with beautiful gardens now completely destroyed by digging.
I added lots of crates on the exterior of the estate to support a stealthy approach, along with some explosive barrels if the player wanted to use them to kick off the fight.
On request, I also added a small family cemetery within the gardens, which is also now clogged up with goblin equipment.
This view from Isadora's estate was very important since it was part of the cinematic for the In the Shadow of the Mountain quest, so I worked with the cinematics team to nail down this vista early and carefully adjusted the composition many times.
Isadora's home began as a complete building, but during the art phase, it was changed into a more ruined structure to show how ill-kept the grounds had become.
I designed the interior with a fairly simple design to help point the player to Isadora's portrait laying on the ground next to the fireplace.
Also by request, I added a secret cellar with breakable debris on top of it.
This leads to an underground section which I also did the basic blockout for, which was mostly kitbashed.
Carted Away
I created the central point of interest for the Carted Away quest, in which a sympathetic goblin has their cart stolen by a group of hostile goblins.
The camp has a main entrance at the bottom of this screenshot, as well as a stealth entrance behind some breakable boards on the left. Tall towers and these metal goblin walls make it imposing from the outside, since we wanted to encourage the player to find the stealth route.
A cache of goodies sits behind even more fortifications, so the goblins need to be dispatched first. I created verticality with the platforms and the main sleeping location.
The Lost Child
I worked closely with Nathan Scott, the quest designer to create a few different points of interest for this quest. The first was Archie's Fort. Archie was fascinated by magical beasts, so I found an old dragon skeleton, and pieced it together, figuring he would set up his hideout nearby.
I also created this camp, which was meant to also be a kind of intro to the stealth mechanic in our game. Since the player is a wizard, we don't have cover grass. Instead we have the disillusionment charm, a kind of semi-invisibility. Enemies will see you if they're close, so I added plenty of cover with these boxes and rocks so the player can avoid combat entirely if they want to. I iterated a lot on the placement and patrol paths for the enemies to make sure there were plenty of openings for the player to utilize.
It all leads up to the main tent, which is actually a large interior dungeon.
I also added a tower lookout at the far end, which adds a great vista after the combat is over.
I opted to make the flow very non-linear and open, so the player could find their own openings and approach it in any way they liked.
Troll Control
In this quest, a Hogwarts student has tried to domesticate a troll.
This troll camp is accessible only via broom, so the player has to land in the arena before they can fight the troll. I kept the surrounding walls high to lock the player in.
.png)
Behind the bloody pile of corpses, I also set up a basic teaching area with props from Hogwarts, a troll bed, and evidence of the student's attempt to make the troll a vegetarian.
Things didn't work out.