That Which Remains

Side Quest in the Shatterscarp Region

The Context

This quest had quite a troubled history. I inherited the quest from another designer with very little documentation, and I essentially had to recreate the quest from scratch. And from there, this quest's vision, goals, and scope were constantly shifting. Major lessons I learned can be found at the bottom of the page.

The Quest

The story is centered around a burned down village. Smoke rising from the ashes of buildings will most likely draw the player here, but I also scattered comments from the villagers in Thirdborn and in the region's entrypoint, Eagle's Reach.

The basic story here is that there was a group of researchers who settled here and were researching the crystal spiders in a nearby cave. But when some of the researcher's family and friends turned into dreamthralls (basically zombies) in the night, the village caught fire in the panic. After saving what they could, the researchers, unable to bring themselves to kill their zombified friends and family, they chose to lock them inside the cave to study them, trying desperately to find a cure.

The Village

One area I think this quest succeeds to some extent is the village. There are three main houses to explore, each with a distinct purpose, and with their own methods of finding entry, including multiple keys and locks, which make it a little bit like a puzzle box to figure out.

When the player approaches, they hear screams coming from a well, which is their main goal. In retrospect, since this is such a crucial point of interest, I would've made the well stand out a lot more, by making it central to the whole village, as well as placing it on a little plinth of rock to start.

This first house, the main living residence, is barred, so the player must climb up the rocks and drop down a hole in the roof. The player can also find a key to some of the other builders here, but this building is mostly optional since it is trickier to get into.

The second building (on the left here) served as food storage for the village, which is also where the keys for the village were kept, including the keys to the spider research lab.

When the player gets the keys, some fire blights (basically fire spirits) spawn from the rubble of the buildings, providing the player a moderately difficult fight.

This building also has a little cave for cold storage and some extra goodies for the player.

The spider research facility. It's here that the player finds the key to the well, as well as a really cool spider-themed unique shield.

When the player arrives in the cave, they have to fight their way through some crystal spiders, which was mainly a pace breaker since this quest is very narrative heavy.

When the player finally arrives in the heart of the cave, they find a cage with all the dreamthralled (zombified) family and friends, along with a bunch of research supplies and notes. This is probably the single best source of what the dreamscourge is in the whole game.

The player has a few different options with the researchers:

- They can turn them into the local authorities for harboring dangerous dreamthralls

- They can offer to get them supplies

- And the darkest option, they can offer to put the dreamthralls out of their misery and free the researchers from this seemingly hopeless pursuit.

If the player chooses this option, they have to kill the dreamthralls themselves, which in this current state are not actually dangerous, but more in a vegetative state. This was a very controversial quest choice, and it nearly got cut or neutered a few different times, but its inclusion I think is one of the things that makes the quest worth doing.

I wanted the player to feel as bad as possible for picking this option, so the dreamthralls don't fight back, and even cry out in different ways while they're being killed.

Lessons Learned

Although I'm proud of certain things about this quest, I think it's the weakest of all the content I worked on.

But I learned some really valuable lessons throughout the process:

- Shifting goals and focus, especially late in development, lead to bloat and mess. I feel like I completely reworked this quest multiple times, and I think there's clear evidence of that in how complex (and sometimes convoluted) the storytelling is. I doubt very many people picked up on many nuances here.

- Sometimes you have to take a step back. This is a fairly difficult-to-discover sidequest in the 4th region of the game, content which statistically speaking, most players will never see. I think we could've shipped this quest in a much simpler state, and sought to cut it down when it was facing problems instead of investing more time into it

- Focus the core experience. I think the puzzle box design of the village actually hurt the quest a bit, making it too difficult and convoluted to even reach the central decision point of the quest. I also don't think it added to the tension like I was hoping it would. We probably could've either skipped most of the village exploration, or most of the cave exploration and put the researchers in their house, or in the cave in the food storage building. I think this would've helped the quest feel more focused and cohesive.

I'm grateful for all that I learned here so that I can improve in the future. I'm also grateful to the amazing team that I worked with here:
- Writer, Cash DeCuir

- Artist, Hector Gomez