LoK: Defiance Remastered - Dev Stories, Part 1: The World Map
This happens to be one of my favorite stories from the making of this game. It is in no small part due to my own involvement in it, but also due to the seemingly impossible task it was, and the happenings surrounding it. So, get a nice, warm cup of tea (or whatever beverage or snack you prefer, if you prefer any at all), and brace yourselves!
The world map, or rather, a new iteration of it, was actually one of the earliest things we wanted to add to this remaster. There were already other maps we could reuse, such as the one from SRX, but we decided to do the game justice and create a proper, “modern” map of Nosgoth, while also incorporating the world’s gothic and gritty flair, without which it wouldn’t really be worthy of being called Nosgoth. I, having a penchant for such crazy tasks, immediately accepted it, months in advance.
The months went on, and eventually I fulfilled all of my “required” tasks, among which all the weapons (save for the Reaver), all the artifacts, all the doors, and many other props I won’t even mention. It was a week before December when I was able to dive properly into creating all the “extra” content. A week before December… and a week before the world map deadline, if we wanted to include it in the game.
I was being told that I could instead focus on another task, since making the world map in a bit over a week seemed like a stretch. Good advice, but I had my own plans. And so, I ended up making the entire landscape of the world map and its textures over the span of three days, essentially getting like 50% of the task done in much less time than it would have normally taken. Suffice to say, the world map plan was suddenly a go!
The following week was no less of a herculean effort. Armed with u/Aevum’s immense knowledge of the games and their lore, and his keen eye for anything that could be better or perfected in this regard, I continued to work on the world map. The people around me were getting sick as well, so not only was the deadline looming, but also an eventual episode of sickness, which, if looking at those around me, would have put me out of commission for at least three days. I still remember those days, in a bit of a haze at times, but at other times quite clearly. I worked during the day and well into the evening, often going past midnight. I made all the tree billboards during a single internal team stream. I painted the forests, brought about many of the improvements suggested by Aevum, and once the landscape was perfected, I went on to the locations. For those, I recreated nearly all the house variants in BO1, and replicated the towns’ layouts as well.
By this point, I started to have the first signs of getting a cold. A bit of shivering, a bit of runny nose. “Well, this is it”, I told myself, but I was determined that no matter what, I’d get the world map done. And so, I went on.
After the towns, I continued with the other locations. Those which I could, I imported from the games, and those which I couldn’t, I recreated myself. Ah, the task of recreating Avernus and Willendorf seemed impossible, but considering that I did not have to sculpt all the details of a gothic cathedral (which could have taken years, realistically), I somehow ended up recreating these in under a work day. I still remember doing a crappy paintover of the Avernus cathedral sketch with Raz, and jokingly saying “Guys, this is the best I can do to recreate a gothic cathedral in this time, sorry”. Ironically, the final one is not that far from my “concept”... It’s also still a bit of a shame that some of the small details that I added in Willendorf are not really visible in the final map (plus, Willendorf was added afterwards).
The Defiance locations themselves, those required by the task, were done on Sunday, which barely left me with time to do a final render. I don’t think I slept that day. Or rather, night, because once the morning came around, I was finished with the minimum required to get the map approved, and I was content enough with myself that I managed to have a good sleep afterwards.
I woke up in the evening, right on time for team meetings. I was proud to show off the map, which, admittedly, was not exactly in the state you see it now (Willendorf was missing, as were many of the extra locations, including the snow version which we wanted to add as well), but the team really liked it. However, the real test was whether the higher-ups liked it as well, which could decide whether the feature was going to be in, or… scrapped. Thankfully, we found out soon that they did like it, which we were all glad about. And so, smiling, and shivering, I went back to bed… because the cold had finally caught up to me. The sheer amounts of vitamins and methylene blue I gorged on to avoid this cold probably managed to keep it at bay for at least several days, and even to shorten its most severe phase by two days.
With the world map approved, and in the game, I had all the freedom in the world to improve and expand it. Again, with the help of Aevum, I added all the extra locations, made the snowy version of the map, burned Avernus, destroyed Vorador’s Mansion, destroyed the Pillars, cancelled that weird clown in the northeast (/s), and so on. It was honestly a fun time, despite how utterly heavy the world map file became to work with. And even like that, there were quite a handful of locations that did not make it, mostly canon ones which were hardly mentioned, or not at all, in the games. The most I can say is that they were Sarafan-era vampire “towns” and related. Maybe one day…
And that’s the story of Defiance Remaster’s world map. A crazy task driven by sheer passion and determination to get it done, and I am very grateful that I could create it, for all the people who can enjoy it for what it truly is: a love letter to the Legacy of Kain series, and a testament that the series may have brand-new content that fits the world and lore, even in this day and age. And of course, I have to thank Aevum again, who is among those people who I wanted to enjoy the map, and whose contribution is in no small part immeasurable, and Raina and the people at CD and PEW for making this possible in the first place.